'Furious lower league clubs have raised the prospect of boycotting
the FA Cup after the controversial move by the Premier League and FA to scrap replays.
Owners
and fans of many sides outside the top flight have been left outraged
by the move, which they say will hit them in the pocket and was made
without them being consulted.
The
FA say they made the call on the back of an expansion to the
Champions League which means more fixtures for those in the
competition.
'This
appears to have been a deal done behind closed doors without any
meaningful consultation with clubs outside the Premier League and
against the democratic spirit of the FA Cup itself,' read Cambridge's
statement.
Orient
chief executive Mark Devlin added: 'My personal belief is that this
decision has been made to accommodate an expanded Champions League
fixture list, which now looks very much like a European Super League
but in different clothing.'’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13328021/Lower-league-clubs-BOYCOTT-FA-Cup-fury-Premier-League-FA-agreed-scrap-replays-hallowed-tournament.html?ico=topics_pagination_desktop
The
following is from the Socialist Standard, May 2021.
‘April
is known for showers and fools. The shower presently in charge of six
leading Premier League football clubs seemed determined to make fools
of the rest. Their stated intent was to form an elite of European
teams to secure the largest possible slice of the revenue pie.
As
it turned out they were the April fools as the scheme quickly
collapsed as all six English (geographically, if not by ownership)
clubs withdrew from the scheme. However, even though a Spanish and an
Italian club followed suit, according to Real Madrid’s president,
the European Super League isn’t dead, it’s ‘on hold’).
The
other 14 Premier League clubs had been joined by the rest of football
and publicity-seeking populist politicians, including the prime
minister, in condemning this blatant money-driven assault on
purported sporting values. Many a pious platitude was solicited from
commentators, pundits, former players and supporters.
Whether
this was a serious proposal or a high pressure negotiating position
remained unclear. It did seem remarkably coincidental that it
appeared as football authorities were announcing changes to present
structures. Whatever the purpose, money will be the driving force
behind it. How could it be otherwise under capitalism?
Those
loudly protesting this assault on the values of the game have more
than a little hypocrisy about them. The Premier League was formed in
1992 for precisely the same reasons offered in support of the
European Super League.
Sky
Television offered fabulous amounts of money for exclusive rights and
football was reformed for that reason alone. Subsequently, other
media platforms have bought into the product, the only value actually
realised being the commercial one.
Football
has succumbed to modern capitalist financial practices. Clubs are
purchased via leveraged deals, whereby the buyers borrow the money
they need, but then settle that borrowed amount as debt on the club.
Manchester United led the way in this sort of trading, but even
smaller clubs are now subject to these methods.
One
such is Burnley, recently bought out this way by an American deal,
ending local ownership for the first time in the club’s history.
Burnley was one of the original 12 founding members of the Football
League in 1888, when the town was a major centre for cotton textile
manufacture.
Of
those 12 clubs, 6 were in Lancashire, the rest were in the industrial
heartlands of the Midlands. The common factor was economic dynamism.
The original Football League was itself a product of the financial
circumstances of the day.
Football
served an ideological function, encouraging workers to identify with
their local team and, by association, the local capitalists who
actually owned the clubs. It also encouraged workers into rival
groups, sometimes leading to violence.
The
link between football and violence of supporters is usually portrayed
as emerging in the 1970s. However, a Times report on
the 1914 cup final between Burnley and Liverpool made a point that
the two sets of supporters did not assault each other, which suggests
such events were not unknown.
Capitalism
is all encompassing. Sport is not, and has never been, exempt from
that. Even amateur football cannot escape: there’s the hire of the
ground to play on and facilities to change in, kit to change into and
various other expenses. Free it is not.
Whatever
the eventual formulation, huge sums of money will be involved. One
often-voiced criticism is that footballers are generously remunerated
while nurses, for example, aren’t. Which are of greater value?
While
the word ‘value’ has various dictionary definitions, for
capitalism there is only one significant meaning, and that relates to
profit alone. Footballers sell far more media subscriptions than
nurses. Which is why the major factor driving the Super League is the
production of a commodity that can be marketed around the world.
The
big difference between1888 and now is that capitalism has moved on
from the local (as it was already beginning to do even then) to the
global. Football must reflect this. If it’s not the Super League
then some similar formation will be required.
Supporters
can gather outside clubs, chant their dissatisfactions and burn
replica shirts all they like, but sooner or later commercial
decisions will be the deciding factor in how the game is organised
and played. It might be football in Britain, soccer in America, but
the name of the game, as it’s always been, is profit.
The
media has alleged that a deciding factor in making the infamous 6
change their minds was fan power, as supporters outraged at the
prospect of their game being threatened by greedy businessmen forced
them to abandon their plans. If only it was so.
When
the Premier League was first launched a major concern expressed in
the media was that the ready availability of televised football would
result in fans no longer going through the turnstiles. Indeed, it was
posited that entrance to games would become free to attract a crowd
to provide the atmosphere.
Clever
marketing sold the concept of glory by association to the point that
some clubs had a waiting list for season tickets being sold at
inflated prices. Cinemas showed matches live for those who could not
afford either tickets or subscriptions.
The
elite league as it then was quickly became a financial juggernaut,
attractive to oligarchs, Middle Eastern princes and American
speculators, among others. The Premier League became the ‘promised
land’, the only worthwhile place for a club to be. A European Super
League, by capitalist logic, would have been a reasonable next phase.
That
it will not now be realised in its proposed form does not mean some
version of it will not eventually emerge. If the financial
imperatives require it to happen it will, whatever the opinion of
fans, politicians or a media willing to curb their usual enthusiasm
for free enterprise to court populist opinion. Not that such
enterprise has anything to do with being free.
As
with all aspects of life, free development is contingent on freeing
society from the obligations of capitalism. Sport in general,
football in particular, will mirror the social environment it exists
in. Only with socialism and the subsequent absence of money can true
sporting values be allowed to develop freely.’
Dave
Alton
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2021/05/in-league-of-their-own-2021.html