Sick of this? Colm is.
Colm O’ Donnell
Senior Staff Writer: @clooom
Will I be watching the premiership this weekend? Someone asked me that question the other day, and the only answer I could give was no. No, I won’t be watching the Premiership, no; I won’t be watching the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Serie A, or La Liga. The simple reality is, what’s the point? I can say with 100% certainty that one of two or three teams will win each of those leagues. My time is far better off spent on Facebook that night, seeing what goals were raved about, and then youtubing the hell out of them.
The fact of the matter is; football has become boring, and as much as I call myself a Man United fan, the reality is, I along with countless other young Irish kids who started watching sports in the mid nineties supported the team that Roy Keane, and to a lesser extent, Denis Irwin, played for. Yes, it’s fun to watch them win the league, but secretly, I get more enjoyment out of transfer deadline day, or playing the fantasy football league, and most of all, I get more enjoyment of watching a sport that is actually competitive: American Football.
Money both is and isn’t the problem. Professional sport is a big money business, nowhere more so than in the NFL, but the key is in the details, in the NFL there exists a salary cap, of $120 million per franchise per annum, spread out among over fifty players on the roster. Football has become so imbalanced because of big money owners coming in and throwing money around like it doesn’t mean anything, leading to mass market inflation, and, frankly, many players being over-valued and over-paid. Cardiff City’s entire squad could have been bought many times over with the amount of money that Man City has spent just this transfer window. It would make little sense for one league to implement a salary cap either, as players would just move to where the money is, and FIFA are too afraid from the potential backlash from big clubs to attempt implementing such a cap, and make no mistake, it would have to be FIFA’s doing, as the only way this could work is on a global scale.
So, setting aside all current leagues, I want to pose the hypothetical question: how could we make a pan-European professional league that would rival any sports league currently in existence, make sure every team would be competitive, and remain financially viable? My ideas are by no means perfect, just the doodling of a bored student spending his summer at home, but imagine a European league with 48 professional teams, in 4 Conferences, geographically divided.
48 Cities, 35 Countries, 4 Conferences, 1 Unbelievable Football League.
| North | South | East | Central |
| Reykjavik | Lisbon | Moscow | Paris |
| Oslo | Porto | St. Petersburg | Lyon |
| Stockholm | Madrid | Tallinn | Marseilles |
| Helsinki | Barcelona | Riga | Vienna |
| Copenhagen | Valencia | Minsk | Zurich |
| Belfast | Bilbao | Kiev | Prague |
| Dublin | Palermo | Bucharest | Hamburg |
| London | Naples | Belgrade | Berlin |
| Liverpool | Rome | Sofia | Munich |
| Manchester | Milan | Zagreb | Warsaw |
| Amsterdam | Athens | Budapest | Bratislava |
| Brussels | Istanbul | Sarajevo | Ljubljana |
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My aim is to have a team in as many cities, and countries as possible, to maximise potential fan-bases. The idea is that within each Conference of 12 teams, a league would be played out, each team playing each other twice; standard protocol. At the end of the season, the top 4 teams in each conference advance to a playoff format round of 16, and play it out to determine the Champions. A cup competition would also be implemented, giving teams who might not have had a realistic chance of the league title a chance of a cup run.
There are a number of points raised by the style of league I envision. Firstly, the reduced number of games involved. I think that there are too many games at the top-level of the game today, and, especially for younger players, the risk of burn out is quite high. With a reduced schedule, the quality of each game goes up, and the risk of long-term debilitating injuries goes down.
Now, the crux of my argument, ‘What’s to stop all the talent flocking to Madrid, or Rome, or London? The answer is two-fold; a Draft, and a Salary Cap.
Firstly, the NFL Draft has become primetime viewing in recent years; with the first overall draft pick from the college ranks possessing the power to change a Franchise from bottom to top. It also commands a fairly healthy financial investment. The St. Louis Rams first overall pick in the 2010 draft, Quarterback Sam Bradford, received a six-year, $78 million deal, which has $50 million of guarantees and has a maximum value of $86 million.
That is massive money, but it also illustrates the power of drafting, in a hypothetical situation, who’s to say that Lionel Messi wouldn’t command such a contract, and who’s to say that on his own he couldn’t make a team instantly much better. Staying with the Rams, they won the Super Bowl in 1999, and lost it in 2001, yet after ten years of decline, they were the worst team in the game. This is the nature of the NFL: fortunes come and go. This year’s worst team, the Carolina Panthers, were in the Super Bowl as recently as 2004.
I am of the opinion that there is plenty of footballing talent to cover 48 elite teams, and a system where any young player who wanted to enter the league, having come up through smaller regional professional leagues, or even older players who had matured, would be able to apply to the Draft. As is procedure with these events, the worst team the year before gets first overall pick and working backwards to the previous year’s champion.
A Salary Cap really is vital for the financial viability of this hypothetical league, and in my opinion, the continued stability of current professional leagues. By all means have player transfers, but within a constrained salary for the whole team, it is still possible to accumulate talent and bring in big names – see this year’s Philadelphia Eagles.
The additional benefit of this the increased focus on coaching and management that would ensue. With the ideal scenario of all teams having a similar or equal talent level, coaching would be the difference maker. If Man City keep spending a hundred million every offseason, it’s going to get to the stage where my little sister could manage them to the Champions League.
The problem does exist when you try and correlate the two sports like this in some ways however, at 17, you can be as physically ready as you will ever be to play in the Premiership for Manchester United (see Macheda’s goals at the end of the 2009/2010 season), but you wouldn’t survive a single play in the NFL. Players need years of conditioning, of being slaves to the gym, just to even compete at a collegiate level, and almost superhuman athleticism to play in the pro’s, terms commonly used to describe the top players in the game are ‘Supreme Physical Specimen’ and ‘Genetic Freak’.
The existence of the NFL within somewhat of a ‘bubble’ is another contrast. Professional players rarely come from as far as Canada, and it’s possible to count on one hand the number of current NFL players who started playing the sport outside of the American continent. From the time a player is marked as a ‘prospect’ in High School, his path to the collegiate ranks, and eventually the pro game, is already marked out for him, should he not become a ‘bust’. It is this strive towards perfection which has resulted in the somewhat sterilised atmosphere where games are only played at these three stages, partly because of the amount of time and dedication it takes to develop the hundreds of plays necessary in the game. It is true that some of the innocence and simplicity of soccer, its ability to be played at all levels, by all ages, which does make it the more universal game.
The ‘Beautiful Game’ deserves a league that reflects its position within the world today. Too many European countries have no real vested interest in the big leagues, and the value of a professional team based in these smaller, poorer countries, in terms of national pride, and financially, would be massive. When Man City opens their campaign against Swansea, barring a shock of dramatic proportions, Man City will win, and they will win comfortably. When I sit down to watch any NFL game, it can go either way. This is what is missing from a game I want to look forward to watching all season long, not just the business end of the Champions League.
