Blatter "has concerns" over strength of Premiership

[Fugazi]

No surprise there then. 

 

Blatter has Premier League doubts

 

 

Fifa president Sepp Blatter is worried that the Premier League's worldwide appeal is damaging the global game.

 

"I have my concerns because the Premier League is the strongest in the world, definitely," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

 

"It is taking over in such a manner that the other leagues have difficulties to match it."

 

Blatter also believes that the England's top flight has an unhealthy imbalance of power, with only a handful of clubs contesting the title.

 

"In a competition where two-thirds or three-quarters of the participants in the league play not to be first, but not to be relegated, there is something wrong," he added.

 

 

Since the formation of the Premier League in 1992 there have only been four different winners, compared to six different champions over the previous 16 seasons.

 

Blatter is also concerned about the influx of foreign players and owners into England's top clubs that has accompanied the Premier League's runaway commercial success.

 

He said he would attempt to convince Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore to impose a minimum requirement for home-grown talent on the pitch and warned that domestic owners might provide better stewardship through the economic downturn.

 

"I want to try to, if not persuade him (Richard Scudamore), then at least influence him in his thoughts that to have a minimum of local players will enhance the quality of his league," he said.

 

"At the moment in the economic crisis, maybe the big investors and the big companies, will have less money to go in than local or regional investors who will be there because they identify themselves with the club."

 

And Blatter warned that England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup, a key part of a so-called "golden decade" of sport for the UK, faced serious competition.

 

Nine other expressions of interest have been made, with Russia and joint bids from Spain and Portugal and the Netherlands and Belgium making up the competition from the rest of Europe.

 

"What is the advantage of England?" said Blatter.

 

"If you look at the the technical infrastructure for stadiums and the organisation of football matches on the level of 50,000 people and upwards then they are ready to organise it, but they are not the only one."

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/7927410.stm

[Pilko]

Blatter is a fucking gobshite, I disregard anything the man has to say.

[Toon Amy]

Sounds like he is talking about reccomending socialism. It won't work in football.

[Jayson]

I fail to see the problem with imposing a minimum amount of English players on English teams...it'll only benefit our national side in the end. All good to me.

[Toon Amy]

That's not his concern though. He wants to kneecap the Premier League.

[Neil]

Blatter in anti-Premiership shocker.

[Guest Stephen927]

Imposing a limit on foreign players would make the league worse not better, why would Scudamore agree to it?

[Jayson]

Why would it make the league worse.....? It would just give teams a reason to improve their academy and give more chance to English kids.

 

The premier league will always attract the top talent in the world & will still be the best league in the world. Making sure to have atleast 2-3 english players at the least in every side wouldnt change much.

 

At worst the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea & Man united might not do as brilliantly in europe. Why would we care about that.......?

[Guest The Libertine]

"In a competition where two-thirds or three-quarters of the participants in the league play not to be first, but not to be relegated, there is something wrong,"

 

agree with that.

[Neil]

"In a competition where two-thirds or three-quarters of the participants in the league play not to be first, but not to be relegated, there is something wrong,"

 

agree with that.

 

So do I but look at any major league. Exactly the same.

[Turnbull2000]

There's an unhealthy balance of power because you c*nts turned the Champions League into a self-sustaining cartel of clubs and money.

 

 

[Segun Oluwaniyi]

Blatter is correct in alot of what he says. I strongly disagree with 6+5 and the other methods he has suggested for fixing it, but the Premiership is definitely spiraling out of control.

[Magpie]

"In a competition where two-thirds or three-quarters of the participants in the league play not to be first, but not to be relegated, there is something wrong,"

 

agree with that.

 

Yeah but he's saying that's just our league like that. Barca - Real, Juve - Inter - Milan, Lyon - Lyon...every fucker's the same.

 

He's just a kiddy fiddling racist.

[indi]

You have to wonder why this wasn't a problem when Italy and Spain have been in the dominant position. How many teams have won La Liga in the time of the Premiership? Five, so that's obviously way better then.

