On the day the Premier League finally kowtowed to the likes of Jurgen Klopp, Ralf Rangnick and their respective clubs, allowing five substitutes to be used because players might get tired, a press release arrived from Old Trafford.
Manchester United will play Liverpool in Bangkok on July 12 in something named ‘The Match’ Centenary Cup. They must mean ‘The Money” Centenary Cup, obviously, but whatever you want to call the friendly, one thing is for sure … it has not been organised with footballers’ welfare in mind. It is to keep the punters in the Far East sweet.
Yep, go halfway around the world in pre-season for nothing other than dollar and then moan about fatigue during a 38-match Premier League season. Covid interrupted the annual wheeze but you know the score by now.
There is surely not a manager out there who believes a long-haul tour of the Far East and Australia is the best way to prepare for the rigours of a Premier League season. Yet off they pop for the cash and then bleat about punitive schedules. And about footballers’ welfare, because that, it seems, is why the Premier League has fallen into line and succumbed to the five-substitute allowance. Or it has fallen into line because the clubs who KNOW it is a rule-change that benefits the established elite have accepted they are in thrall to them.
They don’t want to fall out with the clubs who draw the big TV money. That is why more than 14 clubs voted this in. Yet it is still less than a year since the so-called Big Six were, momentarily, pariahs of the game for planning to play in some joke of a super league. That moment turned out to be football’s equivalent of a nano-second. They still rule the roost. In the grand scheme of things, the five-sub regulation might not be the most serious of developments. After all, pretty much everyone else does it.
But it clearly gives the clubs with the most expensive squads yet another leg-up. Plus, five changes make games farcical and, going back to footballers’ welfare, is this allowance really crucial to it? For one last time, as Klopp - being a historian of his club - will know, Liverpool used only FOURTEEN players across ALL competitions in the 1965-66 season. And WON the 42-game First Division.
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Yes, the game might be faster now … but don’t insult the great players of that era by suggesting it was not physically demanding. This is not about player welfare, this is about coaches wanting half a team of outfield players at their disposal in case things are going wrong. That is how David Moyes and West Ham beat Kidderminster Harriers in the FA Cup earlier this season, by the way. Klopp, Guardiola, whoever is in charge at Old Trafford next season, Thomas Tuchel, will all welcome this capitulation.
Ah, Tuchel. What did the Chelsea manager do when, in accordance with Carabao Cup regulations, he had the opportunity to make a fifth substitution in the final against Liverpool at Wembley? Send on Kepa to fail to save eleven penalties and miss his own. Did he send Kepa on for the welfare of Edouard Mendy? No, he sent him on because - and it backfired spectacularly - he was trying to be a smart Alec.
These coaches will be delighted with five. They would take seven, nine, eleven, if they could have them. The big clubs wanted five and they have got five. And they wanted five because it gives them even more of an advantage, because it will further safeguard the established order - not because it will benefit the welfare of the players.
Because if the welfare of the players was such a monumental concern during a demanding season, they would not be hawking them around Thailand and Australia before it had even started.
