BPL – Below Preeminence Level

I believe there is one curse which we all Indians suffer from and more often than not I would be in a position to coin a term for this by appending a few words. But let my vocabulary and inventive play of words not steal the thunder away from this despicable and emotional epidemic. Ask yourself – who would your favorite Indian actor be? I am supremely confident that the top two answers would be Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. The latter has only one handicap, but for which he is definitely a superstar. The minor shortcoming in his repertoire is his acting skills. Some could argue that the former has won great accolades and awards, but those were for his recent movies and he is more popular and loved for his ‘angry young man’ roles which obviated the necessity for even a semblance of acting. Making the entire line of argument less verbose, all that I am trying to state is that true quality never is really celebrated and glorified. This phenomenon certainly crosses all demarcations and spills into the world of sports too.

Dropping heads – The story of English football

The media is one solid reason behind this mess as they swear by the dictum, ‘What you market is what sells’. The Barclays Premier League is one fine example of this mushrooming situation and I would like to pore into the hard truths of this. The hard core fanatics of the BPL should understand at this juncture that I am in now way belittling the quality of the league; nevertheless I do abhor the unjustified attention and praise it receives.

The English media unlike probably the Aussie counterpart is always looking relentlessly for that shining hero playing in England and hence constantly tries to elevate even the most pedestrian of performances and quality to immaculate levels. If one is an avid follower of cricket, one would be able to appreciate this argument and this applies to all the sports that the media in England, covers. The moment Graeme Hick and Andrew Flintoff started appearing in the cricketing spotlight they were proclaimed to be the next Donald Bradman and Ian Botham respectively. Football legends like George Best and Sir Bobby Charlton have truly made their genius worthy of all the hype and felicitation, but players like these come around only once in 50 years. It is cynical of the entire English media to believe that the BPL is the best league in the whole wide world year after year after year.

Galaxy of Quality – La Liga Extraordinaire

The quality I wholehearted admire is the loyalty of their media to all the English league players and it is only comparable to a mother’s unconditional love for her child irrespective of the ward’s blatant shortcomings. The media just about tries everything in their capacity to project and make a mountain out of a mole-hill, and there have been innumerable examples to justify this. But what really has caught my attention and thereby provokes that feeling of disgust most in me is the media’s rush to the lexicon to search for adjectives and alternatives during the times of disappointment by their so-called superstars. Cristiano Ronaldo in my opinion is a wonderful talent and has a tremendous goal-scoring ability. His physics-defying free kicks are a treat to the eye and the Red Devils’ stupendous form during 2006-07 and 2007-08 had a lot to do with the mesmerizing consistency and quality of the man. However this little genius called Messi comes by and takes the world by storm, and when the entire media calls him the ‘greatest player of this generation’, the English media now turns around and calls Ronaldo a more ‘complete’ player. At one point BPL was proclaimed to be producing the best quality of football and footballers, but with the passage of time, their European domination was becoming threadbare and as expected the English media now called the BPL, ‘toughest league on the planet‘.

I have been following the European leagues quite closely for a while now and have seen teams treated like schoolchildren time and again on the pitch by FC Barcelona and it only goes to show the level at which some of the English clubs actually play.

How many times have we seen children supporting Manchester United? I am quite confident that 90% of these kids would not be exposed to some of the better quality of football. Just before the 2010 FIFA World Cup began, there was a kid in my housing complex who wanted to know who my favorite team was. When I passionately said Argentina, I was shocked to hear that his team was England and that Tevez was the best in Argentina. I clearly understood that the ignorance of the kid was because he was exposed to too much of BPL and hence he knew only English players, and Tevez played for Manchester United and is currently a part of their city rivals. I believe that Tevez is an outstanding and industrious player and England does have some serious talent like Rooney, Gerrard, Terry, Walcott and Joe Hart but to portray them as the best in the world is a little over the top.

The sooner the public and the media acclimatizes themselves to this truth, the smaller will be the pain and ignominy when England and their clubs under-perform at the highest stage.