If it ain't woke then maybe fix it...
The game might be gone but it's not because of VAR, xG and women playing in Soccer Aid...
At no point during the time I’ve been aware of him did I think that Sean Dyche would be the Premier League adjacent manager to transcend the sport.
Sure, Dyche is very entertaining to football fans because of moments such as standing in the snow without a jacket on or when he played the ‘look-a-like’ game during one of his press conferences, but generally you’ve needed the context of the man to find those things extra football.
The former Burnley manager even goes viral throughout football X (doesn’t sound right like football Twitter) for his ‘Brexit’ penalty.
But what makes Dyche truly transcend where he comes from is the picture of the gravelly voiced bald man stood in front of a green brick wall with the phrase ‘Utter Woke Nonsense’ printed in front of him.
At some point around 2021 the word ‘woke’ lost all meaning, with Gen X essentially blaming everything on it in the same way that they still appear to think Millennials are young, despite the fact that we’re now all between 46 and 29 and criticising young people ourselves for stuff we don’t understand, although far less than we’re still criticised for stuff. In a weird way, the younger generations have now reclaimed the word by joining in on the joke and calling pretty much anything they dislike ‘woke.’ Participating in a normal queue at the pub is apparently ‘woke,’ as someone who doesn’t really understand how to get a drink at a bar without a proper queue I don’t agree with this one, but you get the idea generally.
This is where Dyche has been able to make his appearance, popping up every time there is some sort of disagreement with a current behaviour. Of course, the meme still has its uses in football, because the whole thing is full of woke nonsense.
But people have been complaining about the modern game for a lot longer than we’ve been butchering the word that actually just refers to awareness of social and political injustice but has somehow become an insult, because in 2025 caring about people is somehow wrong…
For as long as I can remember, fans have been saying that ‘the game’s gone’ for one reason or another. Whether that’s the modern obsession with set piece coaches, the use of VAR, Michael Buffer introducing teams before kick off, players not celebrating goals against their former team, a defender wearing the number eight shirt or a crazy transfer fee for a mediocre player, there are infinite examples of the game being well and truly gone.
As much fun as it is to complain about all the things that don’t really matter, the problem is that right in front of our eyes the game really is going and it’s starting to look more and more broken. The stuff that is considered ‘woke’ really isn’t why our game needs fixing.
Sure, complaining that money, especially from certain places, is ruining the sport is hardly new or original but the recent FIFA Club World Cup really brought it all home. Firstly, the should be guardians of the game, a supposed non-profit organisation, created a new tournament for the end of the season to ‘compete’ with UEFA and the ever expanding reputation of the Champions League being the best tournament in the world, heck the Europeans even managed to convince people the new format of their competition was great.
As well as creating an ungodly amount of extra football at the end of the season, FIFA have created a further imbalance to the sport with the extra funds that the teams involved earned from prize money. Two examples are a particularly stark reminder of why this is problematic, rather than just part of competition. Inter Miami qualified for the tournament by topping the MLS regular season charts, not by winning the MLS Cup. Anyone who knows anything about American sports knows that those across the Pond don’t really care who finishes as the best team at the end of the ‘regular season,’ only who wins the play-offs. Miami’s ‘qualification’ was clearly just a way to get Lionel Messi into the competition but earned the club $21.1 million in prize money. #
Winner’s Chelsea earned themselves a ridiculous $114.6 million, whilst the west London club at least qualified by winning the 2021 Champions League, the ridiculous thing is they’ve just been fined by UEFA for cheating the financial rules for 2024. Their punishment of $36.5 million pales in comparison to the money they’ve just won from a ridiculous new competition. Why would anyone bother sticking to the rules if they can just cheat enough to qualify for the Club World Cup and have the winnings cover their bill.
Those winnings were certainly helped by the television rights being sold to DAZN for $1 billion. It was an amazing amount for FIFA to bag, especially when for months it seemed like no one actually wanted to buy the rights. DAZN’s offer came thanks to a boost from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, who decided to invest in the streaming service. About two months before that, FIFA announced that the Saudi’s will be hosting the World Cup in 2034. Those last two points obviously have nothing to do with each other.
What will also be interesting to view in the coming years is how much of a difference the prize money will make to the likes of Monterrey, Pachuca, Wydad and other clubs from the leagues who aren’t the richest. There is a good chance that it will tip the scales in their favour for a long time and we could well see those teams turn up in the next version of the competition in four years time, as long as FIFA don’t make it every two years. The organisation’s president Gianni Infantino will no doubt want that to happen in order to parade the trophy which has his name on twice more often or to suck up to another political power.
