Ill thought through football post

While I was waking up this morning (I don't think I actually dream about football) I had a little brain wave (I think). This is it, without any polish.

I have no particular brief for English football and only a tangentially vested interest. In the same way I care about the state of English cricket I care about English football. After years and years and years of laughing at English cricket I got impatient and longed for a decent fight. I wanted to be engaged in the way my parents and their parents once were, with the outcome of test series in the balance sometimes until the last match and then not actually always going our way.

I didn't actually enjoy watching us lose the Ashes but I could point to a couple of mitigating factors and also that the thing was a close run series.

I was comforted though by the knowledge that nothing in the structure of the game in England or the quality of players made likely a sea-change; we remained likely winners in the return series at home and likely to continue for the foreseeable future to produce better quality players, playing better quality cricket with greater determination to win. And we would on balance continue to do that more often than not against all comers.

It was my misfortune some years ago to meet with the Chief Exec of a county cricket board and it confirmed that in English Cricket there exists an obdurate block to success at that level. The man's interest lies in his county, not county cricket let alone the game at national level. They have the game by the balls, as it were, and have no plans to shed their blazers and county ties.

In England the creation of the Premiership has created a similar situation and I think it time the FAE learned the rules of Billionaire Chicken, which is known in some households as Call My Bluff. Legislate in the interests of the national game and the national team. Politely invite the representatives of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea [as well as anyone else for that matter with the temerity to object] to take shove off and play their football outside the English game and with their rich continental friends.

De register the clubs. Have nothing further to do with them. Simple. Of course it won't work. Even the FA doesn't bother to pretend that these clubs get anything from being affliliated with it they wouldn't get from throwing their lot in with their rich and glamorous continental friends. Their web site is nothing but a promotion of a mind-blinding whirl of insubstantial frentic activity.

Good riddance if they go, good behaviour if they stay.