These days, watching football (soccer) gives me a sense of disillusionment, and it did not used to be like this for me. I remember when I was growing up, I would get up on weekend mornings to watch English Premier League or Serie A games. I would get home from school on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons to watch UEFA Champions League matches. Those felt like magical times. Nowadays, I would be hard-pressed to find a match on cable TV. I want to talk about all the issues I have with football in my own words, from its access, to the overload of matches and tournaments, and the overall corruption of FIFA and its confederations.
Football matches have become increasingly more difficult to watch on cable television. I live in Canada, and when I was growing up in the 1990s/2000s, I was able to watch EPL, Serie A, Champions League, and MLS matches regularly on television. I was also able to catch the odd La Liga or Bundesliga match on television as well. Even when I had digital cable and was able to watch the lesser-known football channels like GOL TV and Setanta Sports, I vividly remember watching matches from Colombia’s Categoria Primera A and Argentina’s Primera Division. I would also watch these weekly highlight shows from leagues from far-flung countries, such as Japan’s J-League and South Korea’s K-League.
Nowadays, most leagues are behind streaming platforms that cost $20/month or more. If I want to watch EPL games legally, I must subscribe to FuboTV. If I want to watch Champions League matches legally, I must subscribe to DAZN. If I want to watch MLS matches legally, I must subscribe to Apple TV. It is ridiculous that I must shell out so much money per month to watch the leagues I used to watch when I was growing up. There are more barriers to entry to watching football now, which is why you see so many people using dubious means to watch football.
Players on average (especially if you are playing on a team in a European competition) play many more games in each season than even ten years ago. I would also argue that there is no longer a true “off-season” in football anymore. The expansion of tournaments like the Champions League, the Europa League, and the World Cup, as well as creating new tournaments like the UEFA Conference League and the 32-team FIFA Club World Cup are leading to increased exhaustion and more injuries for the players. I think there is going to be a breaking point where players may end up in a strike because of all these additional dangers to playing football now.
It is also crazy to me that I feel like FIFA and the confederations feel even more corrupt than before. I think FIFA President Gianni Infantino is even more corrupt than Sepp Blatter. He has been cozying up to Saudi Arabia and their seemingly-endless reserves of money to have them host the World Cup in 2034. Before that, it was Sepp Blatter and Russia/Qatar. The sports-washing of Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries is a subject for its own future blog post, but their influence in club ownership and the football-governing bodies has been worrying to say the least. Football could not be more money-hungry, to the detriment of the game.
For me, it feels like the magic of watching football is gone, with all these bad actors tarnishing the game for the pursuit of profit.
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