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Jeff Powell
Are gang of four plotting an exit strategy?
22:57pm 26th August 2007
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With Manchester United making a guest appearance in the relegation zone this weekend, and both Chelsea and Arsenal fortunate to edge wins which they took as routine in the past few seasons, you would think we might be heading back to the good old days of a wide-open English championship.
You would be wrong. We are accelerating towards the ultimate betrayal of our national game, namely the defection of the aforementioned three, plus Liverpool, to a European super league.
With every struggling embarrassment inflicted on the Big Four by such as Portsmouth, Reading and Manchester City, these Premier League upstarts are signing the death warrant of football as we know it.
Pressure point: Fergie has to keep United in pole position for any breakaway
Read more...
Reality check for McFadden as Goodison is united in grief
Palace in £1m plot to help Heinze join Liverpool
Sanchez rants over referee
Stubborn Gravesen may not be tempted by Fulham loan deal
Everton stunned as Fernandes heads to Spain
Jerome getting his head round life at the top
Fergie waves away Spurs' penalty appeals
Jol feels hard done by after United defeat
Nani sinks Spurs to open United account
Carragher sidelined by broken rib
By a terrible irony, the more competitive the other teams become the more urgently the mega-clubs will address the issue of a pan-European breakaway.
It has only ever been a matter of time before it happens but come the first hint of Chelsea, United, Arsenal or Liverpool failing to qualify for the Champions League then it will be very much sooner rather than later.
To hell with more than a century of tradition which has gone into the making of football into this country's most abiding sporting passion.
Forget all those historic rivalries, Liverpool v Everton, United v City and Arsenal v Tottenham included.
This is about hard cash and the multi-million pound signs are on the wall already.
The first of them went up the moment Michel Platini proposed a reduction in the number of English clubs entering the Champions League.
The gang of four went ballistic, as did their blood-money brothers in Italy and Spain who faced parallel cutbacks.
More followed as soon as Platini suggested that one of England's qualifiers should be the FA Cup winners. United have led the protests - the English giants want the insurance of qualification through a fourth-place finish.
So much for those honourable attempts by the new UEFA president to preserve the integrity of Europe's supreme tournament and to restore the lustre of the oldest football competition in the world.
Platini grew up in an era when only national champions had earned the right to take part in the European Cup. He was an onlooker as the purity of Real Madrid's glittering creation was distilled into the absurd misnomer of a Champions League populated by a majority of non-champions.
Not only is it too late now to go back to one club per country but if Platini keeps trying to spread more of the jam around the smaller nations, the sooner the G18 giants will go off to do their own thing.
Since a rebel league would jeopardise the international game - unregistered football would banish the top players from England and the rest of the leading World Cup and European Championship nations - UEFA's only option is to keep the big clubs in-house.
The cost of that is going to be their endorsement of a Super League which will leave domestic football in the lurch, not least financially.
If nothing else, Platini's stand has helped blow the cover of the powerful few.
Their negative reactions to his initiatives have amplified the hidden messages leaking out of the game.
The massive overseas investment in English clubs always implied that those tycoons had identified riches beyond the current structure of our football.
That threat to the status quo has been revealed by indications from Liverpool's American owners that they want to negotiate the television rights to their games independently-from the rest of the Premiership. That has been the unspoken ambition at Chelsea and United, among others, for some time.
This is the forerunner to a Super League, where the broadcasting revenue potential is vast beyond even the Sky, Setanta and BBC deals.
Hence the pressure on Rafa Benitez, Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and, most publicly, Jose Mourinho to keep their clubs in pole position for the breakaway.
This goes a long way to explaining, also, the panic at Tottenham which has resulted in the humiliation of Martin Jol by the board's directors as they went looking for a replacement manager with this season only two games old.
Despite all that embarrassment, Jol still travelled to Old Trafford yesterday under warning that fifth place in the Premiership would not be good enough this season.
Tottenham are desperate to break the quadropoly of United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool before these cash cows high-tail it across the Channel.
