Satire Saturday | Coronavirus becomes football’s cure as it drags the sport back from its moral vacuum

Satire Saturday | Coronavirus becomes football’s cure as it drags the sport back from its moral vacuum

no photo

|

SportsCafe

May 16 is the day that the lockdown on the footballing world is officially over. It’s the date that the first of the four major European leagues resumes with the second joining a month later. Like a gorgeous flower, football is starting to open its petals again, but what world are we stepping into?

As the lockdown is slowly lifted over football, it’s comforting to know that even when the world faces it’s most deadly and extreme challenge, people will still find a way to argue about football. Whether it’s throwing footballers under the bus, throwing football clubs under the bus, throwing essentially anyone even closely related to football under the bus, the world’s favourite game thrives. But in a life without a lockdown, a suspension and even where the mere word never brings about contempt, football is coming back.

It starts with the simple Bundesliga but unfortunately for those watching the games live, don’t get freaked out by the cardboard cutouts that sit in the stands. As unfortunate as it sounds, they’ve been put there on purpose although Spain and the other three major European leagues don’t have a similar plan. But with Spain, Spanish football and a calamitous Barcelona, all following the Bundesliga’s lead with a restart planned for mid-June, football is coming back.

The question, however, on a lot of minds is what kind of world are they stepping into? Thanks to our good friends at redacted we’ve managed to get a redacted and move a year into the future. That’s just before the Euro 2020 takes place in the summer of 2021, alongside the Copa America 2020, which is also taking place in the summer of 2021. Shockingly, the footballing world, because that’s what matters, has become obscenely normal with the sport no longer being a symptomatic cause of its own greed.

Instead, like many predicted, gone are the £100 million-plus transfer fees and instead, clubs across European football’s top five league have cut that down. They’ve managed to hit only a per club spend of around a £200 million which was the average a year ago, give or take a few. But as Manchester City fans have claimed, they’ve never spent over £70 million but instead brought in about half a dozen or so players for £60 million. Because that’s a lot better.

Somehow, that trend picked up across the world, but they’ve stuck to their lines of not spending insane amounts of money to finish second. Instead, they’ve opted to spend only mildly excessive sums to bring in decently average footballers who do little less than dribble once past the best defender in the world, at the time. But as we took a peek at Transfermarkt and a few other sites, we realised that the footballing landscape across Europe had changed. There was no time to look at the changes anywhere else, mainly because no-one cared, so Europe took precedence.

Unfortunately, using the redacted to travel just a year into the future didn’t help our “data-collection” so instead we took advantage and hopped, skipped and jumped to where we needed to go. First stop was Spain and it’s La Liga which, unfortunately, even ten years into the future, had little to no changes whatsoever. While it wasn’t total domination by either Barcelona or Real Madrid, the El Clasico twins were always a part of any equation. However, the trip wasn’t a total bummer, not just because of some wonderful paella, but because of how the rest of the table looked.

As we leapt across the years, a trend started to emerge and it emerged not just in Spain. Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Real Betis and more dominantly, Athletic Bilbao started showing their claws. Bilbao, thanks to a boundless youth academy, managed to win a couple of titles and even performed in the Champions League. Shocking we know but just that seemed to be the case especially when their younglings weren’t snatched from the nest before they hatched. Unfortunately, Real Madrid and Barcelona were on the verge of collapse, thanks to an unforeseen challenge of trying to stay relevant.

Germany was our next stop and once again, while there was change, there wasn’t. Bayern Munich had realised that they could no longer spend money to win and thus struggled in the early part of our ten-year journey. Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, Bayer Leverkusen, Schalke and even Werder Bremen all slowly managed to find themselves doing relatively well. Titles were shared but Bayern was always a part of the equation. But they never managed to make that jump from contenders to title winners.

That was slowly changing as we left for France and Italy, with the Bavarians somehow coming to the realization that they needed to catch up to the times and stop trying to convince Manchester City to sell them Leroy Sane. But it was in France that the state of the league truly shocked our pants off. Quite literally I must add, especially since they were no longer a farmer’s league. No-one was more shocked than Twitter as they realised that somehow the French Football Federation (FFF) managed to sort out their issues.