 

It's true that it's a bit boring now that the big boys seemingly have a stranglehold over the league, but things change, look at Villa and Arsenal this season for example, Everton and us in the past, Man City in the future probably, it's not set in stone. It is important to ensure that it never becomes a closed shop and thought should be given as to how to allow that not to happen, but the responsibility for doing it essentially falls on the shoulders of the other clubs. You can't hamstring the successful clubs and say to them: "You're too successful and we resent that so we're going to fuck you up", when the majority of the reason for the discrepancy between them and the rest is the failure of the rest, rather than anything underhand on behalf of the clubs at the top. There are a lot of badly run big clubs in England who consistently under-perform - I wonder if anyone can think of an example? - which explains why well run smaller clubs, the likes of Bolton, Wigan, etc, can be so relatively successful. They get so much more out of their resources and potential than clubs like us do and we only really have ourselves to blame. We've been hugely profligate over the years and have got so little in return, the lack of efficiency when it comes to player purchases is frankly shocking and the value for money we've managed to obtain has been embarrassing. As much as I hate to say it, it's not Manu, Arsenal, or Chelsea's fault we're where we are, and before we even think about dragging them down to our level we need to put some serious effort into dragging ourselves, and others like us, up to theirs. If we reward the failure of the clubs with potential to live up to that potential then we punish the successful clubs and that includes both the big and small members of that group. How's that fair? How does that improve the league? It doesn't.

 

The same goes for English players. English players aren't crap because of foreigners, they're crap because of their lack of ability, poor technique and/or rubbish coaching, this whole "foreign players coming over here taking our jobs" thing is bullshit. If you're not getting a game it's because you're not good enough, get off your fat highly-paid arse and get better at what you do. If you're not being signed by a big club in England it's because either you're not good enough, or you offer bad value for money. So get better and/or lower your pay demands, you could always go abroad yourself you know, stop being such an ignorant pussy, grow some balls, learn another language and go and experience a different culture. It's bollocks that the clubs don't support English talent, they want to buy English players and they'll even pay over the odds to do so, hugely over the odds in many cases! English players have it way too easy and that's made them lazy, they seem to think they're owed a career, fuck off, if normal people aren't why the fuck should you be!?! How many English players go abroad? Hardly any, they just sign for a lower league club, sulk and spout bitter bullshit about not being given a chance because of all the imports. Do foreign players do that? It doesn't seem so, does it. If they bring in a restriction on the number of foreigners in the Premiership it won't make England better, it's more likely to make them worse as players will have an even easier life and will become even more lazy. Not only that, but they'll be playing in a much weaker league and therefore things will have become worse for everyone.

[OzzieMandias]

Richard Williams in the Grauniad:

 

There is plenty to dislike about Sepp Blatter, but that doesn't mean he is always wrong. And in the present environment, the efforts of the president of world football's governing body to rebalance the economic power within the game are worth a response more considered than the scornful abuse with which they are routinely met in England.

 

Blatter and his ally Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, believe that the Premier League's economic hegemony not only threatens the development of football in poorer countries but also hinders England's own ability to produce players of the highest quality. There was more evidence in support of the latter argument at the weekend, when a nation that can boast plenty of people capable of maximising the revenue streams from broadcasting and image rights deals yet again proved itself incapable of unearthing anyone with the skill and mental strength necessary to step up and convert a penalty in a cup final shoot-out.

 

As the heir to a generation of international sports administrators who turned their little fiefdoms into feudal republics, assiduously improving their lot until they found themselves travelling down the traffic-free lane of life with a red carpet to meet them every time the soles of their handmade shoes touched the ground, Blatter is not necessarily the first person to whom one would turn for moral guidance.

 

Yet when he speaks of the necessity to do something about the all-devouring greed of the Premier League, he may be on to something more profound than the argument over whether Sir Alex Ferguson's preference for Edwin van der Sar over Ben Foster in Manchester United's big games is unfairly

denying a young Englishman the chance to further his career.

 

The deeper truth concerns the effect on football of the vast inequality that makes England a magnet for players not just from the poorer countries of Africa and South America but even from such comparatively prosperous nations as France and Spain.

 

The Premier League's proponents argue that its success is a wonderful thing and that all attempts to penalise it are the result of jealousy. Blatter believes that if football fails to adopt laws that will forcibly reduce the demand from the richer leagues, the roots of the game will begin to wither at all levels. Under his proposed "six-plus-five" formula, received with fury in England, every team will eventually have to include no fewer than half a dozen home-produced players.

