The English Premier League is slowly killing the beautiful game

And yet it's still preferable to Spain, Italy and France where it's August and we already know who the champions of those leagues will be. Germany potentially fits into that category too, although Dortmund have a real shot at it this year. The money argument is always an interesting one, with fans throwing around the 'mercenary' tag left and right. Most people, if offered an opportunity to double or triple their salary by jumping from one corporate office job to another, would do it in a heartbeat. But we expect athletes to be different just because they leave our team?

I guess you would prefer Serie A, where Juventus have just won eight consecutive titles, or Germany where Bayern have just completed seven in a row, or France where PSG have won six of the last seven? England may only have five or six teams that can win it, but it has at least some semblance of competitive balance.

Back in the 90's I used to work for some Americans and one of them said they loved Aussie sport as it wasn't professional. This was back in the day when League and Cricket were basically professional but only just so or in the transition. I took that comment as a bit of an insult, but now looking back I can see where she was coming from. In the 90's, ignoring social factors at play, the sports were the perfect mix of amateur and professional sport. They were trained and played at a great level but they also didn't have the flair and magic coached out of them with fear of making a mistake and loosing. Now sports have become micro-managed affairs driven buy sub-metrics and capitalist ideals. The sports themselves are bland, similar, offering less skill and creativity than before. It is the pursuit of the dreary in search of the risk free win. That is boring and people will turn off in droves in the end. When you add in social changes, digital disruption offers many other things for people to do sport will either loose kids or sell their soul to try and keep them. Cricket for example is well down that path in many respects. It even runs itself like an american franchise here when it is meant to be a not for profit sports administration. I think football has enough spread and variety of cultures involved to resist this change the longest. Sport as a profession will die in the end, and most of these sports will die as well. It is just of matter of when.

I can completely understand this.

They do play incredible football, but they've stirred nothing in me when they've won the league the past 2 seasons - of course the team with 2 world-class players in each position that they bought for a bomb were going to win the league. Personally I believe the 2001-2002 Arsenal team played the most thrilling, beautiful football in the PL's history, and they did it with a blend of the old English guard and absolute bargains from Europe. It felt more natural back then.

I look at the epl as an old girl friend , she’s sort of hot on the outdside , looks are deceiving though , get to know a bit about this old flame her and her mediocrity shines through the make up and dazzling clothes Have fell in love with amateur rugby again. It’s brilliant, brutal incredibly skilled and great surprisingly big crowds that know all the players . Can’t get enough

Thanks Nick - look forward to reading. Yes, the extent of our problems is approaching an existential crisis, and rapidly.

"I’ve increasingly come to believe that Marx was essentially correct in his analysis, if somewhat wayward in his projected solutions – any system based on infinite expansion occurring within a context of finite resources must logically collapse" - Global debt is now at $246.5 trillion. That's $360,029,272,500,000 in Australian currency. As for "infinite expansion occurring within a context of finite resources" there's this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-25/population-growth-world-overshoot-day/11320990

The USA basketball team travel in their own airplane to the Olympics, and stay at their own 6 star hotel. Professional sportspeople are commodities , hired mercenaries, who will play for any team and wear any sponsors logo, so long as they are paid enough. If a team is unsuccessful, the club loses supporters ,sponsors, then money, and subsequently can no longer afford to pay the players, who move to greener pastures. These remarks are not remotely negative, its the way of the world in all professional sport , of which the EPL is just one of them.

In broad agreement with both Sheek and Onside. Globalisation, of which football is part, is a vast ponzi scheme based on the logical impossibility of infinite growth. Once upon a time in a land far away my major was political philosophy, and my speciality was Karl Marx. I then of course have since spent my working life in private enterprise, but I’ve increasingly come to believe that Marx was essentially correct in his analysis, if somewhat wayward in his projected solutions – any system based on infinite expansion occurring within a context of finite resources must logically collapse, particularly when that system is based on rank exploitation and dispossession of the most numerous part of the global population. The only question is how effectively that collapse can be managed to minimise damage, and the speed with which it will occur. Marx foresaw change as a sudden, cathartic and violent event, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Football now is a commercial nonsense. Interestingly, there is a convincing argument that the vast NRL and AFL tv deals (and then cricket too) were fuelled by ego driven competition between the owners/CEOs of the networks, and in football we are seeing something similar but driven by geo political ambitions. The Bale case has been illustrative. A Chinese club being willing to pay him a million a week is nothing to do with football and all to do with China’s desire to make a statement on the global stage. It is one more manifestation of China’s geopolitical ambitions and strategy. Bale sits alongside those notorious islands in the South China Sea.

Plenty of non-commercial sport out there for those interested. However, few are interested, these sports attract minimal interest, certainly no media interest, and as a consequence they don't have two cents to rub together. But these sports exist - they are out there.

Some good comments sheek

Ptcowan, When sport was initially conceived along formalised lines in the early to mid-1800s, it was meant to be a weekend escape from the weekly drudgery of the rapidly increasing industrial revolution. There is a line from The Eagles song,'The Last Resort', that says, "call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye". The Eagles were referring to something else, but it is just as applicable to sport. Eventually, we humans kill almost everything we love through our insatiable greed. Wise men warned that when big business took over sport, they would kill it. And common folk would then have to find something else for their recreation. Or words similar to that meaning. And so it is coming to pass. Players can only become incrementally better, no matter how much money you throw at them. Ultimately, the reasons for their existence, ongoing brilliance & success, requires something other than bucketloads of money thrown at them to motivate them. Of course, we can talk & talk about this for a week of Saturdays. Ultimately, the whole edifice of professional sport will come crashing down, & we'll just have to start again.

A bit like saying The Olympic Games are killing athletics. The beautiful game you yearn for is still alive and well in local amateur competitions. Where players get paid to play full time , either A-League or EPL, it's a business. It's possible to thoroughly enjoy both, amateur and professional.

I do know what you mean by this line of thinking. In many ways the EPL is a metaphor for globalisation. People look at globalisation differently and for me, the benefits outweigh the negatives, although I am not blind to the downsides. As a Spurs fan with one of our own leading us and a few coming through, I probably get the best of both worlds, but I do miss how it used to be in the 70s and 80s. Then again I can watch grass roots football in Australia, be a paid-up member of Union Berlin and watch every European League - even the MLS - on TV. Another way of looking at it is that the love of money is the root of all evil. Alexis Sanchez and many others .... FFP doesn’t work - PSG and Man City stroll on, while Birmingham City get a points deduction, but that is a topic for another day.

The rise of City killed it for me. Once a laughing stock, a yo yo club, they were taken over by morally dirty money and now find themselves at the top. Did Pep grow up dreaming of playing or coaching at City? He'sd probably barely heard of them. A city league title is the most hollow of all.