On July 12, 2011, England legend Rio Ferdinand was lounging at home, recovering from another long season of Premier League and Champions League football at Manchester United. He turned on his television, and was duly entertained by a bunch of dudes across the Pond gathering around in Phoenix, AZ for a bit of light-hearted baseballing.
Rio was watching the 2011 MLB All-Star game, a game in which a relief pitcher entered the game by sprinting from the bullpen and doing a one-knee slide at the mound (note: this is not the normal way for relief pitchers to enter game) much to the delight of everyone. While we might never know if Rio appreciated that stunt as much as everyone else watching, we do know he was looking forward to the game, having tweeted earlier in the day about it:
Baseball All-Star game tonight, tv coverage is quality. We need a PL All-Star game too…the powers that be let’s talk + develop this….
— Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) July 12, 2011
In case this gets deleted in the future, Rio said that the “Baseball All-Star game [is] tonight, tv coverage is quality. We need a PL All-Star game too…the powers that be let’s talk + develop this…”.
We need a Premier League All-Star game, said Rio, addressing that idea to “the powers that be” and following it up with a tweet that they could easily “replace the Community Shield with #premierleagueallstarteam?”. The Manchester Evening News covered these two tweets with a grand total of 100 words, giving it the bare minimum of attention and zero actual opinion or reaction.
Eleven years later, Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly was on stage at a business conference, talking to a bunch of other business types about revenue streams and making money to stay competitive in the era of state-owned professional football teams. Since coming into our Chelsea-lives, Boehly has repeatedly stated that he and the ownership group believe that (European) football is still “really underdeveloped” in terms of generating revenue for the clubs and leagues involved.
Boehly brought up that notion again, adding that one potential idea could be to have an All-Star game in the Premier League (be that before, after, or during a season), which could generate significant sums with minimal effort and disruption, adding that those millions could even be used to support teams up and down the pyramid, not just the Premier League.
Pretty good, right? A fun game and money to benefit everyone? What’s there not to like? You’re welcome, Rio!
As we’ve all seen, the response to this offhand mention of a basic idea (not even a proposal) has been one step shy of declaring war on the USA, with many high-profile pundits and journalists not even trying to hide their xenophobia in their immediate knee-jerk, puerile, and often willingly witless reactions.
Here’s a selection:
I keep saying it but the quicker we get the Regulator in the better. US investment into English football is a clear and present danger to the pyramid and fabric of the game. They just don’t get it and think differently. They also don’t stop till they get what they want!
— Gary Neville (@GNev2) September 14, 2022
More measured reactions — in line in strength at least with this being just an idea — brought up valid concerns such as that we already have internationals or that we already have enough fixtures.
The latter was the objection of Jürgen Klopp when he was confusingly asked about it (though he was willing to consider it by the time he was done talking and mocking), as well as the PFA, who are certainly justified in pointing out that fixture congestion is already a massive problem.
In fact, if we could cut down on frivolous competitions such as the League Cup or whatever nonsense national teams have to do constantly, that’d be great. Doing so would leave plenty of calendar space for a one-off game and maybe another day of skills competitions, which are really the only…
Read More: Congrats on your knee-jerk xenophobia to Todd Boehly’s all-star game idea!