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4 Responses to “ Premier League Trumpet Blowing Too Loud?”

Karl, PSV4LIFE

April 14th, 2008 5:42 pm

The Premier League is certianly not the best league in the world. The Premier League is strong because of good promotion and marketting by the Premier League themselves, therefore broardcasting rights at home and abroad yield lots and lots of cash, which is distributed fairly evenly accross all the teams in the Premier League (other European leagues should follow this, instead of allowing big teams to sell their own TV rights). All this money does not produce a good footballing specticle. The writer of this piece makes reference to Liverpool and Chelsea, and the strength they have, but the football those 2 teams play is pretty awful. Both Liverpool, and Chelsea rely on match winning players, they play little football as teams, and their stautus in European football flatters both of them. Liverpool are only a big name because of competing in the CL on a regular basis, but they consistantly qualify for this competition by finishing as low as 4th!!!!

The ludacris amounts of money in England is destroying the game as a whole. Players just want to get on the first boat to the UK to benefit from the massively inflated wages (huge money for a lot of mediocrity). Foreign investors are interested in English teams, not because they like English football, but because English clubs are proving to be valuable pieces of real estate that will yield big sell on profits. Famous teams from around Europe and the World are showing signs of falling by the wayside, simply because they cannot compete with the financial bubble of the Premier League. Ajax, Anderlecht, Benfica, Flemengo, Red Star Belgrade, Celtic, and many many more are massive clubs with massive support, but small bank balances, and have less financial ability than tiny teams like West Ham, Blackburn Rovers etc. Now the big teams in England are scramblig around the globe to buy up any young talent that may exist. More and more foreign youth team players are heading to England than ever before, largly unnoticed, to join youth academies of English clubs that cannot produce good English players for love nor money, so how are the rest of us supposed to survive, if we lose our youth to Premier League money?

Some leagues are constructive, and make contributions to World Football, others are just fuelled by a thurst for cash, where do you place the Premier League??
Rahul Rao

April 15th, 2008 12:29 am

To respond to your question Karl, I think that the EPL has some great players and plays a decent football. I am personally a fan of La Liga because it is a more “sexy” type of football.

And yes English teams do spend the most money on players (soooo many expensive flops in the EPL) but I think that the EPL teams do contribute to world football because they do bring talents into the limelight who were playing in smaller teams/countries like Eduardo Da Silva, Martin Skrtel, and Mauro Zarate.

However, I do agree with you that most players are drawn to England because of the money and not the football/stars. (for example, Sulley Muntari chose Portsmouth and its English money over playing for Roma or Inter Milan in the Serie A).
Rahul Rao

April 15th, 2008 2:25 am

Fernando Torres on comparing the EPL and La Liga:
“In England the top four are better than the ones in Spain, above all when it comes to consistency,” the Spain international told Radio Marca. “Apart from that, the rest of the teams in the Primera Liga are stronger as they have more quality.”
Karl, PSV4LIFE

April 15th, 2008 7:54 pm

Premier League football is dis-jointed and ugly. People tend to like English football because the game is played so fast, with little thought. The high speed of the English game does not come from quick passing (which does make a team attractive to watch), it comes from possesion changing every 2 seconds, because the ball is sent long, and then both teams have a 50/50 chance of winning the ball, and so on, and so on. English football resembles a game of tennis more than it does ‘the beautiful game’. English football is all based around expensive individuals that can win games on there own, tactics rarely apply. Lots of managers and coaches in England feel that when a team is not winning, the solution is just to spend more money, rather than having the apptitude to look at tactics.

Take Derby County for instance, they have been without doubt one of the worst teams to play in the Premier League, but yet they play the same type of football as everyone else in the league(long ball) so why have the been so awful? It must be because there individuals are not as good as the teams around them, but not one of their 3 managers this season has made the effort to get the team to put the ball down on the floor and pass the football, if a team does not have the money, then surely an emphsis must be placed on the style of football being played. If teams in far inferior leagues can play passing football, why can’t English teams? And this problem is even more highlighted in the England national team. A team made up of multi millionaires, but yet passing and moving seems far beyond them. Fabio Capello wants them to start passing the ball instead of going long, but they simply cannot do it.

