The Global Game? Portsmouth Cardiff City West Ham Liverpool
By WSC
The FA Cup final is often said to have a global audience of some improbably huge figure – the current
favourite guess is over a billion. In practice this simply means that a significant proportion of the population of each country that takes the live broadcast is presumed to be watching the match. Estimations of the total viewing statistics will be revised downwards this year because the final can’t be presented as a showpiece for some of the best players. Well, good.
In the recent past, the decade-long dominance of the Cup by the current Big Four had prompted concerns about the health of the competition, with attendances generally in decline. Now some at the FA are said to be worried about the diminished global viewing audience for the 2008 final while Sky have long been resigned to a falloff in advertising revenues ever since Manchester United and Chelsea were eliminated in the quarter-finals.
Concerns about profit – how much can be made and how much can be lost – seep into most public discussions about football now. Money’s corrosive influence is embodied by the increasingly absurd chief executive of the Premier League, Richard Scudamore, who continues to pop up with reminders, or warnings, about his Game 39 plan. Meanwhile, several Premier League clubs have justified fielding weakened teams in FA Cup ties on the basis that the first-choice team needs to be saved for League fixtures – avoiding relegation being deemed to be more important than a cup run..
Of course there is monetary value attached to reaching a cup final, not least in boosting the transfer value of the players involved, such as Cardiff’s Joe Ledley and Aaron Ramsey. Any manager who hasn’t taken the FA Cup seriously might feel that he was right if his team stayed Read more
TEVEZ - The Movie!
By Joe J (Rooster)
Carlos Tevez, hero of West Ham, is to have a movie made about his life.
The movie will start with his life in the mean streets of Buenos Aires known as Fort Apache, and hopefully finish with conquering the Champions League title against Chelsea.
West Ham FC will play an important role in the movie showing his accomplishment on how he and fighting West Ham Warriors made the great escape from relegation in 2007.
The film will also include the problems Tevez and West Ham had to face after the season ended (Need i say more?)
The movie will also show Tevezs’s major role in making this season successful for Manchester United, as there is no doubt they will
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