Whatever happens in the Champions League final, the 10-year plan of the French club’s super-rich Qatari owners has paid off“Football is not for sale,” Aleksander Ceferin pronounced, famously, at a Uefa conference two years ago, in the process exploring the depth, width and delicate inner workings of just how wrong one earnest-looking man at a podium can be.Cut back to the real world. In the current, rather improbable timeline, Uefa is preparing to stage a biosecure Champions League final with no other purpose than the effective retailing of TV rights. Related: PSG reaching Champions League final gives hope to flailing Manchester City | Eni Aluko Related: Robert Lewandowski: the nutty professor obsessed with finding his outer limits Continue reading...
The argument for financial reform is at last beyond credible dispute as historic clubs face ruin owing to the Covid-19 crisisEven before football was plunged into crisis by the Covid-19 pandemic, influential people in the game were discussing the need for the Premier League’s improbable fortunes to be shared more equally. As historic, stalwart lower-division and semi-professional clubs stare at ruin, and promised investment could drain from the grassroots, the argument is finally beyond credible dispute.However the Premier League resolves its struggle to finish this season so that it can clutch the remainder of the TV money, it will still be a huge draw for broadcast billions when normal life finally returns. The pre-pandemic position, that the big clubs keep...
If the FA and Premier League were truly invested in women’s football, it may not have come to this for the WSL and ChampionshipTwo months after the Football Association informed clubs in the Women’s Super League and Championship that it would not be offering any specific Covid-19 financial support, making curtailment almost a foregone conclusion, that last resort is finally being discussed. And in one way it feels overdue. But should we be looking at cancellation at all?In Germany this Friday, two weeks after the resumption of the men’s Bundesliga, and in the same week the fate of the WSL and Championship will likely be confirmed, the Frauen-Bundesliga season will resume. Related: Inessa Kaagman: 'It's not just sport-minded at Everton,...
As Premier League clubs seek government support to restart the focus is on the brutal gap to the Football League’s three divisionsIf one impact of the Covid‑19 catastrophe has been to hold Britain rigid and shine a merciless light on all our structures, it was inevitable that football’s struggles would culminate in a piercing look at the money. And just as there are calls for fundamental improvements to the nation’s inequities when the horror is finally over, a focus is emerging on football’s own inequalities and how sustainable they really are.The financial gap between the Premier League and the rest has widened exponentially over the 28 years since the First Division clubs broke away from sharing with the Football League’s...
The final league table will merit the biggest asterisk in history if teams are full of footballers who don’t want to be on the pitchAnyone who has spent the best part of an hour just waiting to cross a supermarket threshold in the past few weeks will be aware how quickly the outlandish becomes the new normal. Yet even in these strange days it was still odd to hear Gordon Taylor pop up on the radio with the suggestion that shortened games might be the solution to finishing the Premier League season sometime before the clocks go back.How that would have helped maintain the integrity of the competition or assisted those clubs worried they might be relegated in less than...