Super League and cheating by ManCity and PSG

[Havre]

So what is your point? Of course the big will be big.

Do you want a cap like the NHL? Probably not. So then people somehow think a billionaire lottery is the way to go.

It is easy to point out that something might not be perfect the way they are - a lot harder to come up with a good alternative solution. I guess as a PSG fan you like the billionaire lottery, but apart from neutrals that get this "exhilarating" transfer fees (got to hurt the socialist heart though) and other winners of this absurd lottery it really isn't all that much fun.

 

[Evilo]

So what is your point? Of course the big will be big.

Do you want a cap like the NHL? Probably not. So then people somehow think a billionaire lottery is the way to go.

It is easy to point out that something might not be perfect the way they are - a lot harder to come up with a good alternative solution. I guess as a PSG fan you like the billionaire lottery, but apart from neutrals that get this "exhilarating" transfer fees (got to hurt the socialist heart though) and other winners of this absurd lottery it really isn't all that much fun.

I hate the billionaire lottery.
Maybe you weren't there before the PSG purchase, but I was firmly AGAINST the big spending owners and AGAINST the CL reform.
I knew finances would take over the game.
NOW, for once a french club (because I was never a PSG fan) can compete with the other guys, we're told they can't because the old boys club wants to keep their money toy to themselves. Hypocrisy it is.

As I have said a thousand times here, there are only two solutions :
1/ To get back to the old CL system (1 team for every league and KO competition, no round robin to ensure a mishap isn't eliminating).
2/ A semi-closed league where the bigger teams would be on equal footing (salary cap and all).

If you think current football is fun, I'm so sorry you didn't experience the european cups where uncertainty was there in every single round, where you could lose it all on one single game and where a good coach team could win it all.

 

[Evilo]

Yes I like the NHL approach much better. Weirdly enough, the US have a very communist approach to their sports league while Europe has a free-for-all-kill-the-poors-long-live-the-riches approach.

 

[Havre]

I hated the billionaire lottery since long before PSG. If anything I can at least see the benefit for Ligue 1 having a sugar daddy - not sure how much it has helped French football though - French teams in general do not seem to have become much better. For Chelsea and City that isn't much of an argument. The PL never needed more money.

I think today's football have serious flaws. Maybe the biggest outside of the sugar daddies being Spain clearly subsidizing their two giants. If it was a plain playing field for all I believe we would have had a lot more teams like Spurs, Ajax, Atletico etc. punching above their weight - making the CL a much more exciting tournament. To me it is not exciting to see PSG and City beat the other giants just by paying more money for their players.

I like the idea of FFP. Will it ever work? I don't know, but to me it is the lesser evil at the moment.

 

[Evilo]

It has helped french football tremendously on a few things :
1/ money
2/ TV rights (linked with 1 obviously).
3/ international attractiveness (since then, Bordeaux, Monaco, Marseille and Nice have been bought and I'm sure it's just the beginning)

It is the lesser evil if you are part of the club.

 

[Havre]

Well. If Spurs are seen as one of the giants trying to keep others down - then I think the number of giants are starting to get big enough.

I remember growing up having friends telling me how much bigger teams like Everton, Leeds and Aston Villa were (are at the time) than Spurs.

 

[Burner Account]

I should finish The Billionaires Club within the next week.

https://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Club-Unstoppable-Footballs-Super-rich-ebook/dp/B01N2JPY5L

It's from 2017 and could already use an update given how much has happened since then, but a good read on some of the more interesting American, European, Middle Eastern and Asian owners of European and Asian clubs – how they made their money, their track records as sports owners, how they acquired their clubs or stakes.

 

[Live in the Now]

FFP is an absolute farce. A UK investor has just bought Nice (so to most posters here, his money is ethically right, remember) and its stadium. Yet he won't be able to spend his money because FFP prevents it. How ridiculous is that?

Actually, if you research him, his money is most definitely not right. The guy is the usual kind of oil money scum who gets off on destroying the planet, wants to pillage the land and frack for oil all over Britain. He also doesn't believe in the EU yet buys clubs in other European countries. So, the guy is a typical moron.

It's just the same as everything else, doesn't matter what country he came from.

 

[Evilo]

Well, nobody here stated a word on the british guy, weird.
While russian and arab money is by definition dirty.

