john68 wrote:Socrates wrote:john68 wrote:
That City, a club that I have supported since 1956 may have joined the greed movement (hopefully the reports of this are untrue) sickens and disgusts me. I was no supporter of the machinations of the major English clubs when they formed the Premier League and dumped the rest of English football to fend for itself, I was a major and loud critic of just about all things G14, when they did similar in Europe but on a much larger financial scale and I am certainly disgusted by this move, though in no way surprised.
61yrs of being a City fan, sky blue embedded deep within me.....Not so sure now.
It's just Sorriano, he's probably desperately trying to find more funds that his mate can blow on defenders that can't defend and goalkeepers that don't make saves. Khaldoon will hopefully tell them to pull their heads in.
You could well be right Socs, but I have grave doubts. All through my long term research of the actions of the old G14, latterly their actions within the ECA and the info I gathered regarding a possible breakaway Euro super league after the Memorandum of Understanding expires in 2018, there have been two constant themes. 1) The grab for any and all money they can get their grubby hands on, whatever the cost to any other football institution, club or the sport itself and their need to ring fence themselves, and defend themselves from and stop anybody else qualifying to drink from the trough they created.
Statements made by the owner of Galatasary and confirmed by the Agnelli family (Juve owners) around 2013/2014 at the Leaders In Sport Convention held in New York were quite specific. That "15 to 20 of Europe's biggest clubs had been and were actively discussing setting up a breakaway league which would include all of the major clubs in Europe, THERE MAY BE ONE OR TWO EXCEPTIONS, FOR LOCAL REASONS, FOR POLITICAL REASONS"
Given that the English clubs involved in those discussion were/are Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and the rags and that in the fuller statement, the rags are specifically named as one of the driving forces (David Gill again?), I interpreted and still believe that City, being the biggest threat to the ring fence around those big European clubs, because of City's resources, that City were top of the list of those exclusions. Geographically we are far too near to both the Northern English clubs and certainly a threat to the financial ambitions of all those English clubs.
I further believed then and still do that it was/is necessary for City to grow both on the pitch and off the pitch commercially to such an extent that City could not be ignored. The current commercial growth of City, coupled with the failings of the other big English clubs and the recent rise of Spurs to challenge them also seems to define a race for elite status, given that European football is possibly on the cusp of evolving into such a massive commercial and global enterprise, bigger than we could ever have imagined.
I am both saddened and angered (maybe an age or generational thing) by the direction that football has taken and very unhappy that we look as though we could be become a part of the 'race for greed'.
if it's a generational question, it spans more than one generation. I'm very disillusioned by modern football as well, and have many time said that I will probably give it up if a break-out "SUPER LEAGUE" is created. Especially if City is part of it.