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Why the European Super League goes against every principle of football, sport and life
There’s an interesting subplot in the fascinating Netflix documentary on Sunderland, Sunderland ’Til I Die, in which the club’s director/PR and comms man/shiny-haired southern arriviste Charlie Methven embarks on a miniature campaign to get the club to record the highest Boxing Day attendance in the history of football in the English third tier.
Methven strides the Stadium of Light corridors, cajoling and encouraging the increasingly brow-beaten ticket office staff to sell, sell, sell, as though convincing people to pay for admission to a football match is in some way a quantifiable skill which can simply be tapped into as and when the need for a record attendance dictates.
Spoiler alert — the Sunderland box office staff, led by the Alexander-like qualities of Methven, achieve their goal and 46,039 people turn up to see them beat Bradford City 1–0.
The tale is a poignant and relevant one today, with the mushroom cloud that was the announcement of plans for a European Super League sending radioactive ripples through the sport and everyone except for the clubs involved decided it would be a Very Bad Thing.
Dear old Charlie was desperate for Sunderland to shatter that attendance record. Of course, part of that was ego-driven…
