Football needs to be careful. We all love the drama of a good transfer deadline day and that feeling when your club lands a great player is brilliant but the whole situation is becoming scary.

As I sit and write this, Fernando Torres is moving for nearly £50 million and Andy Carroll is the subject of a bid of nearly £40million. Not to mention the Darren Bent transfer last week.

The so called people’s game is moving closer to the edge by the month. The average fan can not help but feel that they are becoming less and less relevant to the running of their club. Actually, that is not quite true, their wallets are still very relevant but beyond that, one has to doubt. The influx of billionaire owners means that even the old reliance on ticket sales is lessening.

This is not an article moaning about the financial behaviour of clubs, there are enough of them already. This is an external processing of serious worry that I have for the future of the game.  The success of football was built on a connection between clubs and fans and while this has almost entirely disappeared over the past twenty years or so, the situation is now becoming ridiculous.

How can fans still feel part of their club? How can they honestly believe that they are at the centre of the owner’s minds anymore? I honestly believe that radical changes are going to have to come in before the bubble bursts. A salary cap, greater financial equality and more investment in lower leagues are all needed.

Unfortunately all of the above are very unlikely. A salary cap would see many players leaving for Europe unless it was brought in there as well. The big clubs, which hold all the power, are not going to pass any rules which see their financial potency diluted. As for investment in the Football League, the chances of foreign owners suddenly embarking a round of philanthropy are very slim.

As fans we are faced with a difficult question, would we trade the big name, high wage players for a more equal, more sustainable league? Would we suffer a dip in the quality of play in the league for a league where we could see more clubs challenging for the top places? It is a dramatic suggestion and a choice that, in all honesty, nobody wants to make but it is one that could well be facing the game in years to come.

What do you all think? What, if anything, needs to be done to improve the future outlook of the Premier League?

Never mind the fact that I’ve been subjecting myself to the pain of following Manchester City for nigh on 12 years – Despite what I and every other City fan have been singing at the top of our lungs all season, I always knew deep down I wasn’t coming to Istanbul at the end of May.

(Not only do I live in the United States, but I’m also a college student and one who is studying to become a schoolteacher.  In other words, I live far, far away from the club I love, I’m skint enough that I can’t afford flights to Turkey on a month and a half’s notice and will likely continue to be so for my entire professional career.  So there you go, that’s my excuse.)

A lot of City fans probably began to feel that way after their team survived a penalty shootout against Aalborg in the UEFA Cup’s round of 16 – their second win on penalties in the competition this season, both coming against Danish opponents – and they were hardly rewarded for advancing further than any City team has in Europe in the last 30 years.

When Blues supporters braced themselves for whatever fate was about to dealt to them at the last-ever UEFA Cup draw last month in Switzerland, they received pretty much the worst news possible.  A European cup final was still possible, but they would have to get through essentially two two-legged cup finals against Hamburg and Werder Bremen, perhaps the two most dangerous teams remaining in the competition, if they were going to the actual final on May 20.

Things were looking good early at the HSH Nordbank Arena on Thursday, though, when Stephen Ireland’s back-and-forth with Robinho resulted in the Irishman giving the Blues a 1-0 lead and a vital away goal in the first minute of the match.  Unfortunately, Hamburg would then overturn the early deficit to take a 3-1 aggregate lead into the second leg in Manchester next week after having scored three unanswered, and anyone who watched the game would tell you it could have easily been closer to five or six.

The good news for City, however, is that one of the few things that the quarterfinal draw allowed them is still in play: Both in the league and (for the most part) in Europe, City have been miles better at the City of Manchester Stadium than they have been away from it, and they’ll have a chance to prove it once again next week.

They were completely outworked for 89 minutes in Hamburg, but Ireland’s goal in the first 35 seconds of the first leg means that a 2-0 win in the second would send the Blues through on away goals.  It’s much easier said than done, obviously, but if City can take their undoubted player of the year’s advice in his post-game interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, show their team’s quality and “be braver,” then a spot in the semifinals isn’t completely out of the question just yet.

Thursday night should have shown any myopic viewers that are solely in the tank for Premier League sides that the German Bundesliga is not to be ignored, with Hamburg and Werder Bremen taking English and Italian teams to task.  Werder Bremen has most likely already booked its passage into the semis with their own 3-1 win on Thursday, but the gap in talent between Bremen and Udinese is greater than that between Hamburg and Manchester City, and Hamburg manager Martin Jol’s men would do well to keep that in mind when they come to Eastlands next week.

