Bring On A European Football League

I SEE wee Neil Doncaster has been getting a tad worked-up, about suggestions from the European Clubs Association, that the Champions League might be re-vamped, to guarantee annual competition to the "top" clubs from the "top" leagues - England, Germany, Italy, France and Spain beint the leagues most-likely to be involved.

 

Regular readers of this blog will be aware, I have long advocated a proper European League as being the way forward; the Manchester Uniteds and Cities, the Bayern Munichs, the Inters and ACs and the Reals and Barcas of this world really should be playing each other on a regular basis. But, this would, I have long suggested, be best achieved, by a European equivalent of the major North American professional sports leagues.

 

Doncaster, from what I have read, appeared to be supporting the claims of the likes of the Bigot Brothers, and other mid-to-big European clubs such as Ajax, Porto and Benfica - clubs with long and proud European records, but, likely to be excluded from the proposed new big league, because they don't currently play in a big league.

 

Well, all is not lost. I happen to know a wee bit about the history of the North American major leagues. There hasn't always been one NFL, of Major League Baseball. Not that long ago, in baseball, the National League and the American League were self-governing, competing bodies - who only came together once a year, when their respective champions met in the World Series, to settle an overall winner. The same situation applied in American Football. Pror to them amalgamating to form the NFL, there was the NFC and AFC - the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference.

 

By the way - the "World Series" is not thus dubbed because it is the World Championship of Baseball, but, because, it was initially sponsored by the now-defunct New York World newspaper.

 

OK, suppose the five European big leagues go off and form their own Champions League, with or without UEFA's permission. Given they have the bigger TV draws, they will probably get away with it, and the major TV companies will fall over themelves to throw cash at the new league.

 

Well, the likes of the Bigot Brothers and the others should take a leaf out of the old North American play-book and form their own rival league. The TV companies which lose out on showing say Manchester United v Barcelona and Bayern v Real, will surely find an audience willing to watch the games they put on.

 

Cross-league games will follow and, maybe in five to ten years after the new super-duper league(s) kick-off, we will have our EFL (European Football League).

 

And, since crowd-pulling and potential TV audiences will drive this EFL, you can bet your bottom dollar, Scotland will have two clubs involved, and, we know which two.

 

Meanwhile, without the Bigot Brothers, the "diddy" teams will probably produce a really-competitive and exciting league, which it will not cost us poor saps in the cheap seats an arm  and a leg to watch. I call that a win-win situation, more-so if we see more young Scottish players coming through.

 

 

 

OH! the irony, Mark Warburton complaining about Alloa narrowing their pitch for the visit of the Rangers Tribute Act. Ask Graeme Souness about this please Mark.

 

This is possible, because, unlike a lot of other sports, football does not insist on a common size of playing surface. Andy Murray knows, when he steps onto a tennis court, any tennis court, it will be of uniform dimensions. Usain Bolt knows when he goes to his starting blocks, he will have to run 100 metres, whether he be running in London, Bejing or Sydney; it's not 100 metres here, 101 metres in the next city, and 98 in the one after that.

 

Why should football get away with varying pitch sizes? One of the few remaining perks the SFA enjoys for being one of the pioneering governing bodies in the Beautiful Game is its membership of IFAB - the International Football Associations Board, the body which makes the Laws of the Game.

 

Flex your muscles SFA, if only to stop poor wee Mark having sleepless nights. Why not, at the next IFAB meeting, table a motion calling for uniform dimensions to be set-down for football pitches? That way, Mark could park his petted lip.

 

Or, is that too simple?

 

 

 

I HAD a wee minor triumph this week. I have been searching, for the past decade, for a former Scotland football internationalist, who took himself off to the Antipodes soem 60-years ago.

 

My search had grown rather desperate, since, according to the official records, including the SFA's own website, said former cap was due to turn 90 next week.

 

This morning, I spoke to him by telephone, at his home on the other side of the world, and he was in great form. Sadly for me - the official record is wrong; he does not turn 90 until December, so the birthday piece I was planning has had to go on the back burner.   

Still, it is good to know he is in fine fettle, I heard later this morning of another of the Golden Oldies who has joined the too-long list of veterans suffering from Dementia.