 

Levelling down, which is what this is about, never seems like a good idea. In sport, as in life, the instinct is let the winners take the profit from their success, not least as an encouragement to others to excel. But this is not just a matter of a rich nation's interests versus those of impoverished communities. It is, in a very real sense, a matter of self-interest. On Radio 4's Start the Week yesterday morning, Richard Wilkinson, a former professor of social epidemiology at Nottingham University, outlined his research, published in a new book called The Spirit Level, into the links between equality and well-being.

 

He found that countries with the greatest degree of economic inequality – including the United States and the United Kingdom – consistently show markedly higher levels of what he described as "almost all the social problems that one thinks of as congregating in the poorest areas of our societies": violence and other forms of crime, ill health (including obesity), school bullying, teenage pregnancy, mental health problems, and prison population.

 

He added two things. First, it was not just a question of a difference of even something like 50%: these problems were "three, four, five times worse in more unequal societies". Second, the adverse consequences of these problems were not confined to the poor members of such societies. The rich, too, are living measurably more troubled and less satisfying lives than their equivalents in countries such as Sweden, Norway and Japan, where the scale of income differences is less extreme.

 

The present generation of English sports administrators – in cricket and rugby, as well as football – seem to have taken their cue from the pioneering success of another Englishman, formula one's Bernie Ecclestone, in squeezing the maximum reward from the earning capacity of their sports, regardless of the more general effects of that policy. Intentionally or not, these businessmen give the impression that the pursuit of financial success is the principal raison d'etre of their sport, and they are cherished for it by the majority of their constituents – the club chairmen – who benefit mostly directly from their endeavours.

 

But you don't have to be a £100,000-a-week Liverpool or Manchester United player, contemplating the need to hire security men to guard the house and family during away trips, to recognise that the continual widening of an already exaggerated wealth gap creates a new set of dangers.

Perhaps Blatter and Platini, unlike their numerous critics, are intelligent enough to recognise that more equal societies are better for everyone, rich and poor alike.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/mar/03/premier-league-european-football

[Minhosa]

FIFA = Federation of International Football.

 

If he wants to implement anything here, or even 'influence' as he put's it, he can do the same elsewhere.

 

If he's not embedding the same plans in France, Germany etc he can fuck right off.

[80]

There's an unhealthy balance of power because you c*nts turned the Champions League into a self-sustaining cartel of clubs and money.

 

 

 

He's never aired much criticism of that one.

 

Fundamentally excellent post from indi, too.

[Mowen]

The same goes for English players. English players aren't crap because of foreigners, they're crap because of their lack of ability, poor technique and/or rubbish coaching, this whole "foreign players coming over here taking our jobs" thing is bullshit. If you're not getting a game it's because you're not good enough, get off your fat highly-paid arse and get better at what you do.

 

It's because of the loan system

 

If they weren't good enough to get a game at a club, they'd go somewhere where they were good enough, get a proper game and get some real TLC as they developed. The current situation is that the big clubs snap up all kids indiscriminantly, fuck them all off on loan and hope they get a good one back to justify their 'investment'. It's all bollocks. Rich get richer.

[Disco]

There's an unhealthy balance of power because you c*nts turned the Champions League into a self-sustaining cartel of clubs and money.

 

 

 

correct. Make the cups in Europe as they were circa early nineties and it'd be a lot of problems solved.

[1878]

I don't remember UEFA and FIFA bleating in the press and coming up with ideas for imposing new rules every 5mins when Serie A was by far the richest and best league in the 90's.

[indi]

Richard Williams in the Grauniad:

 

There is plenty to dislike about Sepp Blatter, but that doesn't mean he is always wrong. And in the present environment, the efforts of the president of world football's governing body to rebalance the economic power within the game are worth a response more considered than the scornful abuse with which they are routinely met in England.

 

Blatter and his ally Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, believe that the Premier League's economic hegemony not only threatens the development of football in poorer countries but also hinders England's own ability to produce players of the highest quality. There was more evidence in support of the latter argument at the weekend, when a nation that can boast plenty of people capable of maximising the revenue streams from broadcasting and image rights deals yet again proved itself incapable of unearthing anyone with the skill and mental strength necessary to step up and convert a penalty in a cup final shoot-out.

