The End of The Road For The Glory Of The Cup

As I write this, a mate of mine is in Turkey watching Stoke City play Beskitas.

It is the last game of the Europa League group stages and this mate of mine has been to three away games so far in the groups and the qualifiers.

Last week Stoke boss Tony Pulis announced to supporters that he was going to play a weakened team in the match. His side are already through to the last 32 and tonight’s result doesn’t really matter.

He made this announcement he said “so that fans who were going to Turkey knew that a full strength side wasn’t going to be played.”

Leaving aside the arguments surrounding this – it’s a load of nonsense for two reasons: 1) Travel plans would have been made way in advance of this (as another football supporting friend said about a trip to Barrow to watch his team “its not the sort of place you go by mistake.”) and 2) The fans that are going to Turkey 11 days before Christmas are the sort of fans who live for their club and wouldn’t care less what team was picked.

It does lead me to question something I have been thinking for a while: Are cup competitions pointless these days?

Gone are the days when the FA Cup was the biggest sporting event of the year, the Carling Cup is an inconvenience to most clubs and the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy (the only chance, most lower league clubs get to play at Wembley has been treated with contempt, most notably by Sheffield Wednesday boss Gary Megson, who got round the rules that teams have to play six of the team from the previous week by making three substitutions in the first 10 minutes of a game with Bradford.

This weakened team issue is not a new one, in previous Europa Leagues Gary Megson again – this blog is not attack a man I have a lot of time for – rested his Bolton squad ahead of a crucial relegation battle and Martin O’Neil gave the Aston Villa youth team a run out, ironically enough before a game with Stoke. Villa were gunning for a place in the top four at the time and they were two up in that game with the Potters with two minutes left. Unbelievably they were pegged back to 2-2 and ended up staggering home in the rest of the season.

Similarly Spurs attitude to the Europa League has been disdainful at best and downright disrespectful at worst, with a succession of young players have played and Tottenham are more or less out of the competition.

Of course, you can’t blame the managers. Well all know that at Premier league level the monetary rewards are massive, but that is equally true lower down too. Taking Sheffield Wednesday as the example, there would a lot more money, long term in the club beginning their rise back up the leagues than there would be in a JPT final win.
Manager’s often say they want to win every game they play, but do they? Would Harry Redknapp care if Tottenham lose tomorrow? Would Tony Pulis mind too much if Stoke lose tonight?

And if the answer is no, then how much longer – really – do the cups have left?

Rovers Rock - And Thats No Sham!

There were some eye-catching performances last week in the Europa Cup.

It was a dark day for Scottish Football, with both Celtic and Rangers failing to make the Europa League – and of course Hearts fate was sealed last week with their capitulation to Spurs.

Contrast this with the form of Shamrock Rovers.

The Dubliners upset Serbian Champions Partisan Belgrade last night and my, how they have been rewarded!

Spurs will be taking the Ryanair flight to Dublin at some point before December (and a word of advice…I hope they have strong walking shoes for the work from the tarmac to the car park because it is miles!) and the 10,000 capacity Tallaght Stadium is sure to be packed to the rafters for the game.

In many ways, the Rovers story, is if you will pardon the expression, real Roy of The Rovers stuff. The club has had a rather chequered and nomadic history, particularly in recent times, and now isn’t the time to recount it – however if you want to read more then Barry Glendenning wrote a brilliant piece on the Guardian Blog.

And in their rise to the top Shamrock proved all that’s great about sport still holds.

There can be upsets, their can be passion, people can be brought together – all to watch the great game of football or Soccer or whatever you want to call it.

Soccer Business is proud to say that we have a lot of Franchisees in Ireland, indeed one of them is a very, very keen Shamrock supporter. So he deserves to enjoy last night more than most.

It also proves just what is great about soccer, and just why that everyone loves it so much.

Truly there has never been a better time to make Soccer your Business. Contact Soccer Business today

The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Astroturf

Tomorrow night Stoke City play their first ever second round game in European Competition.

Prior to this season The Potters had played in two European ties and lost on away goals both times.

This season they have seen off Croatia’s Hadjuk Split over two legs in the Europa Cup to set up a trip to FC Thun in Switzerland.

Now, I am going to the match. But the reason for writing this blog isn’t to tell you about the fact the coach leaves Stoke’s ground at 6pm tonight and will take me 17 hours to get there its rather to talk about what it can tell us about running leagues on the basis that we try and help you do here at Soccer Business.

We do not currently have a franchisee in Switzerland (if you do want to run leagues in that country get in touch because we could help you do that) but the pitch at the Arena Thun is Astroturf.

I didn’t know this until yesterday, when I was trying my best to find out all the info I could on the game (last night, obviously, on my laptop at home – in case my boss is reading this!) and that is the crux of the matter.

It can teach you a very valuable lesson with regard to the advantage of being a franchisee.

If you are running leagues in the area, you will be absolutely in the best position possible to take advantage of any local knowledge and developments.

So if there’s a rival league, if there’s a new pitch, if there’s anything that happens anywhere near you that could either affect of benefit your league then you will need to be all over it. And more to the point, you should be.

And that in a nutshell is why we formed Soccer Business. We believe that you, as a franchisee, with the backing of the major brand we can give you, will be able far better able to run local leagues than anyone else.

So if you want to make Soccer your business, then give us a call and we can help you.

Now, where’s my passport….?