yeah. it's definitely on the cards. it's relying on being fashionable which is a dangerous game to play. once the Baddiel and Skinner posse fuck off back to reading the guardian the sport's gonna be fucked. all it'll take is another Heysel for the media backlash to really kick in.

I'd love for Rooney and McLouglin's wedding to be rained upon by turds.

i don't think hooliganism could rise to overshadow the sport unless the bottom fell out first

I don't think it'd just take that, but at the moment there's a thirty something generation that's keeping the sport afloat. Kids younger than that seem less and less interested in it, to the point where i wonder if there's gonna be anything like the same audience in ten years time.

He hasn't done anything to enrich humanity in any way, nor will these sports people ever. And certainly nobody is worth extravagant sums of money for kicking a fucking ball. I'd only go to a stadium to watch football players being eaten by lions.

well those thirty somethings will probably still have the money to support the game in 10 years.
what i meant about hooliganism rising if the money goes was that if the money leaves presumably middle class interest in the game will either leave at point or have left already, which i suppose would lead to football being out of the media's gaze and give hooliganism something of a breeding ground. however, i think without the old antagonistic policing methods of the 70s & 80s things will never be as bad as they once were.

I can't ever see a return to the kind of hooliganism of the 70s and 80s. I think that at the moment though, the game is being kept afloat by people with enough freedom to spend their money on football. Once people settle down with mortgages, etc, that money will have to go elsewhere, and I don't see the generation behind them interested in the game enough to want to take their place.

I can see an increase in shorter contracts and wage caps (which the game desperately needs, IMO) in the near future.

hate to break it to ya demonrail, but its not going to go away...

with all the money these sports bring in, don't you think they have teams and teams of marketers making sure that the game stays relevant for every age bracket? well they do

i was in paris at the time of the world cup one year and in the square they had a big television mounted on a building and people were going absolutely apeshit. people do still take it very serioulsy...serious to the point of issuing beatdowns. so i can't imagine what it would've been like 30 years ago.

as a member of the Chinese National Curling Team, I would say YES, we do deserve £68 Million.

those silly Brits, American athletes can make twice that!