When Manchester United scored two late goals on Sunday to secure a come-from-behind 3-2 victory over Aston Villa, the result seemed to sweep under the rug the idea that United were a team in serious danger of relinquishing their Premier League lead heading into the home stretch.

After Tuesday’s 2-2 draw at home to FC Porto in the Champions League, however, the argument that United appears to be running out of gas at a very crucial point in time quickly regained a lot of its validity.

If the Stretford End’s reaction to Federico Macheda’s winner at Old Trafford on Sunday was any indication, United’s win over fellow recent strugglers Villa was just what the red-clad doctor had ordered. In his team’s previous two games, manager Sir Alex Ferguson had watched his side get out-everythinged at home against arch-rival Liverpool in a 4-1 shellacking before losing again, 2-0 at Fulham. Ferguson needed to stop the bleeding, and Macheda’s wonder goal in injury time seemed to do the trick.

At least, that is, for a few days.

Seemingly buoyed by Macheda’s instant rise to fame over the weekend, United had to feel they were heavy favorites coming into their Champions League quarterfinal tie with FC Porto, but it appears the Portuguese side never got that memo.

A calamitous defensive mistake by Jonny Evans allowed Cristian Rodriguez to give Porto the lead on five minutes, and even though goals from Wayne Rooney – another goal that can largely be attributed to comedy defending – and Carlos Tevez would later overturn the early deficit, substitute Mariano leveled the score in the 90th minute to give Os Dragões a vital pair of away goals heading into the second leg at the Estádio do Dragão, a venue at which no English club side has ever won.

“If you have a 2-1 lead with five minutes to go, you really should be seeing the game out,” Ferguson told ITV Sport after the match. It is a slightly peculiar thing to say, given that United had just stolen a win in their domestic league 48 hours earlier, but he certainly wasn’t wrong in his assessment here. A score draw at the end of the night’s proceedings flattered United, and, given recent performances, it’s likely that only an outright victory in Portugal will be enough for Ferguson’s side to advance to the semifinals.

First thing’s first, though, and United will need to put in a much better showing on Saturday away to Sunderland, if only to really prove that they’ve regained their bearings in the league. On paper, their visit to the Stadium of Light ought to be a cakewalk, with the Black Cats only three points above the drop. Sunderland almost stole a point in December at Old Trafford were it not for a late winner from Nemanja Vidic, though, so United will want to be careful in the return trip.

Beyond that, I’m not really sure that I can see United pulling off the much-hyped quintuple – not unless they get some help from results elsewhere. They will have it all to do in the second leg of their Champions League tie in Porto, and any advancement there and in the FA Cup would mean that fixtures would be coming even faster and more furious for United than they’re already set to become.

“Are you watching, Merseyside?” seemed to be the chant emanating from the Old Trafford faithful on Sunday afternoon, but it will be those same fans who should be scoreboard-watching the rest of the way. The possibility of a five-trophy haul for the season is still there, but even if United can somehow find a way past Porto, they may still need to rely on a slip-up or two from their hated rivals on the south border of Stanley Park along the way.

If you consider yourself a political junkie on top of being an EPL newshound, then we certainly have quite the interview for you today.

With FIFA’s proposed ‘6+5’ rule to place limits on the number of foreign-born players in domestic club teams rearing its ugly head in the press once again in recent weeks,  we here at EPL Talk thought it best to go straight to the top to get the European Union’s official reaction for ourselves, and we’ve done just that.

Here, we feature Ján Figel’, the European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth.  His jurisdiction also covers sport issues, and it is for that reason why we approached him for a written interview to get his thoughts on FIFA’s controversial proposal as well as such topics as the European Court of Justice’s landmark 1995 ruling on the Jean-Marc Bosman case, who the Commissioner has had to work with on the issue of ‘6+5’ and how often, and also whether or not ‘6+5’ has been much of a ‘water-cooler’ topic of discussion within the Berlaymont building, which houses the headquarters of the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU.

First of all, Commissioner, for the benefit of any of our readers who may be new to the realm of European politics, could you please describe for us what all your job entails, especially in relation to sport?

