#360view: Football lost its soul long before Ranieri sacking

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  • It’s unclear if Don McLean is a fan of the Premier League, but had he been dialled into the fallout from Claudio Ranieri’s sacking on Thursday night, he would have a muse to record the follow-up to ‘American Pie’.

    Whereas his 1972 single lamented “the day the music died”, following the deaths of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, February 23, 2017 is now the exact date upon which football officially shed its soul.

    Never mind FIFA’s financial skullduggery, match-fixing in Italy, Korea or Germany or the sheer volume of money that leaves the game to pay agents and middle men each transfer window, Leicester’s decision to terminate Ranieri’s contract was the day the game finally reached its nadir.

    It’s incredibly sad. Ranieri was a dignified man who had helped perform a sporting miracle. It was such a seismic achievement it’s difficult to find the appropriate superlatives.

    However, Leicester’s form this season has been pathetic and with the improving Swansea and Hull (both having set some precedent by changing their managers mid-season) pushing them closer towards relegation, it is no surprise the plug was pulled. Even if it was a mere 297 days after that proud lifting of the trophy.

    The Foxes are 17th in the table, having accrued 32 less points, scored 23 fewer goals and conceded 16 more than at this stage last term. In 2017, they have the worst record among England’s 92 league clubs.

    Something is clearly broken and needed fixing. Having spent £68.7m (Dh315.3m) over two transfer windows, the only options open to the club’s ownership were sacking the manager, the players or themselves. You do the math.

    What happened in 2015/16 should be considered within a vacuum. The job of a Leicester manager each and every season is to stay in the Premier League.

    Thailand may be a Buddhist country, but Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha is not in this game for a higher state of consciousness nor about bringing wider meaning to his life; he wants to make money.

    He didn’t purchase the club in 2010 because he was an ardent fan of Muzzy Izzet’s tigerish midfield displays, Steve Walsh’s Herculean tackles or Martin O’Neill’s tracksuit bottoms. He bought and has run Leicester City as a marketing venture which, one day, he will hope to sell on and make a considerable profit.

    And a club down the bottom of the Premier League, never mind in the Championship, does not translate well in a global financial sense. Relegation would mean losing money. Lots of it. Title or no title.

    Had the Foxes been a club run by a local businessman, emotionally invested in the community and the fabric of the club with ties beyond the amount of money he or she was poured in, Ranieri will more than likely still be Leicester City manager. But that concept is outmoded and nostalgic.

    If you want your club or its rivals to take a more altruistic approach, watch a different league or sport. It doesn’t happen in English football anymore and has been that way long before Ranieri was summoned from Seville to hear the bad news.

    Those who shout from the rooftops about the capitalist marvel that is the English Premier League, have to deal with this trade-off. It’s a league of brutal truths, not sentimentality. Like any business.

    If it’s so unpalatable, the only way to change it is to stop celebrating its existence with such hyperbole surrounding its greatness. It’s a race for revenue and attention, the concept of sporting ethics don’t even feature in second place.

    This is a league whose founding fathers in 1992 essentially duped the FA by claiming it would
    directly benefit the England national team, who, since 1996 have steadily declined to the extent there are football fans in their teens who only know the Three Lions to be rubbish. In 1992, that would have been inconceivable.

    Just 6.5 per cent of the league’s recent £8 billion (Dh36.7bn) domestic television deal will be re-invested in grassroots football in England (with the destination of the billions earned from foreign broadcasting deals unclear). Of the 20 clubs, 10 are now sponsored by gambling firms.

    Over the years an exiled politician directly responsible for the deaths of thousands in a brutal drug war, a banker heavily responsible for the financial implosion of an entire country and a man who it was unsure at the time if he even existed, have owned Premier League clubs.

    Is is exciting? Undoubtedly. Produce a high-quality level of football? Of course. Financially successful? Without question.

    But the idea of it possessing any kind of soul died many years ago. Ranieri is just another reference point for this, albeit an extreme one. Deal with it.

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