Has Football Fallen into Disrepute?

It has finally come about where I am fed up with football. The last year of melodrama both on the pitch and off has done such a number on my bruised psyche that I do not believe I can ever watch the sport as innocently and whole heartedly as before. With the advent of the billionaire owner as at Chelsea, Manchester City, and Newcastle United. The turning of our noble sport into a cash cow, and personal fantasy football teams. Together these business minded megalomaniacs super inflated the value of players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba and Michael Owen. An inflation that has proven totally unsustainable. On top of this these same have proven absolutely despicable. Newcastle United proving the point with their nearly satanic owner Mike Ashley who gleefully torpedoed his own clubs down fall beginning with the firing of Kevin Keegan, placing Joke Innear in charge a highly under qualified toady who succeeded in destroying morale and dropping Newcastle, one of the oldest and most loved teams into Fizzy Pop League.

It's not only the owners who have ruined our beloved football. The players haven't helped much at all. With prepubescent temper tantrums for an extra £10,000 a week. The new modern footballer has no loyalty, no heart, and no pride. When Cristiano Ronaldo played his Spain or Not game for almost all of last season Manchester United supporters finally had a enough let him go and get his £80,000,000 price tag. Hopefully he'll break his leg off crashing yet another super car and than the step overs will cease. But he's not the only one. Michael Owen passed around glossy pamphlets describing himself and attractive, intelligent, likeable, and not accident prone so he too could go off to the highest bidder. The erosion is systemic and needs to be put to an end. Unfortunately, I don't see an end in site.

There are other culprits however, refereeing has sunk to a new low, if I see one more "I did not see the incident referee" blatantly ignoring or giving out yellow and red cards. Affecting matches one way or another. I will scream. How many times must we watch a bad ill trained referee give a penalty kick that is not warranted? Fifa and the FA needs to train these people much better and get rid of the morons.

And finally I've had it with sporting organizations giving countries who do not deserve sporting events like the World Cup, to a country known to be infringing on human rights,. South Africa has no right to the World Cup as they aren't safe. Giving South Africa the World Cup is like saying, "Oh we know you were responsible for propping up the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, and the stripping of civil liberties, bad police work, and general government corruption, but we want to reward you anyway, in the hope that you'll improve because your getting the game." Well screw you. I just won't buy your new football with 74 colours on it or any other merchandise you'll try to entice me with.

As I've said, I believe that Football has fallen into massive disrepute. I just hope something is done to right the situation.

 

You will get no input on this issue here, sorry. All the guys that love 'association' football protested the Arena and stayed in this thread: http://boards.theforce.net/your_jedi_council_community/b10008/14833362/

 

Surely the most popular sport in the world warrants discussion?

 

Its certainly welcome here, but most football/soccer discussion takes place in the linked thread above

 

I'm discussing a specific topic within football not Yay Man Utd! I also notice that there doesn't really seem to be any Commonwealth sport or F1 discussion on here either. To be honest when I saw all the American Football and Hockey stuff I felt a bit uncomfortable. And that 1405 topic is mainly people posting as they watch football not actual discussion of off pitch politics or transfer windows. If I want a score line I can log onto BBC Sport or the Sky website.

 

I am not so familiar with the Newcastle situation but as a whole I have noticed that managres in football get far less leeway than they do in American football. I wonder why, but the managers are giving little to no slack and are sacked with knee-jerk reaction
all the time.

This is just the world we live in nowadays. This is in every sport. Players are less and less team players and are more about their celebrity status. There was no reason to jump from Man U to Real Madrid other than monetary reason. Players jump from big club to big club like frogs on lillypads and really it has become quite annoying. I'm looking at others as well as Ronaldo. It's just whoever can pay the highest wage at this point. I fear that this will worsen soon and is partially the reason I enjoy lower league football as much as top class.

This is becoming intolerable. I love soccer(football) and I defend it all the time against fellow Americans who dislike the sport. They often bring up situations with players flopping and referee travesties and I am becoming less and less able to defend it against these attacks. The Ireland situation was just icing on the cake. It seems that every Premier League weekened is not complete without at least one match having a controversy dealing with a referee decision. The flopping is disgusting and is hard to watch at times.

 

most of what's not discussed here is in the your jedi council community. F1 for instance.

and reche... what she was talking about it being a bad idea for the world cup being in africa and your reasons for it being a good thing really don't have much to do with each other. one's real world issues, the other is game only. doesn't quite matchup.

 

They do talk about political issues etc (Sepp Blatter gets a lot of play) but when games are on, yes, that dominates discussion.

As said, you're quite welcome to post here, but the main 'other sport' fans, particularly F1 and soccer, totally avoid this forum because they're opposed to its existence.

 

Why are they opposed to the existence of a sport forum if they want to discuss sport?

 

Because it's too American-centric.

 

Its a vicious circle They tend to stay in JCC because the forum is heavily US sports; the forum is heavily US sports because they tend to stay in JCC.

That said, these discussions are certainly welcome here - we're just noting that you will likely get a better response in the other thread.

 

Why do they stay in the JCC? If they moved over here and the other threads it could be not so American centered. I do agree that the "Buetiful Game" thread is a little too much focus on the big clubs in England.


The situation I am discussing is something that's become fairly obvious in this season and at the end of last season, where referees were casting themselves as the deciding factor in matches rather than letting the players determine ultimately who won. This at a time when they were demanding respect from the players, how could that happen if the referees clearly believed that they were more important to the outcome than the 22 players on the pitch

So what is your opinion on relpay and goal-line technology? Certainly this would eliminate some of the despicable controversies. (see Ireland vs France)

 

Welcome to the club: because that's been the status of sport in the US for a while now. It was only a matter of time before the business mentality crossed the ocean into Europe.

 

Not so, good sir. I had no problem with the Arena as long as we got to keep the JCC thread (although I was sort of against having an official football thread in both places tee hee. That glorious thread (I still can't believe that my last post got no lols) died and got replaced by some Tora Tora Tora nonsense that also died.

And let it not be forgotten that it was I who created the very, very, very, first thread in the Arena's history. So there.