The Times had a good report on his speech to the European Parliament, and The Independent carries an extract:
For the past 15 or 20 years, we have grown tired of hearing that there is no need to regulate, that the market regulates itself, that excesses and imbalances will disappear of their own accord, and that the growth of income in football is an endless upward spiral.
We now know that none of this is true: that in football, as in the economy in general, the market is incapable of correcting its own excesses – and it was not the UEFA president who said so, it was Barack Obama.
The Premier League may well feel challenged by the Platini agenda. The BBC finds some left-right splits among British MEPs, with Labour's Richard Corbett thinking Platini is raising important issues, but the Tories and UKIP sceptical or opposed.
But it is perhaps surprising to see LibDem Graham Watson proposing the Premier League as a good model for football in other European countries. As every football fan knows, the redistribution of income upwards through the Premier League combined with the Champions League restructuring has made English football very much more predictable than it was, with only four clubs able to even think about winning the league. Those concerned about the causes of falling social mobility could find some interesting lessons from football.
No comments:
Post a Comment