That brought about parity and it meant that the league was back to its heyday in the early 2000s. It allowed clubs to step out of the shadows and instead lose a title not to PSG but to Saint Etienne and Nantes, and LOSC Lille, and even Monaco. Italy was exactly the same although it still had Juventus trying to stay relevant with Cristiano Ronaldo, now in his early forties, leading the charge. The Portuguese legend now had a body of a 30-year-old although the number of naps per day had increased from 5 to 10.

But even that wasn’t enough to stop AS Roma and Lazio from winning titles, with Inter and AC Milan chipping in. Like Spain however, it was the table that changed with Torino, Sampdoria, Genoa and even Fiorentina all popping up for a spell at the top. Nothing was ever permanent, expect Cristiano Ronaldo scoring goals, although just before we left a pop up informed us that Gianluigi Buffon had extended his deal by another year. It seemed that he was still waiting to lift that Champions League trophy before he retired. It certainly intrigued us but unfortunately, England and all its glory was waiting.

Something greater than Owen and Shearer? Who thought it possible? © Getty

This was what the world wanted to really hear about and it was all that mattered, and it did not disappoint. Ten years into the future and the league looked absolutely magnificent. Money apparently was still flowing through the world’s most popular football league but not at the insane sums that it was before. The broadcast deal had expired in 2022 and while it was renewed, the lack of funds meant that clubs were sliced off at their knees. It saw Arsenal and Tottenham drop far down the table and Everton and Aston Villa make the top six along with Manchester United and Newcastle United.

The Magpies, thanks to their takeover which sailed through the league’s Proper Person rule, were the all-conquering power in England. They were where they finally envisioned themselves, exchanging blows for first and second place between everyone else. Leicester City and Leeds United somehow pulled themselves back into play with even Sunderland back in the Premier League. It seemed that Charlie Methven’s Ibiza atmosphere had worked its charm, more than the football on the field, and it saw the EFL give Sunderland a place in the top tier.

Things were slowly changing across the world and we loved it. But the longer we stayed, the longer we saw that the competition was slowly changing things back to the old. It ensured that more money was pumped into football, with a lot more pumped into football clubs with the Proper Person’s test now down to checking a person’s pulse. Few cared about moral issues with Chelsea’s Roman Abramovich and Mike Ashley, who was still looking for a new club, now football’s golden boys.

It also meant that for some absurd reason the world took Graeme Souness’ words, a little over ten years ago from where we were standing, to heart when he said “If they’re brave owners, now is the time to go for it. You can cherry-pick even the best players from our big clubs. I’m thinking Chelsea, Man City, who have very rich owners.” That flowed into the Champions League with it now the premier competition for any European club and by any, we mean any. Because no top five league side, barring Newcastle, had managed to move beyond the quarter-finals for nearly five years.

Instead, unknown clubs like PSV Eindhoven, Benfica, Dynamo Kyiv, Anderlecht and even Celtic graced the winner's lists. It destroyed the hearts of football hipsters all over the world, so they decided to do the truly hipster thing. Support the popular clubs instead, one with history, league titles, Champions League glory and Chelsea. But that caused chaos across the lands and as we scrolled through the interweb, the world around us was slowly collapsing. Unhappy with what was a competitive football field again, UEFA, FIFA and various football associations had all banded together to form a group.

A group that would bring an end to a world of competition. A group that would rid the footballing world of the greatest disease it had ever known. We would have loved to watch that good vs evil fight all unfold in what would have been greatest behind the scenes documentary since the Last Dance but our time was cut short. The trailer did tell us, however, that FIFA and UEFA were about to do something radical, maybe bring about a salary cap to the entire footballing world? Or maybe a transfer cap, or maybe something else incredibly sensible?

Or maybe, they would allow absolutely nothing to happen as a morally bankrupt owner takes over the world via a football club. That is the sensible move especially since they have a pulse and enough money to change the world.

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all