Figel’: My main areas of responsibility are education, vocational training, culture and youth policy, but I am also the European Commissioner for sport issues. Sport is not an area in which the European Commission has any formal powers according to the EC Treaty, so your readers are probably wondering, “Why is there a European Commissioner for sport, then?” Well, the answer is that many areas of sport fall within the scope of Community law, especially when we talk about sport as an economic activity. Then, for example, the EU’s competition law and internal market rules apply to sport.

But of course, sport is not like any straightforward economic activity; it has health benefits, social aspects and educational value in addition to purely economic elements. This specific nature of sport was highlighted in the Commission’s main policy document in this area, which we call the ‘White Paper on Sport‘, published in 2007.

It was governmental and non-governmental stakeholders from the Member States that asked the European Commission to reinforce the promotion of European sport; hence the White Paper.  The White Paper was the first time that all the diverse Court judgments and other relevant decisions and developments in sport were drawn together into one coherent document, to present a one-stop, comprehensive treatment of sport at the EU level.

My job consists of listening to sports organizations and stakeholders, as well as Member State authorities, to facilitate contacts between the various interested parties and head off potential problems before they germinate. I am also following up on the White Paper’s list of 53 tangible actions at EU level in sport, actions that, taken together, are known as the ‘Pierre de Coubertin Action Plan’. These actions include things like facilitating a social dialogue with sport stakeholders, to support employees and employers, for example, or coordinating EU approach to the fight against doping in sport.

Last month, the Institute for European Affairs released a report declaring that FIFA’s proposed ‘6+5’ rule does in fact comply with European Community Law and the principle of free movement of workers.  What has been your reaction to the report’s findings, and does the fact that FIFA commissioned the report affect its credibility?

Figel’: It is well-established that professional football players are ‘workers’ under EU law. So, for the European Commission, the EU’s rules on the free movement of workers, and the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of nationality, clearly apply. This has been made clear by the European Court of Justice in various judgments, including the famous Bosman ruling in 1995: a system of quotas based on nationality would simply be illegal under current EU law.

My services are analyzing the report (a 200 page document) and will meet its authors and FIFA to have an exchange of views on the report’s main conclusions.

At this stage, it seems to me that the report by INEA is not adding new significant insights into this debate. The main idea behind the report is that the 6+5 rule would not infringe EU law, as it is not based on nationality, but on the eligibility to play for a national team. However, the Commission remains of the opinion that the 6 + 5 Rule, even when it is re-phrased to refer to “those eligible to play for the national team”, still ultimately implies as a result a quota-based system based on nationality, because obviously only nationals could play for the national teams.

The European Commission is the defender of EU law, and as such, cannot agree to an illegal system. So, as long as FIFA keep on proposing the 6 + 5 rule as it is currently formulated, the Commission will not be able to endorse the application of the rule within the European Union.

It’s as simple as that: the 6 + 5 rule cannot apply within the EU.

Much noise is made about the ‘specificity’ of sport that I mentioned earlier. The specific nature of sport, or its ‘specificity’, has also been repeatedly acknowledged by the Commission and the European Court of Justice over the years, so that European jurisprudence permits some derogations from the rigorous application of Community laws in certain cases. But the specificity of sport cannot be used to justify the ‘6 + 5’ rule: the specificity of sport cannot be used as an argument to justify a general exemption from the application of EU law, which is what the ‘6 + 5’ rule aims to do.

One should also recognize that the EU itself enjoys its ‘specificity’. The EU is a unique organization, not comparable to any other experience of regional integration in the world, as the Treaty on which the EU is founded grants a series of rights and freedoms directly to EU citizens. Looked at this way, the specificity of the EU and of its rules should also be taken into account by international sports federations when setting the rules of the game.

I am frequently asked if the Commission can ever reach agreement with FIFA on this issue. For me, this question is largely beside the point: it’s ultimately a matter for the European Court of Justice to decide. If FIFA were to impose the ‘6+5’ rule in the EU, any professional football clubs or players who felt that they were treated unfairly by the rule could take the issue to the Court. And they would win.

Of course, the Commission is in dialogue with sports organizations, including FIFA, and is looking into ways of reaching agreement in ways that are compatible with EU law. That way, we can avoid lengthy and weary legal battles from developing in the European courts.

When reminded of the controversy surrounding FIFA’s (and UEFA’s, lest we forget) proposed limits on foreign players in club sides, many people think back to the ECJ’s Bosman ruling. Considering that that was well over a decade ago now, do you feel that public reaction to the ruling would be any different if it was handed down today as opposed to back then?

