In twenty years, will domestic leagues be the priority? Will Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and co. even be a part of their domestic leagues?
And if no to the above questions, will you still be as invested in your team?
I know we've discussed this sort of thing before, but it seems an appropriate time to revisit the subject as Rangers and Barcelona fly off to America for the Florida Cup mid-season.
Yes.
I can see us getting a winter break, purely so Man Utd can go off and play in the International Noodle Cup against a load of Chinese teams.
I think there'll still be roughly the same league set-up. I think people want domestic sport more than they give a shit about international/European games.
When it all implodes domestic football will absolutely be the priority.
The problem with going to a Super League (or similar) is that if you say 'We're launching a Super League' everyone will hate it and will want it to fail, so they almost have to try and do it by the back door over an extended period of time, which I'm fairly convinced is what they (big club executives) are trying to do.
I do think that what will happen in my lifetime is that there won't be any cup competitions, at all (or if there are they will be token as fuck), and football will merge into some sort of vast global pyramid with a 10-month, 60+ game season and then playoffs like in American sports. I don't think that will be in the form of a Super League, though, as that will have a carbon footprint the size of Narnia and be extremely boring to watch as no one really cares about forriners - so it'll be more like if you come top two in the Premier League / UK Conference you will end up in the May/June 'postseason' playing Barcelona et al for the world title.
That makes much more sense from a business point of view as you can then also have a dynamic fixture list - give each team in the top divisions some extra designated derby games (so United play City 8 times instead of 4) and some designated cross-national games that count towards the league.
I think you could keep all the promotion and relegation that way too, as if you got rid of promotion and relegation the sport would shrink to a tiny size in the bigger countries.
Ultimately that will also allow America, China and so on to have multi-million dollar teams on an even keel with the traditional European teams, which could never happen at all in the current structure. South America will go into terminal decline, or at least their players will all go to the rich countries at as soon as they grow pubes.
International football will be abolished entirely except for a month of World Cup (probably every two years) and a month of qualifiers at some point before that - don't think they'll bother with any other continental stuff. The World Cup will also stop being hosted by one country, each cup will tour around the world to the key markets and the final will always be somewhere famous like America or London.
Dystopia 101 from me tonight.
I think things will remain pretty much the same, except America will be better (possibly Australia too if rugby becomes the sole preserve of Polynesians), and China will start to qualify for things but top out at being ultimately useless like Japan always are.
America has never produced a top player and it never will until such time as it has access to the best coaches and knowledge, which won't happen until it's part of the mainstream of club football. There's a reason shitheaps like Uruguay still churn out top players but massive economies don't.
China will never be good because they drum individualism out of them at birth.
So does Japan, so strength of numbers suggests that they will become at least alright.
The thing stopping America getting properly good rather than sometimes overachieving at tournaments is that they simply don't care. The mindset, so far as I can tell, is that football is still considered a sport that kids play until they get onto the 'real' stuff in high school, where they'll get sorted into gridiron, basketball and baseball and then go to college to do whichever one they've got the best chance of going pro in.
And presumably the ones who aren't good enough for those or and don't want a real job stick with football.
I reckon Pulisic is going to wind up in the top bracket of players. Notably, he trained at Dortmund from a very young age.Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Also, your dystopian future seems horrifyingly probable.
I think it'd be great if a random generator decided on a particular place in the football pyramid would getting the fourth Champions League place, say 14th in League One.
You'd get some crazy tactics going on in League One, that's for sure! People scoring into their own net, navigating other fixtures throughout the season to ensure they're in and around. Maybe the odd team who's decided to sack it off for the sake of promotion. It'd be fascinating.
That's not the same Barcelona...
Lol. Was wondering what was going on considering Barcelona were playing in the Copa del Rey the other night.
I don’t think much will change, really. I do think the Premier League should be reduced to 18 teams, but I’m not sure it would be either suggested or agreed.
It's weird, back in the day they were well up for reducing it to 18. Now I think it would be more likely to expand to 30 and just have games every single midweek, accepting that squad rotation will be needed.
I don't know why everybody assumes that [more] money is going to ruin the game along all of these Blade Runner universe lines. There are billions (and billions) in it now and, apart from pre-season becoming srs bizness and a load of other ultimately superficial PRODUCT wank, it is fundamentally the same as it was twenty years ago, and it will be in another twenty.
Things becoming more 'commercial' until a maximum level of 'commercialness' is reached will happen, unless that maximum has already been reached, I don't know. Restructuring leagues and all that seems like a massive coordination challenge. One where the top clubs risk not being the top dog anymore, so I don't see [m]any of them wanting some sort of Super League. Middle table clubs would risk being left behind, so they won't be for it either.
I guess the US, India, China, and Antarctica could form they own super league.
I was talking about the famous Ecuadorian club, which one are you talking about?
edit- the thing that I think got me:
Live Football On TVBarcelona v Legia Warsaw Florida Cup 20:00 FreeSports
I'd like to see some standardisation across the major leagues. Synchronised calendars would make things way more straightforward.
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