The Premier League needs enthralling weekends like that for ‘the show’ to go on

By Oliver Kay

A few years back, Sean Dyche found himself talking about the subtle changes he had witnessed in the Premier Leagueera and how the direction of travel worried him, how football was becoming “a bit glossy, a bit formatted, a bit smooth”.

The Evertonmanager, in charge of Burnleyat the time, wasn’t talking about playing style. He just felt the “show aspect” of football, all glossy and picture-perfect, was in danger of overshadowing a sport “that is to be enjoyed not just for the glossiness, but for earthiness, for teamship, for people giving everything to the cause, for feeling part of something, for being part of a tribe of people who care about one situation”.

That line has kept coming back to mind over the past few years as avaricious club owners, television executives and even ministers in far-off lands have, in their different ways, with their different motives, placed “the show” above the sport. We have seen football clubs as cash cows, football clubs as advertising vehicles, football clubs as geopolitical tools.

Now, with the emergence of the Saudi Pro League, we see football players targeted not just for what they can bring on the pitch or even on a billboard but as ambassadors for a state’s tourism industry, as pawns in a much bigger game.

And the great contradiction is this: the further the game drifts from its original purpose — the more the fabric becomes stretched, as Dyche put it back then — the more “the show” needs drama and wild unpredictability of the type that some of those owners and power-brokers would happily sacrifice at the altar of guaranteed revenue streams.

For “the show” to work, the sport has to produce weekends like the Premier League has just had: Nottingham Forestrushing into a 2-0 lead inside four minutes at Old Trafford, only to be pegged back and beaten by Manchester United; Fulhamfighting back with 10 men, after Calvin Bassey’s red card, to force a late equaliser at Arsenal; Wolverhampton Wanderers, who entered the new season in a state of crisis, claiming a last-gasp winner at Dyche’s Everton; Brighton & Hove Albion, so widely admired, given a harsh lesson on home soil by West Ham United; Manchester Cityenduring all kinds of anguish en route to an unexpectedly dramatic win at Sheffield United; Liverpoolspending the entire afternoon on the ropes at Newcastle United, a goal down and a player down from the early stages, and then clinching victory in stoppage time.

The first three weekends of the new Premier League season have seen 86 goals scored in 29 matches. That is an average of 2.97 goals per game, higher than any top-flight campaign in English football since 1967-68. Very early days of course, but it marks the continuation of a trend since the more rigid, conservative tactics of the 2000s gave way to high-risk, fast, fluent football.

It isn’t just the number of goals scored. It’s the moments and the pure joy — and deep despair — they bring. So many dramatic late goals, so many wild celebrations: Bruno Fernandes, Joao Palinha, Rodri, Darwin Nunez, their euphoria mirrored not only among their supporters on the terraces in Manchester, London, Sheffield and Newcastle but among those burning the midnight oil in Sydney, Beijing and Delhi, gathering in crowds to watch in Cairo, Lagos and Johannesburg, or getting up early to tune in from New York, Los Angeles or Montevideo.

Is it pushing it to suggest the Premier League needed a start like this? A little, perhaps, but, after a summer that has seen its greatest modern goalscorer Harry Kane depart for Bayern Munichand seen Riyad Mahrez, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Ruben Neves, Allan Saint-Maximin and even Jordan Hendersonjoin Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Neymarin heading for Saudi Arabia, it was not a bad time to be reminded of the Premier League’s capacity to enthral.

There are times when the hype is misplaced. The exceptionalist talk — the “anyone can beat anyone” talk, “only in the Premier League!” — can sound rather hollow when 90-point title-winning campaigns have become the norm in the Pep Guardiola era and when the financial and competitive divide between top and bottom (in fact between top and upper mid-table) has become an unbridgeable chasm.

“Only in the Premier League”? Not really. Barcelonaand Real Madridhave been on the wrong end of upsets over recent years in La Liga; Napoliwon the scudetto by a 16-point margin last season, but competition in Serie Ahas otherwise been unpredictable and intense; Bayern Munich’s monopoly of the Bundesligais the perfect illustration of a loss of competitive balance within European football but they were beaten by Augsburg and Mainz and reliant on a final-day stumble from Borussia Dortmundbefore securing their 11th consecutive league title last term. Even in the Bundesliga, even now, upsets do happen.

So, no, the Premier League does not have an exclusive claim to drama and excitement. Far from it. As the richest clubs have grown ever richer, it has been far from immune to the competitiveness issues that have arisen elsewhere.

But the weekend underlined something important: even now, in an era when Manchester City are establishing a level of dominance beyond anything seen in English football history — looking not just at the five league titles in six seasons, matching peak Liverpool and peak Manchester United, but their points totals, which are unprecedented — almost every match represents a challenge.

It took 63 minutes for Manchester City to break Sheffield United’s resistance at Bramall Lane: 63 minutes in which City controlled the ball to an almost absurd degree (83.2 per cent possession) and racked up 22 goal attempts (including a missed penalty) to their opponents’ zero. Yet they were forced to sweat and strive and dig deep to force a breakthrough and then to do so all over again to score an 88th-minute winner after Paul Heckingbottom’s team had equalised against the odds.