BTW, Khelaifi is suing Mediapart for the document you quoted, saying it's a fake. Not saying he's right, but sometimes, people should remember there are two sides to every story.

 

[Havre]

Yes. Weird. Why did people focus on Lance Armstrong when others were also doping? Weird.

Such a weak argument. Never criticize someone just in case you do not mention everyone that might do something similar.

And as for me. Why would I care if someone is from Britain, Russia or somewhere in the Middle East?

At least the Russians got exceptionally beautiful women. To imply that I (or others) are judging them different because of their nationality is really a new low.

 

[YNWA14]

Well, nobody here stated a word on the british guy, weird.
While russian and arab money is by definition dirty.

BTW, Khelaifi is suing Mediapart for the document you quoted, saying it's a fake. Not saying he's right, but sometimes, people should remember there are two sides to every story.

But do you remember this? As someone who so often deals in absolutes I hope that you are giving this advice because you are becoming more open minded yourself.

 

[Evilo]

Yes. Weird. Why did people focus on Lance Armstrong when others were also doping? Weird.

Such a weak argument. Never criticize someone just in case you do not mention everyone that might do something similar.

And as for me. Why would I care if someone is from Britain, Russia or somewhere in the Middle East?

At least the Russians got exceptionally beautiful women. To imply that I (or others) are judging them different because of their nationality is really a new low.

I have no idea why you're comparing to Lance Armstrong.
Everyone was doing it in cycling. Problem was, Armstrong was a complete ass about it. He took pride in rubbing it in everyone's face. he made the peloton exclude the few cyclists that ran clean and talked about him.

 

[Evilo]

But do you remember this? As someone who so often deals in absolutes I hope that you are giving this advice because you are becoming more open minded yourself.

You're surely talking about yourself?

 

[Havre]

I have no idea why you're comparing to Lance Armstrong.
Everyone was doing it in cycling. Problem was, Armstrong was a complete ass about it. He took pride in rubbing it in everyone's face. he made the peloton exclude the few cyclists that ran clean and talked about him.

So people cared more about Armstrong not because he was the most successful, but because he is an ass. And people care more about City and PSG because the money is Russian and from the Middle East - not because they are the most prominent teams (for now) among the billionaire lottery winners.

Just a side note. Team INEOS (the cycling team) is by many just called Team Pollution. So let us wait and see what football fans think of Jim Ratcliffe.

Interesting how similar your "reasoning" is with Mourinho's at times.

 

[Evilo]

You think only Mourinho reasons like this?
Mourinho was never an idiot. And I'll send you back to your post about him. Funny how sometimes you choose he's wrong.

Of course it was with Armstrong. He won while claiming he was an angel and acting like an ass with everyone with an incredible arrogance. Where were all the whining when Indurain won TdF after Tdf while being doped as shit?
Where were all the newspapers articles saying Real were breaching ethical rules by being sponsored by the gouvernement?
Or when Chevrolet made a deal for United that was so shady the guy that signed it was immediately fired ?

 

[Havre]

I didn't use Mourinho as a reference to say you are an idiot. Kind of funny you thought so though.

What kind of logic is this? And like Mourinho you are just doubling down even when you know you are wrong. Let us assume journalists and others didn't have the same focus on Indurain as they did with Armstrong - then they should never have cared about Armstrong either?

For whatever reason the general public didn't think doping was as much of an issue in the 80s and 90s as it proved to be. Carl Lewis, Indurain etc. were "heroes" of mine - I had no clue (as a kid) that they were using illegal substances. As for Armstrong I had several discussions with my father during his wins were he almost to the end thought he was clean.

I have stated a million times that I have no love for RM and Barcelona for how they are clearly subsidized by Spain and Catalonia. I honestly have no idea how the Spanish population can accept the way their league is ran.

Exactly. He got fired (taking your word for it). I don't know the details around it, but people in normal businesses get fired if they make poor decisions. Doesn't have to mean it was corruption or illegal. How Chevrolet is even remotely comparable to for example the way Qatar does it business I will never know. But your "reasoning" is at least consistent. "Don't criticize A because you never know what B might be doing". How would anyone be critical of anything if you were to follow that line of reasoning to the end...........