With regards to the comments made by Fernando Torres. I personally don’t think ‘the rest’ of the teams in Spain have more quality, because they have less money than English teams, but what those teams do is play far better football as a team, and place far more importance to the technical, and tactical aspects of the game. Teams like Getafe, Sevilla, Villareal play great football and they can compete with teams that are far richer than them because of their determination to play good football, by moving the ball quickly between team members, and working hard to move off the ball, making players hard to mark. English football has a long way to go if they want to catch up.

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Premier League Trumpet Blowing Too Loud?

Rahul Rao

Every time we log on to our computers, scroll to the football section of our newspapers, or watch the latest news from our beautiful game on television, it’s inevitable that we hear sensationalist reporting. What is sensationalist reporting you ask? Well the dictionary definition of “sensationalism” is something that limits experience as a source of knowledge to sensation. Sensationalist reporting is essentially what the media does in order to play to the crowd’s appetite. When Chelsea supporters say they dislike Avram Grant, the papers will post an unflattering picture of the Chelsea manager next to an embarrassing quote concerning him. When fans in England say that Cristiano Ronaldo is the best player in the world, the papers will quote Sir Alex Ferguson praising the Portuguese winger next to a snapshot of one of his goals or an adrenaline-rushed celebration.

The English Premier League: The best in the world?

Let’s face it, the English Premiership is the most lucrative and popular league in the world. No other league gets as many viewers around the world, but in terms of actual football, is it really the best? According to the interviews with Sir Alex Ferguson, Alan Curbishley, and Cesc Fabregas, the English Premier League is the best in the world. Really? Have Sir Alex Ferguson or Alan Curbishley ever coached (or played for that matter) in Italy or Spain? Did Cesc Fabregas ever play in La Liga before Arsene Wenger snapped him up? If you pay attention to football, the answer is an astounding “no”. If you look at the Premier League in terms of sheer dominating strength alone, then I guess it is the best league in the world. If you combine the power and influence of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea and compare the English “top four” to the top clubs in other countries the English top four take the cake.

But what about the other clubs in England? The English press was raving about Aston Villa earlier this season due to their challenging for fifth place. Yes, FIFTH place. The country is so used to the same top four almost every season that even finishing in the top half of the league is considered a great achievement. Just last weekend, Aston Villa were dismantled by a rampaging Manchester United 4-0. If a club that is doing so “well” in the league gets destroyed by a top four team, it really does show the gulf in class between the best and the rest.

In La Liga and Serie A, one sees teams like Almeria or Atalanta destroying teams of the stature of Real Madrid and AC Milan respectively. This would never happen in the English Premier League. The top four are just too strong for their so-called competition.

This lack of depth in the Premiership is further proved through the lack of any English teams at this stage of the UEFA Cup. And while proponents of the Premier League are quick to point out there are still four English clubs left in the Champions League (three now we are at the semi-final stage), the fact alone that the top four English clubs are reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League while no English teams are still in the UEFA Cup shows that there is a lack of depth in England’s league.

If the Big Four are strong enough to defeat the likes of Inter Milan, Lyon, and reigning champions AC Milan, but Tottenham, Everton, and Bolton (with Nicolas Anelka) cannot even advance to the last eight of the UEFA Cup it just goes to show that while the Big Four are all great clubs, the rest of the Premiership just aren’t on par with the rest of Europe. Now I don’t dislike the English Premier League, actually I follow it every weekend and I have been doing so for many years now. I love it. But it is difficult to say that it is the best.

About More than just Goals

Besides the claims of having the best league in the world, the English and their press, for the most part, claim that their league possesses the best player in the world: Cristiano Ronaldo. There’s no doubt in my mind that Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the best in the world, but the best?