Figel’: I don’t think it is useful to speculate on where we’d be if there had been no Bosman case, but one thing is clear: if the equivalent of the Bosman ruling had only been handed down now, in 2009, I expect the ruling would be applauded as much now as it was then by the footballers concerned, as well as all those with a love for ‘The Beautiful Game’.

Besides, there has been much talk about the “out-of-datedness” of the Bosman ruling. The INEA report affirms that the Court would give a different ruling on the same case nowadays, considering the “negative” developments induced by the 1995 ruling. To that, I can respond that the Court not only confirmed the reasoning behind the ruling, but it also extended its effects to professional footballers belonging to countries with whom the EU has signed particular agreements as recently as in 2003 (Kolpak ruling) and 2005 (Simutenkov ruling).

Obviously ‘6+5’ has been a very contentious issue which inevitably has had people of all walks of life talking about it.  Are you reminded of it very often by your colleagues at Berlaymont?

Figel’: As I said earlier, my primary areas of responsibility are in education and training, culture and youth policy. But EU initiatives in those areas tend to have a much more medium- to long-term perspective. Therefore, they do not hit the headlines all too often. That is quite different when it comes to sport, and especially football! ‘6+5’ certainly sparked many discussions in the corridors of the Commission.

Speaking hypothetically, if FIFA gets its way and ‘6+5’ is fully implemented, is there any concern within the European Community that domestic leagues in other parts of the world would gain ground in terms of quality of competition at the expense of their European counterparts?

Figel’: As I mentioned earlier, if FIFA decide to ignore our advice, and impose the 6+5 rule in the EU, I would expect the issue to land in the lap of the European Court of Justice pretty quickly. All it takes is for one professional football club or player to feel that he was treated unfairly by the rule, and he could take the matter to the Court. On the strength of existing jurisprudence, as well as the fundamental principle of the freedom of movement of workers in the EU, and the principle of non-discrimination on the grounds of nationality, the outcome is, in my view, and without prejudice to the opinion of the Court, utterly predictable: the 6+5 Rule would have to be struck down within the EU.

Considering that EPL Talk focuses largely on the Barclays Premier League in England, I feel somewhat obliged to ask: Where it regards ‘6+5,’ have you heard more from higher-profile associations in countries like England, Spain and Italy – countries whose bigger club teams may feel that they would have more to lose with a rule like ‘6+5’ in place – than associations that don’t normally get as much of the spotlight?

Figel’: My contacts with the sporting world are mainly through trans-national organizations, such as UEFA, ECA (European Club Association), EPFL (the Association of European Professional Football Leagues), FIFPro (the international players’ union), FIFA and the IOC & EOC (the International and European Olympic Committees) and others. I have not so far been directly approached by the leagues of the bigger countries on the topic of 6+5.

This may be because of my dialogue with UEFA. You see, UEFA have proposed a promising alternative to the FIFA ‘6+5’ proposal: the “Home-Grown Player Rule”.As your readers may already know, this refers to the rules adopted by UEFA in 2005 for its competitions. The Home-Grown Player Rule is currently being phased in gradually. The Rule applies to the ‘A’ list of 25 players, and says that the ‘A’ list should have a minimum of eight “home-grown trained” players by the 2008-09 season. These ‘home-grown’ players would have been trained between the ages of 15 and 21 for at least three years in one training centre belonging to the club or another centre of the same national football association.

The European Commission has analyzed this proposal, and in May 2008 concluded that the Home-Grown Player Rule does not constitute any direct discrimination, and that it seems to be compatible with EU law. This distinguishes the rule from the FIFA 6 + 5 proposal. A further review of the HGP rule is scheduled for 2012, by when the rule will have been fully operational.

In doing my research for this interview, I was unable to find out which football team(s) you support, if any. Are there any teams in particular – both club and country, although the latter seems a little more obvious given your nationality – that you support, and how would ‘6+5’ affect them specifically?

Figel’: I traditionally support Slovan Bratislava in my country – Slovakia. In Europe, I like to watch some of the English, Spanish and German teams. As I hope to have made clear, the 6+5 rule would simply be illegal under current EU law, as long as it is a system of quotas based on nationality. Therefore, I would not expect it to have any effect on these teams at all: the rule cannot be applied within the EU.

Finally, how do you see the controversy surrounding ‘6+5’ playing out?  Is it even possible to accurately speculate on how long it will take before the matter is finally put to rest?

