Also, if you recall Jorge Valdano’s intervention regarding the 2007 UCL Semi Final between Chelsea and Liverpool, or, more to his point, between Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez, you will not be entirely unfamiliar with the intellectualisation of that long standing terrace trope, namely the conflation of poor football/footballers with excrement.
The Premier League is far and away the richest league in the world. Its clubs regularly outspend the other major European leagues put together, transfer window after transfer window. The $10bn spent on transfers over the past 5 years for example is far larger than the cumulative spends of the other 4 major leagues in Europe.
Its financial dominance has only increased over time and represents an economic hegemony unparalleled in the history of modern football. The only possible historical corollary would be the Italian Serie A’s dominance in the 80s and 90s when even provincial Italian sides like Parma could outspend the rest of the continent’s non-Italian giant clubs without much fuss.
Furthermore, and unlike that iteration of Serie A, the Premier League’s house of dominance is not built as much on the straw of debt and billionaire owner whimsy but more with the bricks and mortar of great commercial income and global popularity. It appears (relatively) sustainable and that it will be with us for the foreseeable future.
Why, then, is the product itself so terrible? More and more these days, in my conversations with fellow football buffs, there is an inescapable sense of dissatisfaction with modern club football as a spectacle. This sense of disappointment is not unique to the Premier League, to be fair. The dominance of English sides in European competitions thus far this season suggest that there isn’t much going on elsewhere either.
But, as the richest and most avidly promoted league in the whole wide world, it is impossible not to see the Premier League, with its bloated sense of self-importance, obscene transfer fees/wage bills and omnipresence as the embodiment of what is clearly a wider malaise. And this is not a phenomenon of the current season alone…the Premier League has steadily grown into its role as the place where football goes to die over recent years.
Even a cursory look at the top teams in the league is revealing. Arsenal are no longer the purist darlings of yore and it is not difficult to see why. Their insistence on elaborate and lengthy set-piece routines, complete with several simultaneous grappling contests that would put Wrestlemania to shame, is visually striking, and not in a good way.
When you layer this with the mechanical and repetitive patterns of their “open” play, you get a style that is far from fluid. Mix in Mikel Arteta’s innate caution (to put it mildly) and the over-representation of centre backs in the squad, and you have a perfect recipe for public ennui. But at least they have the fig leaf of results to mask some part of their aesthetic nakedness.
Their competition, such as it is, can take no such solace. Manchester City look a pale imitation of Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering sides of a few years ago. The technical precision is missing as is the sense of control that marked them out. At their considerable peak, some found that the metronomic consistency of their short passing game left them cold…but I was never one of them.
These days though, even Pep appears bored by his own team. This might explain his recent, and surprising, metamorphosis into outspoken activism…a curious evolution for such a football obsessive. The situation in Gaza may well divide opinion…but the jury is all in as far as this iteration of Pep’s City are concerned: they are not a patch on their predecessors. Not in terms of watchability and not in terms of results either.
Last year’s champions, and my team, Liverpool, are in an even worse state. Coached by an apparent mediocre who is, admittedly, saddled with an imperfect squad made weaker by injuries, they are unable to play with any sort of sustained tempo at home and away.
On the pitch, they seem as bemused as anyone by the apparently sudden and overt physicalisation of the League, not a good look for defending Champions. The “sturm und drang” of the adrenaline-filled Jurgen Klopp years has been replaced by a pedestrian tempo, tedium and non-flying wingers, as Mo Salah’s flame finally flickers while Cody Gakpo’s struggles to burn at all. Liverpool’s football is dull as dishwater and they are now a hard watch, even for Anfield’s famously patient denizens. It will be interesting to see how it all pans out eventually, assuming we haven’t all been lulled into stony sleep by then.
The rest barely rate much of a mention. Chelsea should be young, naive and exciting to watch….well, two out of three ain’t bad, as Meatloaf pithily put it. A billion pounds doesn’t get you much these days, apparently.
Aston Villa are technically just about still in the title race but have set precisely zero pulses racing with their football. There is no enthusiasm at all for their insurgent cause.
Eddie Howe seems to have run his course at Newcastle while Spurs, historically entertaining but hapless, are now merely hapless, it seems.
Even over-achievers like Brentford and Sunderland have brought little to the party in terms of watchability. The Bees main tactical “innovation” has been Michael Kayode’s long throws, an 80s throwback ploy of which Godwin Obiyan (he of Stationery Stores of Lagos, Nigeria) would be proud, while Sunderland’s success has been built on being a functional and compact unit full of willing, but largely forgettable, players.
Whisper it quietly but I find that, of the traditional “Big 6”, I enjoy watching Manchester United a little more than I should now that they have rid themselves of that zealot Ruben Amorim and his ill-fitting straitjacket.
So…what remains? A very rich league with a poverty of football, alas. As already mentioned, English teams are threatening to dominate Europe this season and their success, should it happen, would only make things worse. It would spawn even more imitators and pretty soon football everywhere would degenerate into an overly physical series of wrestling bouts punctuated by several stoppages of play and penalty areas more congested at corners than downtown Kinshasa during evening rush hour.
The prospect is not appealing but the paradox is powerful. A league, richer than it has ever been, and with every material resource and facility available to it, produces football that is merely a stylised version of the dross that one can find on an average park on a Sunday morning.
Money really isn’t everything!
Akin Dawodu (@alimustapha on X) is the MEA head of a multinational financial institution and is based in London