Sir Alex Ferguson and the managers of the 16 other English teams have all been saying that the Portuguese winger is undoubtedly the best. Even in my opinion, Cristiano Ronaldo is the best goalscorer right now. However, as Johan Cruyff, possibly the most skilled player ever, has pointed out, he does not get enough assists. Against Aston Villa, as mentioned earlier, Cristiano was simply stunning. He provided 3 great assists, which brings his season tally of assists to a grand total of 6. Yes, if the Barclays Premiership’s website is correct, he has just 6, meaning that from August 2007 until March 30 2008 (that’s SEVEN months, folks) Cristiano Ronaldo only registered a measly 3 assists. And as much as I see that Cristiano Ronaldo is the best goal scorer in Europe this season, he is not fulfilling his duty as a winger: tallying assists.

According to the Barclays Premier League website, Cristiano Ronaldo is the 29th highest “assister” in the league, behind the likes of El-Hadji Diouf, Nicky Shorey, and even Tom Huddlestone. Ronaldo may be a winger on the team sheet, but if you watch Manchester United, you will see he spends the majority of the time in the centre of the pitch, and is almost always further up the field than the United strikers (Rooney and Tevez both like to take the ball from lower down the field). And for those of you who say he is a complete player because of his wide array of tricks, if you actually watch a Man Utd game the only trick he can do is a stepover and a Cruyff-turn. If you look at say Ronaldinho, Ibrahimovic, David Villa, or Robinho, they look like freestyle masters compared to Cristiano Ronaldo.

Another popular criticism of Ronaldo is that he is an underperformer in big matches. Many English football pundits have tried to disprove this by listing the Liverpool games as well as the first leg against Roma this season. In the first Liverpool game he was invisible the whole game, before and after his tap-in goal. In the most recent game against the Reds, he was completely anonymous until the 66th minute when Rafa’s men knew resistance to the pressure of United was futile. To list a few big games Cristiano Ronaldo has failed to excel in, one can look to the Euro 2004 final (the most important of all, and in his homeland), the Italy vs. Portugal friendly in January, and the 06-07 Champions League semi-final against Kaka’s AC Milan.

Now let’s look at Spain’s La Liga: Luis Fabiano, the revelation at Sevilla, has 23 goals in 24 games as well as 10 assists. In Italy’s Serie A, Inter’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic (who has had his problems with Coach Mancini as well as missing games through injury), still has 17 goals and 11 assists in 25 games. One must also take into consideration that the Premier League starts one month before the rest of the leagues so a Premiership player should have more goals than a La Liga player by March, and to constantly note how many goals a player has “in all competitions” is a bit ridiculous considering Premiership teams play in the Carling Cup, FA Cup, Champions League, and Premiership, while Spanish and Italian teams play in just three competitions (less games to score in).

The Best Anything?

It is also interesting to note that a player playing in the Premier League has NEVER won a FIFA World Player of the Year award. And as suspicious as the shortlists for this award are, a player with the tag of “the world’s best player” has never played in England’s league. Now that Cristiano Ronaldo is having a free-scoring season, many fans and the press are claiming that he is the world’s best player not only to promote their team (Manchester United- who just happen to be the media’s darling) but also so that a Premier League player may finally win a FIFA World Player of the Year Award. I am not saying this is the sole reason, but it is a minor hypothesis. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Cristiano Ronaldo is a fine player, one of the world’s best, but to list any player as the definitive best player in the world is ridiculous because it is obviously very hard to compare the importance and quality of say Gianluigi Buffon to Franck Ribery, or Sergio Ramos to Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

The Beautiful Game

The Premier League, La Liga, and the Serie A are all great leagues in their own ways. England’s league demonstrates blistering pace and power. Spain’s league showcases beautiful skills and classy finishes. Italy’s league illustrates mastermind strategies and mind-boggling plays. All of these qualities are great, but to claim a league, or even a player, to be the “world’s best” is a bit ludicrous because there are so many factors that go into it. It’s like comparing say Spiderman and Batman. Each of them have negative qualities, as do they both have good unique ones. The media, not only in England but also in other countries like America or Spain will try and tell you what to believe is best. If you have to, the only way to determine what is the best is to asses a player or a league in a neutral filter, not the biased filter of the media or your favourite team. But instead of trying to claim what is the best league or player in the world, maybe we should just be thankful that we have the most beautiful game in the world to enjoy with many different cultures, players, and styles involved.

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