A quick note of warning to any new American owner trying to ingratiate themselves to a Premier League audience: the one thing English football supporters really don’t like is being told, at length, the ways in which their sport could be improved by becoming more American.
When people hear the words “All-Star game”, they miss your next two sentences because they have gone to fetch their pitchfork from the cupboard under the stairs.
A bad idea is a bad idea forever. The most ludicrous element of Chelsea owner Todd Boehly’s idea of a North vs South match is that it was in any way original. For longer than we can all care to remember, football has been enthralled by the pull of composite teams playing off in a “This is what the kids really want” bonanza that entirely misses the point of traditional football fandom.
The pull of sport lies in the loyalty we have to our clubs, not players. This FIFA 22-style experiment is a vaguely interesting concept, a procrastinator’s daydream of composite teams scribbled on scrap paper.
But anyone who has watched the NFL Pro Bowl should understand the issue. In theory, throwing together superstars who are used to opposing each other for a one-off spectacle is piping hot televised fun. In practice, it’s garbage. Nobody wants to get injured and nobody cares about the result, resulting in half-arsed fun. It plots an exact course, covering every element required for a football match but simultaneously sidestepping everything that makes that match watchable.
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And yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, I feel a little sympathy for Chelsea’s new owner. He is quickly discovering English football’s butterfly effect: a club owner flaps his wings at a global thought leadership and networking forum (an event which doesn’t just get increasingly dull with each word of its description but actually has a speaker called Perianne Boring). Several hours later, Jurgen Klopp sarcastically asks if the Harlem Globetrotters will be involved. This is how our world turns.
Conferences such as these come with an expectation. They are impossibly American, a capitalist orgy of blue-sky thinking and “think big, win big” turbo-optimism. The event itself was marketed as “three days of collaboration focused on disruptive innovation”, and Boehly stuck to that brief despite it being entirely meaningless. He spent 27 minutes riffing on a vision to make everything bigger, brighter and better because nobody in that room cares about whether Graham Potter will play three at the back.
Relegation play-offs, all-star games – these are not realities. They are the idle thoughts of a billionaire sharing a stage with names like Rembrandt Flores and Chase Koch (yes, both real) and speaker bios that include gems like “John, also known as VegSurfer, runs the Non Fungible Fund at Wave Financial”.
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Before we chastise Boehly for his bad ideas, perhaps we should at least be grateful that we are hearing anything at all. When was the last time one of the Big Six’s owners spoke at such length, publicly, about their vision for their club? John Henry, Stan Kroenke and the Glazer family have become the silent Americans who we only hear from when there is a PR emergency that demands their bland platitudes. The alternative, as recent experience shows, is that owners operate secretly in their own small cabal as they plan the destroyal of our traditional football culture.
A billionaire owner who publicly conveys fresh ideas – even misguided ones – is far better than a billionaire who says nothing in public, offers nothing of their vision and then sees their masterplan to form a European Super League leaked after being plotted in private. We want owners to engage with us and with the supporters of their clubs. We want to create discussion where none currently exists. If the only response is to loudly deride, do not expect a repeat.
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