Figel’: In the light of the Commission’s analysis of the UEFA Home-Grown Player Rule, we believe it is possible for sporting organizations to come up with proposals to bring more balance to the game of football without resorting to illegal direct discrimination. Such proposals have to be based on criteria other than nationality, such as criteria related to the training and education of players. We have explained this to FIFA, and we’ll be having further discussions with them about the issue over the next few months.

For more information on Commissioner Figel’, feel free to visit his homepage on the EC’s official website.

If Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) sides Boston Breakers and Chicago Red Stars have their way, Arsenal America had better get ready for a new wave of members.

This weekend, both Boston and Chicago hit the road to make their WPS debuts, facing the – it has to be said – curiously-named FC Gold Pride (Santa Clara, California) and Saint Louis Athletica (Saint Louis, Missouri), respectively.  It will be a huge weekend for all parties involved, but with EPL Talk being by definition an Anglo-centric publication, we’d be amiss if we didn’t zero in on some of England’s finest that have come across the Atlantic Ocean to try and make professional soccer in the United States a success its second time around.

For me, I am going to find it especially interesting to track the progress of Boston’s Kelly Smith and Alex Scott as well as Chicago’s Karen Carney, three England and Arsenal Ladies alumnae who have left the Gunners’ seemingly bulletproof women’s team for the financially greener pastures of the United States and WPS.

Of the three, the spotlight will undoubtedly shine brightest on Smith, who joins the Breakers with prior experience playing in America (first in college at Seton Hall in New Jersey and once again as a professional in the now-defunct Women’s United Soccer Association – I’ll get to that in a bit) and was referred to in the Daily Mail this week as the Zinedine Zidane of women’s football.  Arsenal fans from N5 to 90210 should be keeping an eye on the entire trio, though, as even though they’ve left North London, their success in the new American league could result in Arsenal’s reputation stateside growing even more than it already has.

As we neared the end of the long hiatus of professional women’s football in the States following the disbandment of the WUSA in 2003 and it became evident that WPS brass had learned from the mistakes of the WUSA’s business model, it also became increasingly likely that the world’s biggest names in the game would soon be on their way.  You may notice that I neglected to put ‘women’s’ before ‘game’ there, but with the colossal failure that was Beckham-mania, I suggest that all bets are off as to whether the decade has already seen its greatest British footballer plying their sporting trade in America.

Sure, the WPS probably won’t keep up the kind of attendance numbers that 14,832 fans provided for the league’s inaugural game between Los Angeles Sol and Washington Freedom in California last Sunday.  However, if we get to the second Sunday of August and Boston and Chicago stand atop the final regular season standings in WPS’ single table – another thing I like about the WPS, considering MLS’ hesitation to switch away from its format of Eastern and Western Conferences – chances are good that the ex-Arsenal Ladies stars will have played a large part in their new clubs’ success.  If that happens, their former employer would be foolish not to try and capitalize on that.

Arsenal Football Club already enjoys an impressive following in North America, and has made even deeper inroads with their business partnership with MLS’ Colorado Rapids.  Why not do the same with WPS?  The loss of Smith, Scott and Carney to the new American league may have already hurt Arsenal Ladies in the short-term – as indicated by Sunday’s 3-0 home loss to Everton, snapping the Gunners’ staggering 108-league game unbeaten streak – but if stateside success helps to further boost the club’s image abroad, surely that’s the best thing for everyone.

This seems to be Manchester City’s mantra ahead of next month’s UEFA Cup quarterfinal tie with Hamburg, made apparent by the fact that the club has slashed ticket prices through this Sunday for Apr. 16’s home leg to just £5 for adults and £1 for kids.

The temporary markdown makes for a 75% cheaper adult ticket than City’s season ticket holders purchased for the Blues’ home round-of-16 encounter with Danish side Aalborg this month.  On a personal level, as a City fan living overseas, I’m wishing right about now that transatlantic flights were that cheap, but never mind.

With the cheaper ticket prices – Which, as we’ve all discovered, you can do when you’re also able to bid £100 million for one player; Hi, Garry! – the Eastlands outfit are banking on getting a much-improved atmosphere for Hamburg than there was for the Danes’ visit, when only 24,596 bothered to turn up at a stadium that seats almost twice that.

