You, dear non-existent reader, might not have surmised it from the games I’ve surveyed on this blog, but I hate the English Big Four. In fact, I entirely despise the gazillion dollar, pound, Euro worth of the top sixteen clubs in Europe. I understand the storied history of these clubs and why we’re supposed to not mind that only a handful of European clubs win leagues and UEFA competitions every year: the Munich air disaster, Di Stefano and Puskas, the Old Lady, Der Grosse Clubbe der Deutschland keine Historie whatsoeverkeit. But just because your club was coached by Bill ‘Life-and-Death’ Shankly doesn’t mean you still have a God-given right to the Premiership after 18 years of failure.
Case in point; how is it for the second year in a row Manchester United take on Aston Villa in the third round of the FA Cup? Not that the Cup is much use to anyone in England these days, outside of providing an eccentric glass of final-match-of-the-season celebratory champagne. But it would have been a nice thing for my Villa working as hard as they have been over Christmas to draw, say, Woking, or even Oldham who wonderfully beat Everton this past weekend. It’s not like Manchester United, despite the righteous spitting of the British press, are a better team than Villa, it’s just that we always lose to them. It’s part of our recent heritage. And surely Manchester United knew this when they paid off the FA to draw us for the Third Round.
The real point is the finer, non-Big Four clubs in England today view a place in the UEFA Cup or a Carling Cup final berth as the height of glory. And perhaps that’s ultimately not good for football, capitalism and 100 million South East Asian viewers be damned.
Post Script: Although no one really reads this, I apologize for the Christmas delay in posting. Won’t happen again.
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