No all-England final, please
Already, there is a sensory overload building up around the Arsenal-Liverpool clash, but I fear this would only be small beer compared to the Niagara of hyperbole which would saturate a final pitting, say, the ‘Pool against their loving neighbours Man U.
From its inception, the essential beauty of the European Cup was that it took clubs out of their domestic comfort zones and exposed them to the very different challenge of playing teams from other countries in alien surroundings. Down all the years, the novelty value may have worn somewhat thin (and the more recent admission of non-champions made a mockery of the tournament’s redesign) but the roll call of great finals would still be dominated by the kind of thrilling culture clashes which saw Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in Glasgow in 1960.
By comparison, a ‘Battle Of Blighty’ in Moscow would merely be doing Richard Scudamore’s dirty work for him, a European final re-branded as a 39th Premier League game taking place on foreign soil. It might be no more than the English clubs deserve but, in my opinion, it would still be considerably less than the Champions League final demands.
Meanwhile, as the obituaries, doubtless premature, are already being written about Italian football, the hype about the health of England’s domestic game has gone into overdrive, if such a thing is possible after too many years already of Sky-fuelled warp-speed hysteria.
In fairness to the media, however, some of the biggest cheerleaders are the players themselves. Following the success of the Fab Four in the last 16 of the Champions League, Wayne Rooney proudly declared: “This proves the Premier League is the best in the world and that’s why it attracts the best players in the world.”
And, for once, a Red of a different hue could have been singing from the same hymn sheet, when Steven Gerrard harmonised: “If you look at the competition this year it proves our league is the strongest and it’s going to get even stronger. I know a lot of players around Europe want to play in this league so it is only going to get better.”
Which may be so, though one can’t help observing that, with five games still to play before the final whistle blows in Moscow, the boys risk ending up with a certain amount of egg on their faces.
Nor do such expressions of cosy triumphalism fit with the exit this week of Everton, Spurs and Bolton from the UEFA Cup.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Premier League is the strongest mini-League in Europe right now, just as it has been, for that matter, the strongest mini-League in England’s top flight for the past 16 years. Forty clubs have competed in the Premiership since its inception in 1992 but only four – Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and odd ones out Blackburn Rovers – have gotten their hands on the silverware.
Nor will it have escaped anyone’s notice that English dominance has been achieved in the main by non-English players and managers. In the last 16 second legs, no English player featured in Arsenal’s stunning eclipse of AC Milan, only two started in Liverpool’s win at Inter, four featured in Chelsea’s victory against Olympiakos and four in Manchester United’s defeat of Lyon.
If the Premier League really does go on to prove itself the best in Europe and perhaps even the world, then it will be a victory for the globalisation of football, the profound result of what was ‘the best of Britain’ being recast as a league of nations.
Which is fine by me. This column is a firm believer in football, wherever it’s played, being the best that it can be, and you don’t need confirmation from the Champions League that the English club game has benefited hugely from the presence of such managers as Wenger, Mourinho and that other well-known foreigner Ferguson, as well as stellar talents on the pitch of the calibre of Cantona, Zola, Ronaldo, Henry, Drogba and Fabregas.
However, it’s not only the stupidly xenophobic who have concerns about the growing foreign influence in the English game. More thoughtful folk, who have the best interests of the sport at heart, worry that the price for the success of the club game is being paid at international level, with England’s failure to qualify for the upcoming European Championship finals invariably cited as a smoking gun in the case for the prosecution.
On the face of it, it seems like a reasonable connection to make but even a cursory glance at the historical record suggests otherwise. After all, it’s not just yesterday that England began struggling in the international arena. Lest we forget, a full 42 years have elapsed since they won their first and only World Cup, and that was on home soil. By general consensus, the club game enjoyed something of a golden age in England from the late sixties through to the mid-eighties, a period which also encompassed the conquest of Europe by Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Manchester United and Aston Villa. Yet the national team still failed to qualify for the World Cups of 1974 and 1978, and missed out again in 1994. And the only foreigners you could blame for those setbacks were the ones wearing the opposition shirts.
Where the new and relatively easy access to foreign players does appear to pose a problem is in the way that it would seem to limit the space for young home-produced players to rise through the ranks and gain first team experience at the highest level. Yet, the one doesn’t necessarily have to preclude the other, so long as clubs are willing to put the time and effort needed into developing their own nascent talents.
All of this is hardly of academic interest to Irish football since our senior players continue to be drawn, almost exclusively, from the ranks of English and, to a lesser extent, Scottish clubs. But, while an Irish kid may grow up worshipping Man U or Liverpool, his or her active involvement in the game will kick off, literally, much closer to home.
A reminder of where the journey begins and where it can end was crystallised out at Home Farm’s ground in Dublin this week in the charming spectacle of John O’Shea surrounded by little ’uns in football strips at the launch of the FAI’s admirable Summer Soccer School programme.
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