Up to now, City have yet to even reach the 30,000 plateau in this season’s UEFA Cup, but it would appear that they won’t have much trouble there this time around, with the Manchester Evening News reporting massive queues both at the City of Manchester Stadium box office as well as City’s shop in the Arndale Centre, combining with online customers for 15,000 tickets sold before the club had to temporarily suspend sales.

It’s certainly a good sign that that so many tickets have already gone with another four days and change left before the ‘sale’ expires, but getting tickets in supporters’ hands is at best only half the battle.  The club is (so far) holding up its end of the bargain – The rest is going to be up to the fans, and they will need to make their voices well and truly heard.

Though I find it a bit disgraceful in a way – Of course there’s a hierarchy there, but a major trophy is a major trophy is a major trophy – the UEFA Cup is commonly seen as a sort of ‘best of the rest’ competition, as indicated a lot of the time by attendance figures, and City fans have been just as guilty as anyone this season in that regard, but City’s win over Aalborg on penalties has given Blues supporters a golden opportunity to redeem themselves.

While City are sure to pass the attendance numbers of their first seven UEFA Cup home matches this season with ease for the Hamburg game, the fans know that it will be up to them to create the kind of atmosphere that the circumstances demand.  As Manchester United supporters enjoy reminding their City counterparts, the Blues have not won a major trophy since around the time that John Simm experienced Life on Mars, and rarely has the first team been this close to grabbing any silverware worth grabbing.

City have a tough road to hoe if they’re going to make it to the final in Istanbul, with Hamburg standing in their way and then presumably Werder Bremen after that should their compatriots go down, but if the fans finally prove themselves able to answer the call for the first time in this competition, what sometimes seems like the impossible dream might become that little bit less thus.

A year ago, a Digital Photography course I had to take for my degree at university pushed me head-first into the world of photo-doctoring. Not to the point where we were creating things that weren’t there, but just touching pictures up so that they looked more aesthetically pleasing. I got out of the class with a solid A, but I didn’t then and I wouldn’t now call myself an expert.

Other people are, though, and fair play to them. However, when some of these supposed artists’ work – namely fake football shirt designs – hits the presses otherwise known as the Internet, I can’t help but ponder the following:

Shouldn’t we have anything better to do with our lives?

I realize that morbid curiosity gets the best of pretty much everybody at some stage, but sometimes I really do fear for those who fall at the first few hurdles. If you want a case in point, we’re right in the middle of a pretty big one at the moment, with tech-savvy prognosticators trying to predict what Adidas, Nike, Umbro, Canterbury, Under Armour – Yes, really. Hannover 96 must protect this house! – and all the rest of the kit manufacturers are going to be coming up with for club and national sides for the upcoming season.

That’s fine, except that by my math, ‘next season’ for a lot of those teams is around about five months away.

To help put this into perspective, allow me to throw in a personal anecdote. The club I support, Manchester City, is in its second year of a contract with French kit manufacturer Le Coq Sportif – Which translates into English as ‘The Sporty Rooster.’ …Yeah, okay. – and has travel agency Thomas Cook as their main sponsor. Both of these things are set to change next season, with City changing manufacturers (to Umbro) and possibly sponsors (to Etihad Airways).

I’m not going to speak for all City fans here, but frankly even that bit about next year’s kits is more than I’m really all that bothered to know at present, especially when I’m much more concerned with what’s going on more immediately with a club that’s still very much alive in the UEFA Cup and battling to retain their place in Europe for next season. Therefore, you can imagine that I might have been a wee bit annoyed the other day to find that the blog Todos Sobre Camisetas had unearthed the Blues’ supposed new home shirt for the 2009-10 campaign…or so they and we are all led to think.

On the surface, it’s all there: club badge on the left (from the wearer’s perspective), Umbro logo on the right, ‘Etihad Airways’ emblazoned in block letters on the middle of the chest. The only problem? It looks just like the supposed new England home shirt that has been making the rounds on Internet football sites. Which may or may not actually be the real thing. And is supposedly going to retail at a recession-tastic £50.

It’s with that last point in mind, then, that I put out the following question: Why are we encouraging this? I suppose there is the possibility that a lot of these ‘insiders’ are just wind-up merchants and/or supporters of other teams that are trying to get a rise out of rival fans, but I fail to see what purpose that serves.

Premiership clubs  evidently reserve the right to come out with the following season’s kits before the last one’s even finished anyway – See among others Chelsea wearing this season’s ‘new’ kit in the Champions League final last summer – thereby giving fans something to tide them over during the summer, which in my mind makes this plagiari…er, art of creating fake kit designs ultimately kind of pointless.