 

[Evilo]

No, it's not what I meant, I said I never said Mou was an idiot. He's become a joke of a coach, btu he's hardly an idiot, that's what I meant.

I have no idea how you come up with Indurain's doping not being a problem. It was. People talked about it, and two years after he last a Tdf, the Festina case came up.
Nobody thought either (Lance and Indurain) were clean if you followed cycling. Heck, if HF search still exists, you'll see I talked about it here during the Tdf back then.
The reasons Lance took more heat than anybody were 1/ he acted like an arrogant prick and 2/ he won more than anyone else
Again, there's absolutely no comparison with PSG or City.

You mean there was no corruption in the Chevrolet case? You should make a few Google searches.
No, the difference in media (and HFboards bias) treatment is absolutely stunning. This was my whole point (and you know it every well).

 

[Havre]

If I follow cycling. You are cute. In my extended group of friends there are two former stage winners from the Tour de France and I occasionally ride with former professionals myself. Unless your are related to Hinault I am pretty sure I have more inside information about cycling and what people knew than you ever will. So yeah - if I follow cycling....

Anyway. When you are left with arguments like "if you follow....." then this discussion is over.

 

[Vasilevskiy]

Armstrong got more heat because he won more than anybody (and also because all of the times he denied it)

Only in the inner circles of cycling fans you will read all the other reasons why he should have got even more heat. The guy was a f***ing bully in the peloton.

Indurain at least was smart about it and retired before his name could get publicly dirty. Very dark years for cycling.
Well, the current ones are not much better with SKY/INEOS

 

[Vasilevskiy]

If I follow cycling. You are cute. In my extended group of friends there are two former stage winners from the Tour de France and I occasionally ride with former professionals myself. Unless your are related to Hinault I am pretty sure I have more inside information about cycling and what people knew than you ever will. So yeah - if I follow cycling....

Anyway. When you are left with arguments like "if you follow....." then this discussion is over.

Where do you live?

 

[Evilo]

If I follow cycling. You are cute. In my extended group of friends there are two former stage winners from the Tour de France and I occasionally ride with former professionals myself. Unless your are related to Hinault I am pretty sure I have more inside information about cycling and what people knew than you ever will. So yeah - if I follow cycling....

Anyway. When you are left with arguments like "if you follow....." then this discussion is over.

When you say you follow cycling and then you say things like "I thought Armstrong was clean until the end", you're either not following cycling or you're refusing to see the obvious. Guy had his ass saved mutiple times by shady IOC business.

 

[East Coast Bias]

Or when Chevrolet made a deal for United that was so shady the guy that signed it was immediately fired ?

You keep repeating this but it's very misleading. You keep tying Ewanick's departure from GM as fallout to a conspiracy to circumvent FFP but there's really no evidence to support this. Maybe United took advantage of a man's naivety, but there's been absolutely no link to illegality. In fact the only questionable thing he did was award a commercial contract for 500k to a company that employed the CFO's wife, which was completely unrelated to any of this. But more likely to weigh in his fate.

He was fired because he made a ton of bold moves - United deal but also several others - that changed the way GM marketed, as well as their target audience. Moves that didn't totally align with their other areas and vision.

The articles over the years on this have criticized the decision to push Chevy as a brand in the Euro market, cannibalizing GM's other brands popular in Europe, while overestimating the viewers in of PL and United in general in Asia. They also looked at United over 2 decades - their success, their exposure, etc and predicted that forward. Never accounting for SAF leaving, or in turn what not making the CL annually would do to that projection.

 

[Evilo]

Not as a way to circumvent FFP.
As a way to get Caiman bank money.
If you think a CEO is that naive, you're the naive one. He got a fat check otu of that contrat, a personnal check in his Caiman account.
That's how it works, but if it makes you feel any better, they are surely not the only ones.

 

[East Coast Bias]

Not as a way to circumvent FFP.
As a way to get Caiman bank money.
If you think a CEO is that naive, you're the naive one. He got a fat check otu of that contrat, a personnal check in his Caiman account.
That's how it works, but if it makes you feel any better, they are surely not the only ones.

He wasn't the CEO. He was the chief marketing officer.

I mean anythings possible. But you're making these wild assumptions with no proof.

 

[Havre]

Where do you live?

Norway.