Italian football bias
I don’t know why this is so, but it seems that the English football media in general and the commentators in particular prefer any other team in the world to win than the Italians.
In September, David Platt and Andy Gray could be heard dismissing Milan’s chances of retaining their title, even after an impressive display against an admittedly second-rate Benfica team.
They did the same thing last year, citing the same boring excuse that Milan have an aging side. It is very clear that they do not want to say that they do not believe Milan can win it, but they do NOT want Milan or any other Italian team to win it.
People like Andy Gray, who knows nothing but the Premiership, try to act as some kind of authority on world football and still talk as if Italian teams do nothing but defend.
When, in fact, the Italian league has been outperforming the premier and La Liga for quite some time.
He is bored by the fact that they always want to preach to the weak-minded that the premiership is the best and that if English teams win the Champions League on a regular basis, their proclamations would be confirmed, but clearly that is not the case. . .
It must irritate when Milan and other Italian teams reach the final and win, while top-tier teams with their so-called best players in the world haven’t been as successful.
Liverpool and Manchester United are the only teams to have won it in the last 15 years and we all know how completely they were outclassed.
Andy Gray even had the temerity to defend Chelsea’s pathetic result against Rosenborg by stating that they did not have Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard and Ricardo Carvalho.
For a team that has spent £350m on players in the last 5 years, that’s a pretty pathetic excuse.
If you removed Paolo Maldini, Kaka and Ronaldo from the Milan side, they should still beat Rosenborg home and away.
Chelsea just don’t have creativity on their side and had to turn to John Terry playing center forward so they can make their usual long balls forward.
In the world cup, Alan Hansen felt that Italy would not win the world cup because they don’t have the rhythm.
Right there is the nightmare of English football, it’s all about pace and not us, the Italians don’t need pace simply because they control the pace of the game because they have the technical players to do it.
English players cannot control the pace of the game against more technical players and that is why England always struggle to win tournaments and British teams struggle to win the big ones on a regular basis.
You’ll find Sky sportscasters time and time again trying to turn the premiership into some sort of football heaven, but my analogy will be comparing gourmet cooking to fast food.
Gourmet cooking is for the most discerning of palates, the deeper you go into it, the more fascinating it becomes, while fast food is cheap and gives you a buzz, but only for a while and then you get bored when you dig deeper.
We would see which country provides the winner of this year’s competition, but one thing is for sure, Andy Gray and his cohorts in heaven with their limited knowledge of world football would gush once again about how the premiership is the most exciting, Best and blah blah blah in the world.