Then again, maybe I just have more pressing issues to worry about.

All joking aside, though, the London-born Brassell, 32, has also amassed a strong portfolio as a freelance sportswriter, contributing to UEFA’s ‘Champions’ magazine as well as ‘When Saturday Comes’, Sky Sports’ website, ‘The First Post’ and portugoal.net. In 2006, he also made his authorial debut, releasing All or Nothing: A Season in the Life of the Champions League. On top of that, he and Tim Vickery have in recent months taken their show on the road, so to speak, signing on as the European and South American correspondents respectively for the World Soccer Daily radio program out of Los Angeles.

EPL Talk readers may recall Vickery’s interview with Christopher Harris for Episode 105 of our podcast, but with Brassell joining Tim on WSD in recent months, and also this week’s return of the UEFA Champions League, we thought it was high time we also formally introduce the ‘Brassanova’ to his newfound North American public.

See what I’ve done there? No? Good, let’s pretend that bit never happened. Now, though, let’s get onto something that actually did – The interview:

With London being the most linguistically diverse city in the world, did growing up in such a multicultural setting contribute at all to your interest in football in mainland Europe?
Brassell: I guess that would make sense – the idea of diversity never really struck me as a concept until later in my childhood, as it was just the norm. But really, European football just seemed so exotic to me when I was a child (and it still does!). We never really had the money to go off on overseas holidays, so teams from France, Germany, Italy, Poland or wherever just seemed as if they were from different planets to me. When I saw a non-English team on the TV, I used to dig out the atlas and find out where they played. The ban on English clubs in Europe when I was growing up just accentuated this feeling. Frankly, I would have given my right arm to have Spanish football on TV when I was a kid, and when Gazza moved to Italy and they started showing Serie A – when I was a teenager – it was fantastic. Today’s young folk don’t know how lucky they are!

You support AFC Wimbledon now, but followed Wimbledon F.C. before the club moved to Milton Keynes. Describe the mood around Selhurst Park in those final months, and have you ever felt any bitterness about what happened to the club?
Brassell: Well, I don’t exactly wish MK Dons well, that’s for sure. And of course I felt a great sense of loss when the move became concrete with the FA appeal decision, shamelessly buried in the midst of England’s 2002 World Cup campaign by the spineless people who allowed the decision to pass contrary to their own laws.

The final game we all went to as Wimbledon as was (v Barnsley at Selhurst Park) was surreal – protests went on throughout the game and some even cheered Barnsley’s winning goal, though a minority of others, unbelievably, were still moaning at people to just ‘sit down and watch the game,’ conveniently overlooking the fact that if we left the club to get on with it, there wouldn’t be a game to watch anymore. Fortunately the vast majority of the hardcore didn’t bury their heads in the sand, but fought the good fight from beginning to end in a peaceful and dignified, yet passionate way.

The positivity that the supporters created by mobilising in the face of such a bleak situation is what created AFC Wimbledon, so while I wouldn’t want any set of fans to go through what we Wimbledon fans went through in 2001-2, the protests that went on in that season were inspiring, and it’s actually hard to regret what’s happened since. Today we have a club that we can be immensely proud of. So much so that while MK Dons are a despicable creation, I don’t really share the revenge fantasies against them that others (quite understandably) do. They’re just not that important.

Are there any other clubs that you’ve encountered in your travels that you’ve taken a liking to and/or kept a lookout for their results?
Brassell: I feel a closeness to Lyon as I watched them every other week for a couple of years, but believe me, there will be no split loyalties when AFC Wimbledon play them in the 2021 Champions League final!

What made you choose to move to Lyon – and, later on, back to London – and what differences did you discover between living in England and in France?
Brassell: My wife and I had both talked about leaving London to try something else for a while – she studied in Spain and France and went back to Spain to live for a while after her studies, so missed living abroad a little. We already had friends who were from Lyon, so it was a good way to introduce ourselves to life in France. It’s also very close to Switzerland, which was handy in the lead-up to Euro 2008.

