Football: The fleecing of the ‘people’s game’.
Football has always been a behind closed doors, smokey room wheels and deals wasps nest of corruption but in the 21st century with the takes and the amount of the money swilling around the game higher it’s got grubbier and more ridiculous.
The way it’s run now is like Rome burning as Nero quite lierally gets on the fiddle…
As a Blackpool fan I’m frustrated by the way the club owners the notorious Oystons seem to be running the club into the ground and keeping hold of the premiership millions instead of sharing with the club and the town but it doesn’t take long to notice that this money grubbing disease is all over the country’s favourite game. At Blackpool the premiership parachute payouts of millions seem to have disappeared with little sign of reinvestment and yes, whilst this is quite legal it also doesn’t feel right. Other clubs like Leeds and Blackburn are just the tip of festering iceberg where people’s loyalties are traded on and their deep commitment to their club is used to bolster huge bank accounts of owners ill equipped at best and totally mercenary at worst to run the fabric of local communities.
Surely its time for football to put its house into order and the money back, not only into the clubs, but also into the local communities because, after all, these are the people that will be there through thick and thin supporting their local club. Local clubs that are part of the sense of pride in many of the deprived towns across the UK. Clubs that need to be part of their community and not hoovers to suck all the money and hope out of their communities.
The money should not just be for the elite but for the whole community, it should be encouraging people to get involved in sport or the community, it should be breathing life into it’s surrounding area. Is it not time that the clubs were run as part of their towns and not as separate money trenches for the rich and the greedy. Clubs should not be run in the cynical and manipulative way that they are like a grim reflection of the way that the UK is being systematically fleeced by faceless bankers?
Casting your eye over the way that football is run is quite a shock.
It’s never been perfect but seems to have become a rotting edifice of greed and strange decisions all geared toward lining the pockets of the bosses. Like a arrogant fragment of Victoriana it sits there,one of the last places where the mill owners can take the money and run and is looking all the more ugly for it.
Blackpool FC is not the only place where this is going on. In a festering and unregulated sport any chancer with a few quid can steal a club and many of the great clubs of the UK are being bled dry by a cranky and strange set of people and nothing is getting done about it at all.
It wouldn’t even take a brave politician to say STOP. It wouldn’t even take a brave politician to force the clubs to become part of their communities again and to be run by people who want to make their clubs an inspiration for local people.
No-one expects all those millions to be spent on expensive players, of course being a fan you want your club to do well but you can accept defeat and the bad times if you felt that was the best you could do with what you had but there is an increasing feeling that you are not actually supporting the club at all but are being hypnotised by the rich man’s plaything-in our case – are you a Blackpool fan or an Oyston FC fan? what is the heart and soul of the club- the hopes of it’s community or the faceless and heartless mill owner sneering at the fans?
WE have been left with a premiership that is a mere moneyfest, a place where there the richest clubs win everything and the poorer clubs desperately try and stay up,it’s become boring.
Like the rotten boroughs of them olden days football has become knackered anachronism of petty fiefdoms run by arrogant millionaires whose prime motivation is to make all the money for themselves.
Should football clubs be the mere playthings of eccentric and distinctly unlovable rich men? Or should it have a roots and branch rethink of the way that the game is run? Should the money be put into the local communities? are clubs part of their town or seperate? is it time to regulate before it’s too late?
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