news tidbits

[jazzypom]

Comments

[blackjedii]

lol no the reason EPL has become so dang boring is that it is no longer about the game on the ground but the drama in the locker room. With Bundesliga (partially thanks to language barriers) you aren't spending all your time wondering when will be the next time Guardiola will go off on someone or whether Hummels will use his leverage to sniff around La Liga to get a new contract with Dortmud.
We don't hear about whether one of the players may or may not have slept with someone else's wives and there isn't nearly the focus on say, the big name player's home lives that you would get with EPL.

EPL has been a hella mess and it's becoming an increasing mess over the last few years. Meanwhile Bundesliga is fresher and newer and where world champions are coming from. Even with La Liga I find the Real/Barca games boring but you don't know what will happen with the others. Distractions and drama do not build good, solid teams.

What EPL really needs is to just re-focus on their youngins and actually build players instead of the constant carousel of celebrity internationals and will-he-or-won't-he coach drama.

[marsyke]

I do agree. The EPL has become a circus, soap opera and telenovella, all in one. The media are definitely at fault too. Transfers sagas, hypes and trainer drama get more attention than the matches themselves.

It hasn't been that way since 2010 tbh

[jazzypom]

In terms of say, footballers courting the press and such. That was the mainstay of Beckham, Gerrard and such. Once Rooney retires, it's the last of that sort of football player and accompanying WAG. I mean, save for the footballer who was a pedophile and the other one who was a rapist, I have no compunction about the media calling such things out? Apart from that, they've left the younger players alone. You don't see them on Hello! or OK! like the Gerrards, Rooneys, Beckhams of old. For instance, the only pictures of Harry Kane that I might see out and about are from fan tumblrs, not newspapers, where they would have been with Gerrard and his missus.

The up and coming footballers seem to have their heads down and their wives and girlfriends seem to be in professional jobs (not model/star columnist/singer), so you don't see that sort of thing anymore. The most you might see a footballer doing an interview is because of his sponsor and that's pretty rare.

With Bundesliga (partially thanks to language barriers) you aren't spending all your time wondering when will be the next time Guardiola will go off on someone or whether Hummels will use his leverage to sniff around La Liga to get a new contract with Dortmud.

Not necessarily? My German is rudimentary at best, but rumours still do snake around in the German press and make it online and about in various forums and in newspapers. You also get the same news in terms of La Liga (with Marca and such).

What EPL really needs is to just re-focus on their youngins

That I agree with. The EPL overpays for usually middling foreign talent who will take time to get their head around the league instead of say, going the Spurs and Leicester route and tap up League 1 players and see how they do. I'm glad that Chelsea is stopping the spigot on that one, re: Mourinho, since he's the one who inadvertently started the great foreign rush back in 2004.

[yamair]

I know what you mean, but I think this is more about the media. They report on the game as if they were reporting on the Big Brother house. The focus is on personalities and drama.

The Sterling thing should never have got as big as it did, and that was solely down to the media. I have actually had to cut myself off from EPL coverage. The Guardian in particular. The drama around Balo swapping his shirt was the beginning of the end for me.

And then you have the Eva thing, which I still don't understand how it escalated. It seems something went on behind the scenes and she was dropped. Because Mou's comments in the after-match interview weren't on that level imo.

The English press were the ones who coined the WAG term, and I think that says it all about where their focus lies. Football is a huge money earner for them, they need to create clickbait.

There's this recent interview with Wenger where he starts to take some journalists to task when they badgered him about Ospina. He commented on how they cover football, and I agree with his points and sentiment 100%. The football media don't analyse a game, they don't know how to. So they concentrate on sensationalism and they are sheep.

Starts at 5:25, watch on to 7:30

[blackjedii]

yes. that. that is a good way to explain it.