The football at the Club World Cup was enough to entertain people but the more that we force footballers to play, the more the quality is going to drop over the coming years and meanwhile we’re all paying more and more to watch it, whether that’s on one of several television services to watch each game or to find ourselves in the stands.
Infantino’s latest addition to the football calendar is far from the only reason to worry about the sport.
There are also financial issues where PSR comes into it in England. The Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Regulations were supposed to make sure teams weren’t likely to go into administration or overspend where they couldn’t afford it.
However, instead of that, they have left the league in a position where teams are happy to sell their own academy products just because their values are pure profit.
This really hit home to me when Manchester United were apparently ready to sell Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo because the two youngsters would have made them good money and it all would have been profit on their books. As a United fan I was ready to go to war to keep either player. There has been little to bring joy to the Old Trafford faithful in recent years but two talented academy players making a positive impact has been one of the few things to cheer.
That Mainoo hasn’t found his place in Ruben Amorim’s system and that Garnacho now looks on his way out after falling out with the manager is irrelevant, the need to keep up with PSR shouldn’t be the reason to sell academy players. After all, why don’t United just sell their women’s team to themselves?
The fact Chelsea and Aston Villa have been able to sell their own women’s teams to essentially themselves to get through PSR is an added farce. The Blues are often used as the example of how to run a women’s team and how to back it, but using the Super League winners as a pawn for your men’s team means that no matter how much you invest, you don’t really care as much as you claim.
In other rule news, this week saw Crystal Palace demoted from next season’s Europa League to the Europa Conference League. The London club celebrated their first major trophy win in May, beating Manchester City in the FA Cup, but pretty much ever since they’ve had the cloud of this punishment hanging over them.
The issue for Palace comes because of multi club ownership, that in itself is a problem blighting the sport, but the Premier League side seems to have been extremely harshly done by. For one, clubs such as Manchester City, Manchester United and RB Leipzig have managed to circumnavigate the same issues and play in the same competitions as their sister clubs. Secondly, the owner at the centre of this specific issue is John Textor, who also part owns Lyon, or I should say part owned as he’s now sold his Palace shares. The American also has money in Brazilian side Botafogo, who are fresh from competing in the Club World Cup, but his ownership of his English club had caused him a headache. That’s because Textor had a minority ownership that hadn’t allowed him to make any decisions and he’d been left frustrated and trying to sell his shares.
Ironically, both Lyon and Botafogo seem to have enjoyed an extremely healthy relationship with Nottingham Forest, with the two times champions of Europe having done several transfer deals with those two sides in recent transfer windows. That in itself isn’t ironic but it is Forest who are going to benefit from Palace’s demotion, as they get promoted to the Europa League. It seems absolutely crazy that Textor has had more say at Forest but they’re allowed to compete with Lyon, whilst Palace are punished. Never mind the fact the French club were actually relegated from Ligue 1, and would have had to give up their spot in Europe, due to financial misdemeanours but their appeal allowed them to be reinstated. The appeal committee might have shown more testicular fortitude. Textor in turn has stepped down from the board and his position as club president.
The last couple of weeks haven’t exactly been brilliant for some in north London either, but I’ll preface this part by saying this isn’t just an Arsenal issue.
The Gunners have had to deal with the fallout from former midfielder Thomas Partey being charged with multiple counts of rape. It came just days after the player’s contract expired but that was with the club desperately trying to get him to sign a new deal. Pieces about how much they knew about the accusations suggest that it wasn’t a good idea for Mikel Arteta’s team to be trying to keep the 32-year-old former Premier League player. To many the identity of the player accused of rape has been football’s worst kept secret for a couple of years now. Some rivals have booed every touch that Partey took in certain games, commentators often ignored it.
Football undoubtedly has an issue when it comes to how it treats women, even with the Women’s game ever growing. Plenty of cases raise questions about whether the safety of women’s players and fans is more important than success on the pitch for the men’s teams. That has been stark in the reaction of some fans of the Gunners’ to the Partey news compared to the transfer on Noni Madueke from Chelsea. There was far more vitriol towards the forward than towards their former player.
This issue more than any other cannot be about rivalry though, Arsenal are the latest example of these kind of issues but they are not the only one and it would be foolish to suggest other clubs would not have dealt with this exact situation in the same way, or maybe even worse somehow.
Dyche will continue to crop up whenever VAR makes a stupid decision, a player decides to avoid a rival club’s crest on the ground, a referee wears some bright green boots, a pundit references xG or someone dares to buy a half-and-half scarf. But it’s worth remembering none of these examples are why the game is well and truly gone!