Since that loss would plunge the Premiership into economic crisis and deprive Football League clubs of essential trickle-down revenue, no one can afford to be left behind.
None of that is of serious concern to the Russian at Stamford Bridge nor the Americans who have taken over United and Liverpool and are trying to buy Arsenal.
The great English football fan might prefer the clamour and cutand-thrust of his traditional local rivalries to week-in visits from Porto and Nancy or week-out trips to Belgrade and Kiev but halfempty stadia for the less attractive Euro-League fixtures will not bother the clubs.
Television's richest gold mines await selfish plundering on the Continent.
That is the real, and hitherto concealed, price which English football at large must expect to pay shortly for the invasion of foreign investors.
When it happens the most vexed question will be whether the game's administrators failed to see it coming, or chose to turn a blind eye.
Either way, it will not be a pretty sight.
Friendly fire is the last thing we need
Either Steve McClaren is a glutton for punishment or the Football Association fear England will fail to qualify for Euro 2008 and are trying to bank as much money as possible before what David Beckham describes as 'the unthinkable' comes to pass.
After last week's Wembley defeat by Germany reserves - and all the ensuing criticism - McClaren needs another tricky friendly like a hole in the hands of whichever calamity-prone goalkeeper he has to call on.
Yet England have shoe-horned an away game with Austria into their already crowded autumn programme of Euro-qualifiers.
McClaren must take his team to Vienna on November 16, just five days before the home match with Croatia on which England's qualification is likely to depend, thereby deciding his fate as England manager.
If this is his decision, then for sure a long streak of masochism runs through his nature.
If the FA have inflicted it upon him, it can only be because they are eager to collect the appearance fee before the worst might happen. Because the most opportune time for any of the finalists to pay a playing visit to one of the host nations for next summer's tournament - in terms of both goodwill and familiarisation - would be next spring.
Jumping the gun, just in case they miss out, is not exactly an FA vote of confidence in their head coach.
Jeff Powell
Are gang of four plotting an exit strategy?
22:57pm 26th August 2007
Comments
With Manchester United making a guest appearance in the relegation zone this weekend, and both Chelsea and Arsenal fortunate to edge wins which they took as routine in the past few seasons, you would think we might be heading back to the good old days of a wide-open English championship.
You would be wrong. We are accelerating towards the ultimate betrayal of our national game, namely the defection of the aforementioned three, plus Liverpool, to a European super league.
With every struggling embarrassment inflicted on the Big Four by such as Portsmouth, Reading and Manchester City, these Premier League upstarts are signing the death warrant of football as we know it.
Pressure point: Fergie has to keep United in pole position for any breakaway
Read more...
Reality check for McFadden as Goodison is united in grief
Palace in £1m plot to help Heinze join Liverpool
Sanchez rants over referee
Stubborn Gravesen may not be tempted by Fulham loan deal
Everton stunned as Fernandes heads to Spain
Jerome getting his head round life at the top
Fergie waves away Spurs' penalty appeals
Jol feels hard done by after United defeat
Nani sinks Spurs to open United account
Carragher sidelined by broken rib
By a terrible irony, the more competitive the other teams become the more urgently the mega-clubs will address the issue of a pan-European breakaway.
It has only ever been a matter of time before it happens but come the first hint of Chelsea, United, Arsenal or Liverpool failing to qualify for the Champions League then it will be very much sooner rather than later.
To hell with more than a century of tradition which has gone into the making of football into this country's most abiding sporting passion.
Forget all those historic rivalries, Liverpool v Everton, United v City and Arsenal v Tottenham included.
This is about hard cash and the multi-million pound signs are on the wall already.
The first of them went up the moment Michel Platini proposed a reduction in the number of English clubs entering the Champions League.
The gang of four went ballistic, as did their blood-money brothers in Italy and Spain who faced parallel cutbacks.
