: Tue Jul 14, 2009 10:00 pm
Do the City fans crowing about signing Tevez not feel a slight sense of anti-climax about the whole thing?
Lets face it, football is dead as a sport. It's now an entertainment media platform much like the massive American sports. It's 100% about money and the next revolution IMO is franchising.
If City reach the Champions League next season have they achieved anything? If they win the league is there really any need to congratulate Hughes or whoever their manager is after they spent £999 gazillion on players?
The thing about signing Tevez, Adebayor, Robinho, Santa Cruz and co is that they can't play every week or they'd lose every week due to an embarassing lack of balance. So that means their statements about wanting to push themselves and play every week are ridiculous. Santa Cruz in particular is going to be playing Coca Cola Cup games and every fourteenth Saturday.
It just amuses me about City, their billionaire is not the astute man Abramovich is for Chelsea. You get this picture of this Arab sat with the Football Manager 2009 database on his screen and youtube on the other, finding a well-known and horrifically overpriced player and then dialling the phone and telling the club to bid for them. I don't think Hughes has any involvement in these fantasy deals at all.
I think the European football authorities need to get a grip of things before they get even more farcical. Salary caps linked to turnover are surely needed as there are now so many clubs solely reliant on individuals to survive. If those individuals are naughty and have their assets frozen or lose out in business climate changes, there is a risk clubs will go out of business. They have also got to sort out the Champions league circle where the teams that qualify for that are guaranteed such increased levels of income that it becomes almost impossible for them to fail to reach the CL. They are creating the much talked about European Super League by default as they are allowing several clubs to swell to truly epic proportions whilst allowing the rest to languish in eternal mediocrity, unless bought by a rich boy looking for a status symbol.