The New York Times - The Crumbling Pyramid

The Myth of the Pyramid

What is not up for debate is this: There is a moral duty incumbent on the Premier League — the richest domestic soccer competition in the world, a global sporting, televisual and cultural phenomenon never afraid to declare the weightiness of its wallet — to support the rest of English soccer at what is, now, a time of urgent crisis.

Coronavirus infection rates across Britain are rising. This week, at the end of a summer of confused, contradictory messaging, with a testing infrastructure that is entirely overwhelmed and a tracing system that does not work, the government’s own failings forced it to implement a more draconian set of restrictions: not a second lockdown, but very much not yet.

Those who can work from home are, once again, being encouraged to do so; pubs, for reasons that are not entirely clear and do not, prima facie, make a vast amount of sense, must close a bit earlier than normal; the police have access to more severe penalties for those not wearing masks; and the prospect of the army being drafted in to help enforce rules has been floated.

And — minor, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, but major for those involved — the phased return of fans to sports stadiums has been paused. A handful of trials — at Middlesbrough, Charlton and elsewhere — had offered encouragement that, perhaps, there might be a sprinkling of fans watching live soccer in the next month or so; that hope has now been dashed, with most clubs now preparing for more months of empty stands.

For the Premier League, of course, that is problematic: The league’s 20 teams stand to lose $900 million or so if this turns out to be a whole season in which crowd noise is pumped into television feeds. There has long been an unspoken truth about English soccer — that its wealth is all smoke and sand, that all the money that comes in quickly goes out — that will now be exposed.

But for the rest of what is always called, with earnest affection, “The Pyramid,” it is disastrous. The Premier League — and to an extent the second tier Championship — are sports in their 21st century form: not so much live events but products staged for and shaped by television. That is the source of their success, and of their wealth. As long as the television money keeps rolling in, they will be able to survive.

Further down, in Leagues One and Two, and in the National League, that is not the case. Clubs there make money the way they have always made money: by attracting people to their grounds every week or so. The take at the gate is what keeps them afloat. Without it, they will sink.

It is here that the government must step in to protect cherished, social institutions, but it is here, too, that the Premier League is honor-bound to intercede. Even if the profit margins of its teams do not quite match up to the swagger with which they tend to traverse the world — all those celebratory announcements about the size of a new television deal, or the jubilation at their dominance of the Deloitte Money League — they enjoy enough wealth to share a little of it at a time of need.

Doing so would, though, be almost entirely be an act of altruism, as strange as using that word might seem in relation to the sports league that, at times, comes closest to embodying Gordon Gekko’s maxim. The moral case for the Premier League to intervene in some meaningful way to help the Football League is sound. The business case, much less so.

The Pyramid is the great, abiding orthodoxy of English soccer. It holds on to it with a deep and sincere reverence, the idea that the very top of the game can only touch the sky because of the breadth of the base. The idea of The Pyramid dictates that the Premier League needs the Football League and the vast ranks of professional, semiprofessional and amateur teams beneath that not just to thrive, but to survive.

Perhaps that was true, once upon a time, when the various tiers of English soccer were separated by cracks, not canyons. Perhaps it still contains a kernel of some broader truth, that soccer can only be a country’s dominant sporting obsession if it is widespread and accessible and ubiquitous, if it is a common language through which status is bestowed and relevance achieved.

But, in almost every practical sense, it is a myth: a harmless myth, a beneficial myth, one we all happily sign up to, but a myth nonetheless. The Premier League does, it is true, need a second tier — a source of fresh meat, a punishment for failure, a place to send young players on loan or to sell trinkets that have lost their sheen — but, lower down, the bonds are taut and thin.

The lower leagues do produce players, of course, and in greater numbers than should be expected at a time of industrialized youth development. But, as much as Jamie Vardy and others who ascended from those leagues have added enormously to the rich tapestry of English soccer, it is a bit of a stretch to say that the Premier League would not have survived without him.

This is not the same as Major League Baseball’s relationship to the minors. Leagues One and Two are a source of players, but they are far from the only sources of players. They can be a place to send young talent to polish up their abilities, but increasingly best practice has it that teams keep their brightest prospects in-house, rather than exposing them to a world where time and results are what matter, not their personal development.

And more and more, the managers overseeing those players have not needed to cut their teeth away from the limelight. Frank Lampard got the Chelsea job on the back of a single season at Derby County, and a stellar playing career. Mikel Arteta went from being a Premier League player to an assistant at Manchester City to managing Arsenal. For years, the only way for a lower league manager to make the leap to the summit of The Pyramid has been to take a team with him.

Indeed, in a sense, that is the only way in which The Pyramid remains a real, tangible thing: that there is at least theoretical access to it for all, that the future might be different, no matter what the present looks like.

In almost every other respect, the Premier League has unmoored itself from the rest; in doing so, it has not tumbled to the ground, but drifted off into the clouds. The restart of the top two tiers, in the brief lee between coronavirus waves, proved as much. The Premier League’s appeal as a television product did not diminish in the absence of the lower leagues; if anything, logic would suggest it would increase.

None of this is to say that the Premier League should wash its hands of the rest of the game. None of this is to say that the lower tiers of The Pyramid are devoid of worth. Quite the opposite: They are home to bright, inventive coaches, talented, hardworking players and a standard of play that is far higher than is often assumed.

They are populated by clubs that provide, between them, thousands of jobs, that offer crucial community space and outreach programs, that at their best are the heartbeat of the towns that sustain them. Most of all, they offer recognition: for towns like Rochdale and Colchester and Newport, a soccer team is often the only route into the national consciousness, of telling people that your place exists.

