The death of the beautiful game

According to the BBC Sport site the Manchester City manager Sven Goran Eriksson is to be booted out at the end of the season. If ever there was truly a lousy decision it has to be this. The whole saga is yet another nail in the coffin of the beautiful game. It highlights to me just how much greed is attached to the game.

Just a year ago here was a club fighting a seemingly losing battle. After a mediocre start to the season they ended up scrambling for enough points to stay in the top flight. This season they have a stunning start, gave the top four something to think about and then settle in to a position that was probably more their place. With respect to Man City fans it was fairly inevitable that the stamina of the top four would soon shine through. The Premier League is not a race. It’s something to be taken a game at a time. Man City did just that and the results were going their way. So much so that they maintained an enviable home record for several weeks.

With new ownership came good money. Good money of course buys the best of the international talent pool. Martin Petrov and Elano proving to be fine individual talents. World class? Well that remains to be seen.
But Mr Shinawatra seems to have his expectations set a little too high. You cannot expect to enter in to this league and see your team suddenely rise to the top after such a long time without success. It needs a careful strategy and effective leadership. Mr Eriksson to me is the perfect man to guide this team of above average players to a better place. The team needs a strategy and its foundations rebuilding.

Sadly it’s not going to happen now. At least not with this manager.

I fear for the future of the Premier League (and football in the UK in general) if we are to see teams funded by multi-millionaires with little or no knowledge of the game and lofty expectations. Shinawatra appointed Sven as Manager and Head Coach yet has failed to see the long term advantage. Worse still he has failed to empower the man and rely on his notable experience. World class club coaches are few and far between. Admittedly he struggled with the English national side despite reaching the last 8 in competitions, but here’s somebody with a fine pedigree in club football. His deriders have always stated that he took on already successfull clubs and guided them to inevitable success. But we’re all seen the biggest clubs buckle under the weight of their egos.

Like Mourinho, Sven appears to be the victim of a business decision and internal wranglings beyond his control.

So we now have a sport that 100+ years ago was borne out of the working classes. It now appears in the hands of the greediest people on the planet all looking for quick returns on their investments. What next for the game if financial clout supercedes the talents of those that directly affect what happens on the pitch?

Under normal circumstances I would predict a backlash to it. A kind of revolution where the power is handed back to the fans - the people paying at the turnstiles every week. But this isn’t going to happen. The game will become a bland boardroom spectacle where newspaper columns report rifts in management over the actual content of a match. It’s all very sad.