James Corden Had a Must-Watch Rant on the European Super League
I think pretty much everyone who follows sports even remotely — and even those who don't — has heard about the formation of the European Super League and what it means for the entire global structure of soccer in the last 48 hours. Even as an American who has only really been following the sport for a year or so, it really sucks. And when I talk to people like Zah who have lived and died with this shit for decades, it honestly breaks my heart to hear them talk about it like the entire sport will die because of this — and they might not be wrong.
So James Corden spent more than six minutes of his American network television show on Monday night talking about the league and why it's so catastrophic to clubs around the world, but particularly in England. One of the things I've loved so much about becoming a Premier League fan is all the different competitions and smaller clubs that get their chance against the big guys. Earlier this season, Manchester City had an FA Cup game delayed because their opponent's stadium was in the middle of a neighborhood and somebody was shooting off fireworks at their house.
That's the kind of stuff that you don't get in American sports. And by the way, Cheltenham scored to go up 1-0 in the 59th minute in that game and looked for a while like they might fuck around and win. We don't get anything approaching that in the United States short of the NCAA Tournament, which even still isn't the same. Every NCAA Tournament team has at least one player who belongs on the court with a bigger opponent, but that was a team in the fourth division of English soccer almost beating the best team in the world right now.
But now, all of that could be gone if the biggest clubs go join forces with the other superpowers in the world and just create a league where they play the same teams every year for a trophy that everybody hates. So it's simultaneously heartbreaking but also cool to see guys like Corden go on TV and say all that he did.
And actually as I was writing this, news broke that makes it look like some of the fan backlash may be working.
Hopefully the other English clubs follow suit and back out. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
EDIT: It looks like the Super League is going to be called off after just a couple days. What a wild 48 hours.
