Football in the dock.

 Football in the dock.

Somehow this had to happen. Football once again finds itself in the dock and the jury will have to think very hard in their deliberations. This is not going to be easy watch by any means. In fact there have already been incriminations and recriminations, a sign that football has sacrificed itself on the altar of financial greed and blatant capitalism. There can no other way of dressing this one up. Football should but probably won't hang its head in shame because the profiteering spivs and shysters who allegedly have the best interests of football at heart have turned around and held football to ransom. 

So here we are hopefully approaching the end of a hellish year of the dreaded virus that still lingers in certain parts of the world and all football can do is stick its head in the money trough. Oh what a deplorable state of affairs. There was a time when football was a game of simple methods, timeless values and extremely high standards. The truth is of course that football once had integrity, probity, principles, an enduring care and consideration for the people who both run the game and play the game. 

But today football stands accused of the ultimate crime. Football can only cover its face because it knows it's done something horribly wrong rather like the toddler who opens up the biscuit tin and grabs as many as they can. It is the most heinous act of betrayal, the most radical departure from the norm, almost smacking of treachery and, quite possibly, treason. 

Yesterday a dissident group of UEFA officials came up with one of the craziest, silliest and most impractical idea in the history of football. The proposal of a European Super League involving the very elite of clubs in England and the rest of Europe's leading lights, has exposed so many fault lines in European football's top brass that you'd barely think they would descend to the lowest of levels. 

Some of us were still scratching our heads in utter incredulity because we've heard this potty suggestion before and even then it seemed barely credible. What must be going through the minds of these selfish, mindless, self obsessed members of the football community who think it might be a good idea to set up a competition that nobody wants and more to the point couldn't give two hoots about. But then maybe they've nothing better to do with their time than compile ludicrous ideas to improve the game. 

What we have at work here is the mentality of the absurd and idiotic. A plan to squeeze a seemingly impossible schedule of football matches into the smallest space of time is now on the drawing board. It is logistically nonsensical, realistically insane and just sounds like some despairing cry for help. For the last year football has been skint, destitute and wholly without the vital revenue for its continued existence. There is an air of poverty within the game that none of us could have foreseen and now can hardly believe is still at large, ominously hovering over the sport like the darkest of clouds. 

When Project Restart brought football back again at the end of last June after a seemingly endless oasis of no football at all  the thought of football digging an even deeper hole, seemed scarcely imaginable. But yes, you were right. Football has indeed lost its mind. It has been asked to do something which can only be regarded as a positive breakthrough by those whose pockets are already bulging with millions of pounds.

Now how many long hours, months and weeks have been spent pondering, poring over the possibility of a new format, the kind of brainchild that dear Clive Sinclair must have thought would become a reality. But although Sinclair gave us the C5 to drive on our roads what he didn't know at the time that it was just a passing fad. Sinclair of course was a great inventor but when you come up with new fangled creations you have to believe that they might just work. The C5 didn't quite catch on did it?

And so football must try to re-examine its thought patterns and try to go down different avenues. For the powerful and wealthy likes of Bayern Munich, AC and Inter Milan, Barcelona, Paris St Germain and Uncle Tom Cobley and all this may sound one of the shrewdest ideas ever conceived. But it does seem that football needs to recover its marbles and commonsense since none of us have got time to worry about an already criminally overloaded fixture list of Europa League and Champions League matches and then hope that football can take a European Super League seriously. 

Your mind goes back to the very early days of the UEFA Cup when it was known as the Fairs Cup or when the European Cup Winners Cup was just a superb vehicle for those teams who had just won their country's equivalent of the FA Cup. You now lament sorrowfully the disappearance of the European Cup and now have to make do with the Champions League, a tiresomely long winded competition that seems to go on for ever. 

Way back in the mists of time, we had but only the European Cup, a straightforward knock out competition over two legs where the team at home would have to establish such a commanding lead in the first leg that the second leg would have to be utterly intriguing if the scores were level. But oh no! Now we 've got to contend with those faceless bureaucrats who are now firmly of the opinion that a round robin of apparently glamorous sounding matches between these obscenely wealthy teams is just what football needs at the moment. 

Sadly, football now finds itself beholden to the millions and millions of pounds and euros to be offered by those grasping, acquisitive, moneymaking chairmen who couldn't care less about  football's lowest classes, the commoners, the peasantry, the ones at the bottom of the heap or just about solvent. The likes of Sky Sports and BT must be salivating at the prospect of yet greater riches and let's totally forget about the likes of Rochdale, Torquay, Grimsby and Barrow. They're utterly beneath us. They're old school and should never be spoken of in the same sentence as any potential European Super League. 

Both Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City, Spurs and Chelsea though can hardly be blamed for looking enviously at a financial windfall that could make them even more affluent than they already are. But we must hope that football will ignore the publicity, the wacky insistence on feathering its nest and just stamp on this foul smelling proposal. If football can bring itself to its senses and the necessary legislation put in place for the abandonment of this crass piece of thinking. Good riddance to the European Super League and don't darken our corridors again.