The Future of Football and Forest


Now this seems somewhat maybe a broad and sweeping subject to tackle for a mere Forest blog, but it’s been a quiet period with the international week, and it’s been an interesting day possibly in the future of football.

With Sandro Rosell the Barcelona President has spoke on a subject that could have huge long term ramifications for the future for our fair club.

He spoke about how basically he would like to move closer to a European Super League and how the top divisions should move down to 16 team leagues, and basically how it have a larger Champions League, with weekend games.

Basically the target is that rather than every so often games between the huge European super powers of football, we should instead see those far more regularly.

Now on the one hand I am not surprised, nor do I care overly too much on the outside, we as a club are so far removed from that world of football that they can frankly do whatever they want. We won’t get there anymore and if greed so drives them into eventually killing the game, so be it. These games get a lot of attention due to the rarity of them. And so maybe people in China, Brazil and other emerging markets want them more? Do these new fans really have to change what the old hardened fans of old want to see? Well the bank manager certainly thinks so.

For one, the fact that Manchester United v Barcelona or suchlike holds a vast interest when it’s on is because it is that, a rarity. They want to dilute and pollute market more than ever.

But the fact that if this happened, it would by a stroke be much harder to get in the Premier League, it would become more a closed club, and would likely see a step closer to abandoning relegation.

This would see the rung beneath that become like the minor leagues in US sport. Which almost sounds a disaster and no way forward, but a great many clubs forge a decent history that way. Problem is those clubs have never had the highs that a club like ours has had. Now I usually am one to rally against us always harking on about the past, but for this I think it points to how such a move would be a disaster. Most realists know we will never be atop club again. I would still like to retain a league whereby we can dream of making it to the topflight, and with that is always the chance of a few good years, but even that is something UEFA would gladly take away from us, and that as a former double European Cup winner would be tragic.

Unfortunately those people running our sport from the very highest (yes, Mr Blatter) are driven not by the love of the game, the romance the passion, the fans, but purely by profit. By axing out how much every one of them can squeeze every penny from the game.

No doubt with us all being football fans as well as merely Forest fans it will mean higher costs in terms of Sky Deals, and other knocks ons whereby they try and squeeze more out of us more than ever.

So although it is still all conjecture, the decisions made by presidents and chairmen of the biggest clubs in other world football might one day put us in a situation whereby we are forever stuck in a second or third tier of the game, unable to escape.

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