Comment on How American culture gave rise to the perverse structure of the Premier League by From football to football: Jesse Marsch in Yorkshire | Star Sports News Australia

Art by Charbak Dipta

This year has been defined, naturally, by the coronavirus pandemic sweeping our globe. The same can be said of football. at stadiums and many gathering places, with authorities hedging their bets on public health in the face of cries of ‘freedom.’ Clubs, especially smaller ones, are haemorrhaging money without them. In recent weeks, the The reaction to this economic strain has become clear: the Premier League's top clubs are taking advantage of a period of crisis to consolidate their power and wealth. At this moment, we can see the coronavirus not as a crisis-creating event, but as an event that exacerbates pre-existing crises in our system.

This crisis has shed light on the relationship between people and systems. Protests across the United States and around the world have shown how police brutality is inexorably linked to systemic racial injustice. The economic system has proven in countries like Britain and the United States that its response to a catastrophic pandemic is to enrich its billionaires and deprive the working class of proper financial and medical treatment. Football is closely linked to both, and recent reports of a restructuring of the English football pyramid also offer insight into how a discussion of any subject is necessarily a discussion of people.

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In 1990, at the turn of the decade, two events shaped the course of economic development in Europe.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw a power vacuum develop in Russia and neighboring countries. The transition from Soviet socialism to unrestricted capitalism predictably led to years of violence and hoarding of finances at the top of Russian society. The Russian people have borne a huge burden as "a significant new group of people living in poverty" has been created, according to the US Department of Commerce.

The other event was about an Australian media mogul, a group of starving football club owners and the untapped potential of the world's greatest sport. The 1992 breakaway from the former Football League Premier League was not only the most significant development in modern football, it was the moment when modern football really saw the day. And his unleashing of the forces of modern capitalist modes of accumulation was not unlike that of the collapse of the world's first socialist state.

When the First Division became the Premier League, the lower leagues had no say in the matter. Had they had the chance, they might have complained about being completely cut off from lucrative TV deals. Dobson and Goddard's article on English football income of the late 1990s explains how the genesis...