 

As the heir to a generation of international sports administrators who turned their little fiefdoms into feudal republics, assiduously improving their lot until they found themselves travelling down the traffic-free lane of life with a red carpet to meet them every time the soles of their handmade shoes touched the ground, Blatter is not necessarily the first person to whom one would turn for moral guidance.

 

Yet when he speaks of the necessity to do something about the all-devouring greed of the Premier League, he may be on to something more profound than the argument over whether Sir Alex Ferguson's preference for Edwin van der Sar over Ben Foster in Manchester United's big games is unfairly

denying a young Englishman the chance to further his career.

 

The deeper truth concerns the effect on football of the vast inequality that makes England a magnet for players not just from the poorer countries of Africa and South America but even from such comparatively prosperous nations as France and Spain.

 

The Premier League's proponents argue that its success is a wonderful thing and that all attempts to penalise it are the result of jealousy. Blatter believes that if football fails to adopt laws that will forcibly reduce the demand from the richer leagues, the roots of the game will begin to wither at all levels. Under his proposed "six-plus-five" formula, received with fury in England, every team will eventually have to include no fewer than half a dozen home-produced players.

 

Levelling down, which is what this is about, never seems like a good idea. In sport, as in life, the instinct is let the winners take the profit from their success, not least as an encouragement to others to excel. But this is not just a matter of a rich nation's interests versus those of impoverished communities. It is, in a very real sense, a matter of self-interest. On Radio 4's Start the Week yesterday morning, Richard Wilkinson, a former professor of social epidemiology at Nottingham University, outlined his research, published in a new book called The Spirit Level, into the links between equality and well-being.

 

He found that countries with the greatest degree of economic inequality – including the United States and the United Kingdom – consistently show markedly higher levels of what he described as "almost all the social problems that one thinks of as congregating in the poorest areas of our societies": violence and other forms of crime, ill health (including obesity), school bullying, teenage pregnancy, mental health problems, and prison population.

 

He added two things. First, it was not just a question of a difference of even something like 50%: these problems were "three, four, five times worse in more unequal societies". Second, the adverse consequences of these problems were not confined to the poor members of such societies. The rich, too, are living measurably more troubled and less satisfying lives than their equivalents in countries such as Sweden, Norway and Japan, where the scale of income differences is less extreme.

 

The present generation of English sports administrators – in cricket and rugby, as well as football – seem to have taken their cue from the pioneering success of another Englishman, formula one's Bernie Ecclestone, in squeezing the maximum reward from the earning capacity of their sports, regardless of the more general effects of that policy. Intentionally or not, these businessmen give the impression that the pursuit of financial success is the principal raison d'etre of their sport, and they are cherished for it by the majority of their constituents – the club chairmen – who benefit mostly directly from their endeavours.

 

But you don't have to be a £100,000-a-week Liverpool or Manchester United player, contemplating the need to hire security men to guard the house and family during away trips, to recognise that the continual widening of an already exaggerated wealth gap creates a new set of dangers.

Perhaps Blatter and Platini, unlike their numerous critics, are intelligent enough to recognise that more equal societies are better for everyone, rich and poor alike.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/mar/03/premier-league-european-football

 

Do they still have the Bad Science column in the Guardian?

 

That's a perfect example of a journalist seeing a bit of research, thinking that it backs up their point, but being to thick to understand it and so getting it totally wrong. Yes, somewhat obviously, a society in which there is a huge disparity between rich and poor will have more extreme relative-poverty related social problems, than one where there is less of a gap. That's so obvious, it almost goes without saying. We are human beings and we judge our situation in comparison with those around us. If everyone else has the same as we do - whether that's huge wealth or grinding poverty - then we do not envy them, we do not covert their stuff, we do not see the corrupt rise to positions of power, we do not see the downtrodden poor, and so-on, because everyone is equally rich or poor and no-one is at an advantage or disadvantage. However, you can't then take that almost tautological truth, out of the context in which it is true (ie relating to society as a whole) and apply it to one tiny area within that society, whilst excluding the remainder. It won't work. It only works if applied to everyone, you can't just apply it to football. There's so much wrong with the implications drawn in that article that I'm not even going to bother going on about it any more, it's just wrong and has obviously been written by someone who simply doesn't have the first idea what he's on about.