More followed as soon as Platini suggested that one of England's qualifiers should be the FA Cup winners. United have led the protests - the English giants want the insurance of qualification through a fourth-place finish.
So much for those honourable attempts by the new UEFA president to preserve the integrity of Europe's supreme tournament and to restore the lustre of the oldest football competition in the world.
Platini grew up in an era when only national champions had earned the right to take part in the European Cup. He was an onlooker as the purity of Real Madrid's glittering creation was distilled into the absurd misnomer of a Champions League populated by a majority of non-champions.
Not only is it too late now to go back to one club per country but if Platini keeps trying to spread more of the jam around the smaller nations, the sooner the G18 giants will go off to do their own thing.
Since a rebel league would jeopardise the international game - unregistered football would banish the top players from England and the rest of the leading World Cup and European Championship nations - UEFA's only option is to keep the big clubs in-house.
The cost of that is going to be their endorsement of a Super League which will leave domestic football in the lurch, not least financially.
If nothing else, Platini's stand has helped blow the cover of the powerful few.
Their negative reactions to his initiatives have amplified the hidden messages leaking out of the game.
The massive overseas investment in English clubs always implied that those tycoons had identified riches beyond the current structure of our football.
That threat to the status quo has been revealed by indications from Liverpool's American owners that they want to negotiate the television rights to their games independently-from the rest of the Premiership. That has been the unspoken ambition at Chelsea and United, among others, for some time.
This is the forerunner to a Super League, where the broadcasting revenue potential is vast beyond even the Sky, Setanta and BBC deals.
Hence the pressure on Rafa Benitez, Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and, most publicly, Jose Mourinho to keep their clubs in pole position for the breakaway.
This goes a long way to explaining, also, the panic at Tottenham which has resulted in the humiliation of Martin Jol by the board's directors as they went looking for a replacement manager with this season only two games old.
Despite all that embarrassment, Jol still travelled to Old Trafford yesterday under warning that fifth place in the Premiership would not be good enough this season.
Tottenham are desperate to break the quadropoly of United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool before these cash cows high-tail it across the Channel.
Since that loss would plunge the Premiership into economic crisis and deprive Football League clubs of essential trickle-down revenue, no one can afford to be left behind.
None of that is of serious concern to the Russian at Stamford Bridge nor the Americans who have taken over United and Liverpool and are trying to buy Arsenal.
The great English football fan might prefer the clamour and cutand-thrust of his traditional local rivalries to week-in visits from Porto and Nancy or week-out trips to Belgrade and Kiev but halfempty stadia for the less attractive Euro-League fixtures will not bother the clubs.
Television's richest gold mines await selfish plundering on the Continent.
That is the real, and hitherto concealed, price which English football at large must expect to pay shortly for the invasion of foreign investors.
When it happens the most vexed question will be whether the game's administrators failed to see it coming, or chose to turn a blind eye.
Either way, it will not be a pretty sight.
Friendly fire is the last thing we need
Either Steve McClaren is a glutton for punishment or the Football Association fear England will fail to qualify for Euro 2008 and are trying to bank as much money as possible before what David Beckham describes as 'the unthinkable' comes to pass.
After last week's Wembley defeat by Germany reserves - and all the ensuing criticism - McClaren needs another tricky friendly like a hole in the hands of whichever calamity-prone goalkeeper he has to call on.
Yet England have shoe-horned an away game with Austria into their already crowded autumn programme of Euro-qualifiers.
McClaren must take his team to Vienna on November 16, just five days before the home match with Croatia on which England's qualification is likely to depend, thereby deciding his fate as England manager.
If this is his decision, then for sure a long streak of masochism runs through his nature.
If the FA have inflicted it upon him, it can only be because they are eager to collect the appearance fee before the worst might happen. Because the most opportune time for any of the finalists to pay a playing visit to one of the host nations for next summer's tournament - in terms of both goodwill and familiarisation - would be next spring.
Jumping the gun, just in case they miss out, is not exactly an FA vote of confidence in their head coach.
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