Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Italian football podcast. Without saying the same things that we say all the time, what can we do about it? We know the problem. We know that this is never going to change. What can we actually do now? The thing that has to be done, the thing that absolutely has to be done is that UEFA has to be nothing more than an admin.
Speaker: bod, meaning UEFA should not be hoarding cash that should be going to the clubs. Before we do this, I absolutely love the cognitive dissonance on display by people in the English -speaking media all over the world who cannot fathom
Speaker: who, first of all, don't even know what the European Super League is and spew absolute bollocks about how, oh, they're going to leave the domestic league. That was never on the table. Only in your head, only in your and Gary Neville and Carver Solhicol's head did that happen. In the actual planet Earth, the third planet from the sun, in the year of our Lord 2023, that never happened.
Speaker: So can we please stop this nonsense? Secondly, this notion that Serie A is mismanaged is relevant to the discussion. Yes, the Serie A is mismanaged. It is run by clowns. I think we talk about this more than anyone else does, who works in Italian football, who covers Italian football. No one does it as much as we do. So that is also true.
Speaker: But it doesn't change the fact that the Premier League is now so big that it swallows such a giant percentage of the complete revenue streams available. Because again, we don't live on a planet of infinite resources.
Speaker: We live in a planet of finite resources. The market keeps growing, but it's not growing infinitely, which means that when you have someone who swallows such a huge slash of the pie of the revenues, the others could build stadiums on par with the Jetsons in terms of modernization, and it would still not
Speaker: even have a dent on the impact it would have in trying to eat up the lead that the EPL inevitably has. That's the best I've heard. I mean, it just boggles my mind how people don't understand that.
Speaker: And it has nothing to do with that. And also, no one is criticising the Premier League for doing their bloody jobs. They've done their jobs. That's great. They've done brilliantly. The others haven't. Now, the fact of the matter is this. Either the EPL and even the Championship, just watch, because the next step is turning the Championship into EPL2.
Speaker: The championship is going to be the second best league in the world. Exactly. Just watch this space. What's going to happen is, unless Spain and every single league from all over Europe, the traditional big leagues, unless they go together and create a European Super League without the Premier League clubs and without UEFA's involvement,
Speaker: they will have zero, zero chance of existing other than as feeder clubs to the Premier League clubs. It's as simple as that. And as James Horncastle so brilliantly tried to explain to one of the dumbest people who's ever existed on Twitter, this is not a cyclical issue. This is now to the point where Microsoft was before the US government came in and had to break it up because it was monopolizing the entire market.
Speaker: And that's what the Premier League is doing now. It has become this giant money monster. It's not a cyclical thing. We live in a Premier League hegemony now. And if you want the other leagues to survive, they have to do something. UEFA will never do something.
Speaker: Microsoft is a great example, actually, of monopolization. Just before I expand on that, I just had a quick look. The Championship has spent more money on transfers in January than in Serie A. I mean, there you go. Just to point it out. Exactly. And this is what's going to happen unless they do something about it. It's an existential crisis for every single league except for the Premier League.
Speaker: What's happened? I tell you what's happening. This is the final step of a process which probably began over 30 years ago, where originally the European leagues swallowed up the South American leagues, like Brazilian league, the Argentine league. I mean, these leagues were
Speaker: World -class league during the 1960s for example, you know that people that criticize Pele for never having played in Europe for example Well, actually during the 1960s Certainly the first half in 1960s the Brazilian League was the best league in the world when when Pele was there playing with Santos and
Speaker: you know, and the Copper Libertadores was the best competition in the world, better than the Champions League or the European Cup as it was known there. But these leagues continue to remain incredibly strong up until, you know, into the 1980s. I mean, you have a look at the World Cup squads of Brazil, of Argentina, I mean, even that Brazil 1982 squad, I mean, pretty much the entire squad almost.
Speaker: and Falcao was at Roma, but pretty much almost everybody else played in, still played in Brazil as recently as 1982. So it started off with gobbling up the South American leagues. Then obviously in the 1990s, we saw the, you know, with the fall of, first of all, with the fall of communism, we saw the leagues that East European leagues were the ones that were swallowed up. So we saw, you know, the Yugoslavian, Balkan leagues,
Speaker: even the former Soviet Union, great teams from the Soviet Union, like Dynamo Kia from Ukraine, and you know these kind of teams that had great teams, and Stalbu Kores from Romania, like these sides, were gobbled up. So they were swallowed up and became feeder leagues.
Speaker: Then you had the likes of Portugal, Portuguese teams, the Dutch teams. The Dutch league is dead. Like Ajax, one of the most greatest teams ever, PSV. These three, three of the biggest clubs in Europe became feeder teams. Let me remind people that PSV Eindhoven are one of the teams that have won a treble, a continental treble. Like we're not talking about Mickey, like we're talking football royalty here.
Speaker: No, that's it. You speak to a 15 -year -old, 16 -year -old now, and it's very sad. They'll look at teams like AX and PSV, and they'll just think that they're Aquintin -Stanley level teams. But these are legends and giants. Hamburg in one of us, yeah. That's where we get to now. But then it became in the late 90s, after the Bosman ruling, it became Holland,
Speaker: Belgium, Portugal, who else have we got? I mean, Scotland, even Scotland had great teams, you know. So these level leagues were gobbled up. And now what we've had in the last, you know, 10 to 15 years, but certainly in the last decade, and now, you know, it's now complete now. I don't want to talk about
Speaker: if we don't stop it, this is what's going to happen. And Yelly is doing. It's not. We're there. It's happened. Look, it's already happened. Look at these. Obviously, it takes a few years. And another thing I wanted to raise with you on the video as well. Translated on the pitch and it will be a Premier League team winning it every year.
Speaker: And another thing that's overlooked as well is this isn't just the revenue streams growing. When revenue streams grow, they also become far more attractive to rich and powerful investors, meaning that the Premier League will also be the natural habitat of every billionaire in the world.
Speaker: which even further makes them dominate.