[indi]

The same goes for English players. English players aren't crap because of foreigners, they're crap because of their lack of ability, poor technique and/or rubbish coaching, this whole "foreign players coming over here taking our jobs" thing is bullshit. If you're not getting a game it's because you're not good enough, get off your fat highly-paid arse and get better at what you do.

 

It's because of the loan system

 

If they weren't good enough to get a game at a club, they'd go somewhere where they were good enough, get a proper game and get some real TLC as they developed. The current situation is that the big clubs snap up all kids indiscriminantly, fuck them all off on loan and hope they get a good one back to justify their 'investment'. It's all bollocks. Rich get richer.

 

You have a point, but it's not just down to the clubs, we can't absolve the players totally from all responsibility, they don't have to sign up with those clubs when they know they're not going to get a game. For example, I have no respect whatsoever for players like Shaun Wright Philips, Steve Sidwell and so-on, who signed for teams like Chelsea and put grabbing a quick buck before their own professional development, when they claim that they didn't get a chance. It's bollocks, they knew they were going to end up in the reserves, everyone knew it and so it came to pass. They can't then whinge about it afterwards.

[Mowen]

The same goes for English players. English players aren't crap because of foreigners, they're crap because of their lack of ability, poor technique and/or rubbish coaching, this whole "foreign players coming over here taking our jobs" thing is bullshit. If you're not getting a game it's because you're not good enough, get off your fat highly-paid arse and get better at what you do.

 

It's because of the loan system

 

If they weren't good enough to get a game at a club, they'd go somewhere where they were good enough, get a proper game and get some real TLC as they developed. The current situation is that the big clubs snap up all kids indiscriminantly, fuck them all off on loan and hope they get a good one back to justify their 'investment'. It's all bollocks. Rich get richer.

 

You have a point, but it's not just down to the clubs, we can't absolve the players totally from all responsibility, they don't have to sign up with those clubs when they know they're not going to get a game. For example, I have no respect whatsoever for players like Shaun Wright Philips, Steve Sidwell and so-on, who signed for teams like Chelsea and put grabbing a quick buck before their own professional development, when they claim that they didn't get a chance. It's bollocks, they knew they were going to end up in the reserves, everyone knew it and so it came to pass. They can't then whinge about it afterwards.

 

I absolutely agree with you on those players, I'm looking younger though. 'Big 4' all having 10+ youngsters out on loan for instance, there's no way they need all those players. They just take them because they can. It's a shame imo, very rare that class / exciting youngsters are at a lower club beyond 16 these days.

[Disco]

The same goes for English players. English players aren't crap because of foreigners, they're crap because of their lack of ability, poor technique and/or rubbish coaching, this whole "foreign players coming over here taking our jobs" thing is bullshit. If you're not getting a game it's because you're not good enough, get off your fat highly-paid arse and get better at what you do.

 

It's because of the loan system

 

If they weren't good enough to get a game at a club, they'd go somewhere where they were good enough, get a proper game and get some real TLC as they developed. The current situation is that the big clubs snap up all kids indiscriminantly, fuck them all off on loan and hope they get a good one back to justify their 'investment'. It's all bollocks. Rich get richer.

 

You have a point, but it's not just down to the clubs, we can't absolve the players totally from all responsibility, they don't have to sign up with those clubs when they know they're not going to get a game. For example, I have no respect whatsoever for players like Shaun Wright Philips, Steve Sidwell and so-on, who signed for teams like Chelsea and put grabbing a quick buck before their own professional development, when they claim that they didn't get a chance. It's bollocks, they knew they were going to end up in the reserves, everyone knew it and so it came to pass. They can't then whinge about it afterwards.

 

I absolutely agree with you on those players, I'm looking younger though. 'Big 4' all having 10+ youngsters out on loan for instance, there's no way they need all those players. They just take them because they can. It's a shame imo, very rare that class / exciting youngsters are at a lower club beyond 16 these days.

 

Those that are will be snapped up when they come through anyways - Scott Sinclair, Theo Walcott, John Bostock (to an extent)

[Mowen]

John Bostock and Theo Walcott were both snapped up age 16. Not sure about Sinclair, but I assume similar. If a club believes it will be a benefit to sign someone that young, fair play. If they're signing them indiscriminantly hoping they'll improve having been shipped out on loan, I'm not so impressed.