Sustaining all of that, saving all of that, protecting all of that is vital; like the government, the Premier League has a moral duty to help. That is not up for debate. But it is not worth sustaining and saving and protecting because of what it does for the health of the Premier League; it is worth it for what it is, and what it does, in itself. The Premier League does not need the rest of The Pyramid, not really, not any more. But need and want are not the same thing.

Please, Please, Please Leave. We’re So Sorry You’re Going.

Luis Suárez spoke haltingly, in between deep, nervous breaths, as though he was struggling to contain his emotions, as though tears were not too far away. He had been “proud,” he said, to play for Barcelona; he was deeply grateful for the chance he was given, back in 2014 — fresh from his disgrace at the World Cup — to join “the best team in the world.”

It was strange, on a number of levels, to watch Suárez give his farewell address: strange that he should be leaving like this, strange that Barcelona should put him through such a public farewell, strange that the club should seem so overcome with emotion — as if Suárez himself had chosen to go — when it had spent much of the last six weeks or so desperately trying to force him to depart, and has eventually acceded to selling him to a rival.

But amid all the strangeness, one element warrants pause. Suárez is the third highest goal-scorer in Barcelona’s history. Officially, only Lionel Messi and Cesar Rodríguez are above him (technically, he is eighth, because the likes of prewar players like Paulino Alcántara and Josep Samitier scored a considerable portion of their goals in games deemed unofficial).

That is, of course, a remarkable achievement, but one that says as much about the scale of Barcelona’s dominance as it does Suárez’s ability. Samuel Eto’o spent just one season fewer at Camp Nou, but scored almost 70 fewer goals. The same is true of Rivaldo. It does not diminish what Suárez has achieved as a player to suggest that the strength of the super-clubs now is such that historical context has become a little distorted — not that individual records mean less, but that they are certainly easier to break.

A Slightly Different What to Watch

There are, now that all the leagues are back up and running, a host of interesting games across Europe this weekend. Roma against Juventus may well be the pick of them — assuming we count Liverpool against Arsenal, on Monday night, as happening next week — but Werder Bremen against Schalke, Real Madrid’s visit to Real Betis and Barcelona’s season debut, at home to Villarreal, among others, all have their own appeal.

But to watch all of them in the United States, you will need: ESPN+ (for Serie A and the Bundesliga), a cable package that includes NBC Sports Network and Peacock Premium (for the Premier League) and beIN Sports (for La Liga). Throw in CBS’s streaming service for the Champions League, and that is upward of a hundred dollars a month and several passwords that you will need to remember.

It is similar — though perhaps not quite so complex — in Britain. The Premier League and Football League are now on Sky Sports and BT Sport, but also sometimes Amazon. BT Sport provides coverage of Germany and France. Serie A is on Premier Sports, a streaming service. La Liga has its own channel, broadcast through Premier Sports. The price, all in, is similar.

There is a point to be made here about the fragmentation of the television landscape, and about the rapacity of soccer, but the most pressing one — to my mind — is the myopia of all of this, particularly on the part of Italy, Spain and Germany.

These leagues do not have the market share of the Premier League. They are still in the process of building an audience. They need to win eyeballs; the payday can come later. Placing their product in a silo, making it complex and expensive to access, is simply perpetuating that status. The priority, surely, should be making sure as many people as possible are able to watch, so as to build that loyalty and popularity, rather than ensuring the greatest short-term payday.

Correspondence

A follow-up question to last week’s explanation on how the transfer market works from John Matthew IV (and, no, sadly, it’s not asking for a back story on Ian Midfielder, though I have one ready if anyone needs it): “Do players ever get traded, as they do on this side of the pond?” he asked.

Yes, is the short answer, though it is much rarer than the endless, breathless talk of “swap deals” would lead you to believe. Clubs find it hard enough to negotiate the purchase or sale of one player; trying to do two simultaneously is, well, about twice as complicated.

The most common barriers, generally, are that the player being used as a makeweight does not fancy being used as a makeweight, as well as wildly differing interpretations of a player’s worth. I expected this summer to be something of an exception to that rule — with cash in short supply and a need to keep wage bills relatively steady — but, thus far, nothing of the sort has not materialized.

Alexander von Nordheim, meanwhile, points out that soccer’s transfer system may actually be a little more “benign” than the approach used in the United States. “Transfers are dependent on the buying club reaching a contract agreement with the player,” he wrote. “A player can reject any sale and demand fulfillment of that contract.

“Imagine being an N.B.A. player and signing for the Miami Heat or the Los Angeles Lakers out of an affection for sun and sand, only to be traded nine months later to the Milwaukee Bucks or Minnesota Timberwolves. The fact that soccer players can veto any transfer suggests to me that soccer players have it quite good.”

That is a fair point — stories of players being traded in the U.S. almost immediately after being drafted always make me wonder quite how much agency they have — but it does, perhaps, overstate the power wielded by players in Europe. They can, in theory, veto moves; in reality, it is often made clear to them that they have little choice (particularly away from the elite). And that is before we get to the role of agents in determining where, and when, their players play.

That’s all for this week. All thoughts, ideas, theories and recipes should go to askrory@nytimes.com; Twitter is here if you wish to leave me a screed of invective from behind a cloak of anonymity; and Set Piece Menu is especially good this week, because I am not on it.

Have a great weekend, and keep safe.

Rory