For years people have wondered when the top flight’s gracious times would finish rolling but there appear few threats to the English bandwagon’s momentumTurbulence on the stock markets. The price of oil freediving. China’s growth figures appearing pallid. After a week when the global economy wobbled on a thin and precarious crust the Premier League has never seemed more powerful. Deloitte’s Football Money League 2016 revealed nine English clubs – a record – are in the world top 20 wealthy list. And that,startlingly, Leicester City, or Sunderland,Swansea City, Stoke City, and Crystal Palace and West Bromwich Albion earned higher revenues in the 2014-15 season than Napoli,who sit on top of Serie A.
For years we have wondered when English football’s bubble might burst. Perhaps we should start asking whether it ever will. Most of us didn’t expect the gracious times to keep rolling. A decade ago I wrote a column asking why supporters were paying more for an increasingly predictable product, particularly when they were often treated with contempt by clubs and administrators. Football Fans Are Idiots, and it was headlined. But it turned out that I was the idiot. Because despite the worst global recession in the past 50 years,the annual springtime inquest into its clubs flopping in Europe, and the game’s biggest megastars largely playing elsewhere, and the Premier League has become a global status symbol.
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Source: theguardian.com