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Platini's plan for league merger and some other stuff

Tuesday, 24 March 09, 05:50 AM · Comments(2)

Hi and hello Football fans, it's your old pal Roko the Football Guy, whats going down? I hope all is well wherever you are. Things are.... A little better than yesterday here in the broom closet at FG towers, although despite getting quite a good nights sleep am having one of those annoying mornings where you find it terribly difficult to wake up. I'd imagine Fergie feel just like that right now, only he's trying to wake up from this nightmare his glorious season seems to be turning in to (had to get that in... sorry).

So yesterday I read on the Guardians website an article about how Uefa President Michel Platini wants to merge some of the smaller leagues in Europe to help with audience and overall competitiveness (is that a word?)

Now this is something i've talked about with friends for a long while and I wont be able to do it justice with a couple of paragraph here, but it's something that I'm fully for and here are the reasons why -

Make leagues more competetive

I'm not going to use the Dutch league as an example here as was talked about in the article in the Guardian, but if you look at a lot of the smaller leagues in Europe (and I'm including Scotland in this) there are predominantly two teams that win the league each year because they are by far the biggest teams in that country. Just take a look at pretty much ever smaller country in Europe and you will see that they are dominated like that, joining smaller league would mean more competition and more interest, which brings me on to my second point.

Bigger viewing audience

I will use a country I know a bit about here, Croatia. Croatia has a population of about 4 to 4.5 million people and Hajduk Split and Dinamo Zagreb are the two powerhouses. Neither fills their stadium unless the other is the visitor or they are playing in Europe.

If let's say they made a Balkans league you would have a audience of about 20 million and more gunuine rivals for the title, therefore making it more competative and hopefully filling out the stadiums more and generating more TV money.

That would mean teams like Dinamo Zagreb could hold on to players like Eduardo, Luka Modric and Vedran Corluka for a few seasons more and actually make it to the CL group stages and make more money meaning again... Keeping hold of some of their better players for longer giving them more chance to compeate against Europes big boys.

Make the Champions League more intresting

Of course teams like Manchester United and Real Madrid will always be able to attract the talent as they will always be bigger and richer clubs, but lets face it, more often or not the Champions League will be won by a team from either England, Spain or Italy, with the occasional champ coming from Germany, Portugal or Holland. You will never have the likes of Red Star Belgrade or Steaua Bucharest (both have won the European cup) winning it again as their leagues are to small and the gulf of money is too great.

Have leagues merge together would increase the chances of teams like that ever so often keeping a generations of players together for a few season and actually having a chance (with a bit of luck) to compete with the big boy and win the Champions League.

I know this is a very brief argument in favour of what Platini said, but it's something I will write about at some point in more detail and I think it would be good for the rest of European football.

Robin Van Persie

Apparently according to RvP the gunners are now "unbeatable", OK, that's the tabloid version of what he said, but again it bolster what I've always said about football - "Things chance very quickly".

Just watch if Arsenal lose their next game or two..... "Arsenal in crisis" "Wenger has lost the plot" "All the players are shit".

Just take a look at United right now!

Robinho the drug taker

Apparently Brazil legend Pele was recorded saying Robinho took drugs....

Well if Fat Ronaldo like's ladyboys, then I guess anything is possible?

The article states the Pele was unaware he was being recorded, which to me sounds like a crock of shit, why would you tell people you are not good friends with that Robinho took drugs? Why?

There is no good reason for doing that and basically Pele is a knob who will endorse anything as long as it pays well and it would not surprise me to find out (not that he is lieing) it was a paid interview and he told them that..... Why else would you say Robinho took drugs?

Reader Comments

In response to Martin Race, a reader who left a comment (as he often does, thank you) about how he think some of the red cards from this weekend will be recinded and Steven Taylor will get a suspension.

Brad Friedel - Yes, I agree he could very likely have his red overturned.

Wayne Rooney - I doubt it, as I think it would go against the FA's respect campaign as he showed very little of it.

Steven Taylor - The problem is the ref saw it and gave a free kick, by the rules of the FA, if a ref has given a decision then that's it, had the ref given nothing then the video panel could have gone in and banned him later but because the foul was given to the FA that means it was dealt with.... I think.....

Platini's plan for league merger and some other stuff

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