PLAYER POWER HAS GONE MAD
Deane: Prem stars just do what they want and get everything their own way...
ENGLISH football has lost its soul – 25 years after the riches of TV transformed the game for ever.
So says Brian Deane, who scored the first-ever goal in the Premier League, for Sheffield United in August 1992.
His warning comes after a week that saw Leonardo Ulloa threaten to never again play for defending champions Leicester.
Ulloa said he had felt “betrayed” by boss Claudio Ranieri, who, Ulloa believed, had reneged on a promise to let him leave the club if they received a bid for him of more than £5million.
It was a strike of far different kind that carved out Deane’s place in footballing history.
But he believes the Ulloa situation is just another example of the extraordinary shift in power away from the clubs and towards players, who now earn sums that would have been unthinkable all those years ago.
“How can people openly say that they’re not going to play for their team? Back in our day, you wouldn’t dare say something like that,” says Deane.
“It’s just a sign of the times. There is this power with the players to say, ‘I’m not going to do this or I’m not going to do that’.
“I just find it ridiculous. You’re doing something that you love and to come out and make a public statement in that way is totally wrong.
“I think a lot of people would agree with that. It’s good if you can get a balance of power because when I played it was too far weighted the other way.
“We didn’t have any power, but now it’s gone so far the other way – if someone just wants to leave, they generally get their way. It’s the way of the world.”
West Ham’s Dimitri Payet also engineered a move to Marseille in the transfer window after effectively downing tools at the London Stadium.
The Premier League of 1992 is a world away from the product that the UK proudly trumpets as one of its most suc c e ssful exports.
It is hard to imagine Chinese or American football lovers would have been salivating at the prospect of watching an old First Division fixture played in front of dwindling crowds in dilapidated stadiums, back when English clubs were serving a European ban in the late 1980s. But, Deane (above) contends, that this e x p l o si o n in popularity has come at a cost. “The Premier League has created this product that sells all over the world and, if you want the best product, then you have to pay top dollar,” he says. “All these factors have come together to make football here what it is.
“I think that the packaging is sometimes better than the product now. The product has become distorted.
“There aren’t many big clubs now that aren’t being bought by consortiums or foreign investors and, when that happens, you’re bound to lose that bond and that community feel.
“I think a lot of fans think that their club has changed. Football is now a business. Nothing more.
“I would never turn around and move to somewhere like China because that’s a personal decision. But it’s good money – too good to turn down.”