Rich clubs got their Premier League – they will get their European Super League
WELL, that de-escalated quickly! One minute the top six (yeah, RIGHT) football clubs in England were going to break away.
Form a so-called Super League with a bunch of Spaniards and Italians. Trouser ever more vast sums of money.
Cue an immediate howl of outrage from, well, almost everyone else. Including the Prime Minister and Prince William.
Not to mention those incredibly fine, decent and upstanding people at Uefa and Fifa. Fans holding protests, social media seething with fury.
And one day later the whole idea is as stiff as a stoat. All the English clubs — Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal — have pulled the plug. There have been grovelling apologies and resignations.
What an epic misjudgement of the public mood.
Fan power, apparently, won the day. There will be no Super League — yet.
But here’s my suspicion — that idea isn’t dead. Far from it. And sooner or later the “big” clubs will have their way, maybe in a different form. That’s what’s happened in the past.
It’s what will happen now, whether Boris likes it or not.
The original idea was never going to work. Never mind the ludicrous notion of Spurs being considered one of our six most successful clubs.
Hell, I’ve won more football trophies than Spurs. They’ve taken the league title only twice.
And the last one was around the same time The Beatles played their first gig at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. Before the Cuban missile crisis.
No wonder the likes of Everton, Leeds, Leicester and Aston Villa were a bit, you know, affronted.
Also, it wasn’t really a “Super League” because the biggest European club, Bayern Munich, refused to take part.
And then Uefa announced that the players who joined up wouldn’t be allowed to play for their countries, and the various nations said nor would the clubs be able to play in the domestic league — that was it, kaput. Not fan power, just common sense.
But believe me, this will all come back. Maybe in a modified form.
VAST WONGA
Because in the end, much though the fans might complain, money talks. And that’s what has happened at least twice before with our national game.
The older among you may remember the furore when those same big clubs suggested setting up a super league in England.
That was in the late 1980s, when the big clubs were anxious to grab as much money as possible from the new TV franchises.
What happened? After the initial objections had died down, we got the Premiership — just as they wanted.
A smaller division swamped with vast amounts of wonga. And those clubs grew richer and richer.
The same clubs again clamoured for an expanded European Champions league.
Not just a knockout competition, as it used to be. But leagues of teams. What happened? The Champions League was hugely expanded and now takes up a hefty proportion of the season.
In the end they got ALMOST everything they wanted.
Ditto right now. Watch this space.
The richest clubs in Europe have been demanding a bigger share of the spoils, and a special league, for a decade.
And in the end they will get a version of what they want.
And will it be so bad for all that? A lot of us who don’t support the “Big Six” can’t wait to see the back of them.
And the money will trickle down and make the smaller clubs richer too.
That’s what happened with the Premiership and Premier League.
So — the Super League. Not dead at all. It will be back. Watch this space.
It’s engagement No 419 for Katie Splice
KATIE PRICE has got engaged again. It’s about her 419th engagement (sooner or later she’ll get around to you, don’t worry).
I can’t remember the name of the bloke she’s, er, betrothed to. And by her track record, as soon as I remember it’ll be all over.
Sometimes I think she gets engaged only to get her name in the paper.
Well, it’s worked again, I suppose.
Go wild for cat return
SOME good news! Wildcats will soon be reintroduced to England for the first time since Shakespeare was alive.
They’re our most endangered animal – only a handful live in the far north of Scotland.
One problem is game-keepers, who persecute them relentlessly. I wish we could have a game-keeper eradication programme.
The other is that they are probably just about the only animal in the world which is being, er, shagged to extinction.
They interbreed with domestic pussies . . . you know, any port in a storm.
So there are only a few thoroughbred wildcats left.
Next? Bring on the wolves.
Bar pol pots in pubs
GOING to the pub is still a bit of a palaver, isn’t it?
More to the point, the hospitality industry seems divided about how to treat its customers.
There are the bars and restaurants where the staff go out of their way to make you feel welcome. And then there are the others.
Patrolled by jobsworth Napoleons who try to make life as difficult as possible for anyone daring to buy a drink.
I ran into one of these this week. A bullet-headed little Pol Pot whose happiest moment in life was when someone gave him his bloody headset.
We cleared off after one drink. Meanwhile, my mate tried to book us into a pub for a drink tomorrow night. “You can stay for a maximum of 90 minutes and you must buy a meal,” he was told.
Get stuffed is the only reasonable answer to that.
I hope we remember which establishments were nice and which were not when all this is over.
It’s also why I have a certain sympathy for Keir Starmer.
The Labour leader was kicked out of a pub by a ranting landlord called Rod Humphris.
He needs to remember that a host should treat his guests with courtesy, no matter what political views they might hold.
I think in the circumstances Starmer behaved with dignity. I’d have lamped the bloke.
A fluke of York
A WOMAN has been arrested after being found wandering around Prince Andrew’s home.
The woman, in her forties, claimed she was engaged to the Duke of York.
I assume the guards let her in because they thought nobody in their right mind would CLAIM to be engaged to the sweatless buffoon.
I mean, why would you?
They should let the poor woman go.
She’s about the only person in the last year who voluntarily tried to meet the bloke.
Queen’s quiet dignity
SADDEST picture of the year was surely that of the Queen, masked up, sitting alone in a pew, waiting for the funeral of her husband.
Such quiet dignity at a time of heartbreak.
We will remember the second Elizabethan Age with enormous love and respect for both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
But I wonder too if it will also be seen as the beginning of the end for our Royal Family?
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I’M telling you, this column must have influence! Couple of weeks back I said that when the kids return to school, it should be without masks.
The Department for Education has now said it expects pupils to stop wearing masks by “stage three” of our emergence from lockdown – May 17. Not a minute too soon.
Let’s just hope that mid-May isn’t when we start seeing another spike in Covid cases.