Maybe it was a freakish game in some regards; Sheffield United had zero shots in the opening 72 minutes before Jayden Bogleequalised with their first genuine chance in the 84th minute. But even if their gameplan was largely about hanging on for dear life, they managed to do so for more than an hour — and then, having fallen behind, responded impressively — in a way that made for a compelling spectacle, no matter how inevitable the final outcome felt.

Manchester United’s victory ended up feeling inevitable too, almost from the moment Christian Eriksenreduced the deficit. But then Fulham showed that even a player short and a goal down at Arsenal, there is still a way back into a game if you can find it. Liverpool, whose predicament on Tyneside looked as bleak as Fulham’s had at Arsenal, went even further, surviving extended periods of pressure after Virgil van Dijk’s red card and then coming from behind to win it thanks to two goals from substitute Nunez.

Jurgen Klopp said he had never experienced anything quite like it in more than 1,000 games as a manager. And yes, his Liverpool team rode their luck, grateful for one extraordinary save from Alisson to deny Miguel Almirona goal that would have put Newcastle 2-0 up, but the fundamental principles behind the comeback were those he has always demanded for his teams in Germany and now in England — the resilience, energy and work ethic that seemed to desert them for much of last season.

Even in a league that boasted 16 of Europe’s 20 richest clubs at Deloitte’s last count, there is a huge gap in resources between the wealthiest (which now includes Newcastle) and the rest. But there is also an expectation that almost every match will bring a tough examination. If even a talented group of players are feeling sorry for themselves or coasting, underperforming for weeks on end, there aren’t many cheap points to be had. Liverpool found that to their cost for a period of last season. So too, far more starkly, did Chelsea.

Again, this does not make the Premier League unique. But it is the best aspect of “the show”. It is what the owners of the biggest clubs never seem to appreciate as they push for an ever greater share of an ever larger broadcast revenue pie — never mind that qualifying for European competition year after year, meaning more full houses and even more global exposure for their brands, already puts them far beyond the rest of the league.

It is so important that the league remains honest. That means enforcing its own rules properly, not tolerating abuse of its financial regulations or disregarding its powers of investigation. It also means preserving a culture where competition remains fierce, where any given Saturday or Sunday (or, increasingly, Friday or Monday), any match can become a game of inches — as well as being a game that matters to so many people not just inside the stadium but all over the world.

That is where the Premier League exists on a different level to, most obviously, the Saudi Pro League. Nobody should underestimate the serious passion for the game in Saudi Arabiaor the threat it poses to the European football ecosystem more widely, but even now, in the age of glossiness and overseas ownership, the Premier League has a history and a soul that cannot be matched just by throwing money at potential recruits — and that is said with full recognition of the huge external investment, sometimes of questionable origin, that has driven the Premier League’s growth over the past few decades.

The Premier League show has taken on a life of its own. But ultimately it is nothing without the sport. It is at its best when the glossiness gives way to high-class football played at breakneck speed and moments of pure, raw emotion like so many of those witnessed this weekend, games of the type Klopp had in mind back in his Borussia Dortmund days when he characterised English football as “rainy day, heavy pitch, everybody dirty in the face and you go home feeling like you can’t play football for the next four weeks”.

Rather like St James’ Park on Sunday, in fact. And rather like the “earthiness” that Dyche described as being at the core of the game, underneath the glossiness of “the show”.

There are times when the glossiness takes over. Never more so than during the transfer window, when new signings are paraded like trophies, celebrated with social media announcements that sometimes seem to have given more thought than the acquisition itself. The concept of the trophy signing seems to have reached its zenith in Saudi Arabia, where every new signing is heralded less for its significance to the club than to the league and, by extension, for what looks increasingly like the biggest soft-power play in sporting history.

In English football, there is still the concern that this summer’s exodus, with most of the departures of little consequent to the Premier League, is a sign of things to come. Even if Mohamed Salah’s first instinct was to say ‘no’ when Al Ittihad came knocking a few weeks ago, their overtures persist. Sooner or later, would it seem a natural move for the most celebrated of Muslim footballers?

And yet watching this weekend’s Premier League action, the thought occurred that some of those players now in Saudi Arabia might have been given cause to contemplate what they have left behind. Mahrez could have been part of Manchester City’s late show at Bramall Lane; Neves likewise with Wolves at Goodison Park; Mitrovic with Fulham at the Emirates Stadium; Henderson with Liverpool at St James’ Park, where, as a Sunderlandnative, he would have enjoyed a comeback victory more than anyone.

Henderson had to content himself instead with sharing an Instagram story, showing him watching from afar while preparing for Al Ettifaq’s 2-0 defeat by Al Hilal last night — and there is an irony here because at Liverpool, as captain, he was felt to embody the earthy values that defined Klopp’s team at their best. At Al Ettifaq, as well as setting those standards, he is expected to bring the glossiness.

Other big-name players will be lured to Saudi Arabia, just as many of them were lured to Englandin the first place by the unrivalled sums on offer, and it is quite feasible that, in time, the Premier League’s glossiness might fade a little.

But the glossiness matters far less than the substance that lies beneath. The English league’s appeal lies in its earthiness, its history, its soul and its capacity to enthral. Now into its 125th season, the show goes on.

https://theathletic.com/4813378/2023/08/29/premier-league-saudi-arabia/