In front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the street has been paved with artificial turf and a series of giant goal posts have been erected. On the riverbank in Hamburg, two dozen shipping containers have been painted in the colors of the competing countries. Part of Leipzig Zoo has been handed over to a program of cultural events, although probably not related to tigers.
Across Germany, flags are being flown, marketing plans are being finalized and anything bearing the logo of something other than one of UEFA’s official sponsors is being covered up. strangely. After six years of planning, the European football championship – Euro 2024 – is only a week away. Teams will start arriving shortly. Hundreds of thousands of fans will follow closely behind them.
Meanwhile, for the rest of Europe, these are the glorious, hazy days before the festival begins – a time filled with sticker albums and bunting, stirring television footage , lines of speculation and sweet nostalgia. Or rather they should be, because it’s hard not to suspect that everyone is taking action.
It’s not that there’s no interest in a traditional tournament that’s second only to the World Cup. But it definitely falls into the muted category. All the emotions usually associated with one of football’s great performances – hope, excitement, fear, wonder at how England will destroy itself – have been overshadowed by one thing. another, something closer to ennui.
The most direct explanation for why that is probably lies in the football schedule, which has been out of sync over the past four years. The Men’s World Cup ended only 18 months ago. The last men’s European Championship took place three years ago, not four. The game’s body clock has become unstable. It seems like the entire sport is suffering from jet lag.
Much – though not all – of that can be attributed to football’s efforts to make up for lost time during the coronavirus pandemic. There has been a near-constant wave of football since that unwanted break in 2020. The extent to which players are exhausted has been well documented, but the same logic applies to fans. The more games there are, the less important they seem.
(This is certainly an issue that affects the Copa América, which also begins this month. From 2011 to 2020, the Copa América seemed to happen almost continuously. They never failed to play a Copa América. After a while, it gets very difficult. It’s hard to get too excited about it unless, perhaps, your country is involved, and even then it’s a stretch. )
But there is a more direct factor in football’s summer unrest, which was exposed on Tuesday, when The Times of London Details are announced of Manchester City’s long-awaited legal action against the Premier League, a battle that has the potential – and this is no exaggeration – to change the world’s most popular sports league beyond recognition.
City’s main aim, as stated in 165 pages of court papers that are both egregious and absurd, is to abolish the federation’s regulations on Related Party Transactions, the catchy name given to such contracts. Co-sponsorships are carried out by clubs with companies affiliated with their owners.
City contends that those companies should be able to pay what they want for such deals, rather than a price close to market value. The club’s lawyers say the current rules, which require the following, are anti-competitive, and if they are not lifted, City will have no choice but to stop sponsoring the team women and their community work. If that sounds like a naked threat, that’s because it is.
The possible consequences of what appears to be a case of technical impropriety could be profound. If Manchester City succeed in overturning the rules, it will mark the end for anything close to cost control in the Premier League. That would give free rein to the club – and Newcastle, like Man City, are backed by a state agency – to pump as much money into their coffers as they like.
Of course, in keeping with the spirit of the times, City dressed this in populist rhetoric about overthrowing a hated and self-interested elite, while injecting a healthy dose of democracy. Free economics is flawed. The reality is different: City’s goal is to eliminate all ghosts of competition.
Being able and willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a team without worrying about losses will be a prerequisite for success. Such an environment would most likely make the Premier League an unattractive investment for anyone but other countries. At least some of the American owners currently participating in the league will most likely have no choice but to abandon the league.
Even if the case fails, the outlook is not much brighter. Later this year, City are expected to face – finally – a hearing into the 115 charges they face for breaching a number of the league’s financial rules.
Now they not only question the legality of at least some of the rules on which it will be adjudicated but also make clear that everything else could be challenged as well. It’s not that City wants to prove its innocence against the charges. It wants to burn down the entire mansion that allowed it to be accused in the first place.
There is no clear path back to smooth sailing for the Premier League from here. The reality of the league now is that it has at least one team – its best team – that wants to abolish not only the rules but also the mechanism that makes the rules. Legal documents describe the way the Premier League is run as “the tyranny of the majority”. (In this case, that word seems to be synonymous with “democracy.”) The City’s aim seems to be to turn it into a much more traditional form of autocracy.
But while the stakes are certainly high, the timing of the legal developments – a few weeks before the European Championships – is also significant. International football has not been as successful as its club equivalent. Major tournaments are not the showcase of the game at its highest form as they once were, a place to see what the future holds.
The appeal of the international game is precisely that it is different: away from the endless chaos of the club game, the change in tone and focus and to some extent the speed. It is an escape valve from the emotional pressure that has built up over the course of a long and arduous season. In its most basic form, it gives each person a different person to scold.
Yet, as the intense coverage (appropriately) of the Premier League’s most pressing struggle for survival has demonstrated, the idea of retiring from the game at club level is anathema. Of course, this wasn’t intentional: the Premier League didn’t intentionally decide to disband in June, simply because fans’ eyeballs were drifting elsewhere.
Rather, it is a function of how all-consuming club play has become, how supporting a group no longer seems like a passive, occasional leisure activity. anymore but an active, full-time job – one that requires sustained attention and public performance. , something that is inextricably linked to your very sense of self.
In that context, a major tournament can never capture the imagination because a club’s season never ends, never really ends. There’s always another managerial appointment, another player transfer, another attempt to reshape the league’s rules so that they meet your personal definition of fairness.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Euro fever won’t sweep across the continent at some point in the next four weeks. By the time the later stages take place, at least eight countries will be fully involved. But even as the glorious prospect draws closer than ever, there will still be a noise, a noise in the background, an inevitable reminder that real life goes on, that summer is over. , that this isn’t a really important part of the game.