Coming from London, the pace of life was different of course. It was definitely a case of leaving my ‘London head’ at home as you have to be more patient. I actually chose which bank to go with on the basis that it was the only one that didn’t shut for a lunch hour! On a football level, the atmosphere in stadiums was much better than British people might expect, though France has singularly failed to embrace Britain’s number one sport, ie watching football in the pub. Nowhere near the same numbers go to watch games there and if they do, it tends to be specifically for that purpose, and when the game is over, people leave straight away. Though this is very handy if you want to take your other half out for a drink and watch the game at the same time, which would never happen here in the UK!

The bio at the beginning of your book lists you as having been living in Battersea, London, but you dedicated the biggest number of chapters in your book to Ligue 1 sides (Marseille, Lyon, Monaco and Saint Etienne), and covered as many Spanish clubs (3) for the book as you had English teams. What do you feel that the leagues in France and Spain offer that others don’t?
Brassell: The pick of clubs covered in the book was quite arbitary, as it was a project that evolved very organically. Whilst freelancing, I had the opportunity to go to Champions League games over Europe, so the idea of a running narrative of the CL season occurred to me, and I had to make the decision to go with it there and then. As I was doing a bit of work in France, I have quite a few French clubs in the first half of the book, though I wouldn’t have included them were they not relevant to the project as a whole and for this reason I left a few others out. Factoring in clubs from diverse countries in Europe was necessary as the book progressed to give it balance and shape.

That said, I do love French and Spanish football. Ligue 1 fascinates me because France has produced, and still produces, such fantastic players, and this is where they all start – think of the likes of Thuram, Petit and Henry coming from Monaco, and how excited the French media are at the moment that their ‘new Zidane’, Yoann Gourcuff, is following in Zizou’s footsteps at Bordeaux. It has evolved now into almost a finishing school for Premier League players, and you can see why. The technical level that players glean from their formation is supplemented by a really tough, physical league. The physical aspect isn’t always something that the French themselves appreciate – note Platini’s comments that ‘if I wanted to see athletes, I’d watch the Olympics’ – but it is the single biggest barrier to overseas players succeeding in English football, and players who’ve played in Ligue 1 first are better prepared than most.

Spain is still the best for me, I have to admit. I can understand why the Premier League tends to be the preferred choice of the world – the intensity, etc. – but there is a better balance in Spain between technical excellence and excitement, in my view. The overtly political side of it is fascinating, too, especially for an outsider.

Considering all the legwork that you’d done for the book, it wouldn’t have made sense for you to not be in attendance for that season’s final in Gelsenkirchen. What was the atmosphere like in and around the ground? Was there ever a feeling that throwing Chelsea and/or Deportivo La Coruña (that season’s semifinal losers) into the mix would have made for a more interesting final?
Brassell: The atmosphere was good, and I should know, as I got there four hours before kick-off! But it was more convivial and fun than passionate, mainly for two reasons. Firstly, one of the clubs, Monaco, have next to no fans and their allocation was therefore filled with a lot of ‘tourists’ as opposed to regulars. It was a pretty normal French sporting crowd, there for the spectacle rather than to roar their side on with passion and blind faith. Secondly. while the Arena AufSchalke is a very tidy stadium indeed, it’s completely isolated. It’s 20 minutes’ tram ride out of the centre of Gelsenkirchen (which is hardly Vegas anyway) and so there is the stadium, the training pitches, club museum and nothing else there. There was a fan park but of course this lacks the spontaneity of a normal working city welcoming a load of football fans for the day. I understand that a fan park is more practical, but it’s not the same.

Football-wise, I think the final was just right. It really was the year of the underdog in the competition. Monaco played the most exciting football, and Porto the most effective, so they both deserved to be there, and the better team won. Deportivo are a good microcosm of that season as a whole, going through all the highs and lows of cup football in the Champions League and agonisingly missing out on what was their best-ever chance.

I cannot imagine that irony is ever lost on authors when they are choosing what to put on their book covers. What was the reasoning behind choosing the cover photo that you had for All or Nothing – do you see it as equal parts Jose Mourinho kissing the trophy as well as his reflection?
Brassell: That he was kissing his reflection wasn’t actually something I noticed until after I’d chosen the photo and a friend pointed it out, but it’s no less amusing for that! I just felt Mourinho was the key figure in the competition that year. Porto weren’t a team of stars, but completely moulded in the image of their coach. As I said in the book, if you spoke to Porto fans about the team’s success, they immediately referred to the coach ahead of any of the players, which is quite unusual.

At the end of the book, you make an interesting point about big clubs bringing in big-name players over the summer months to help make up for any shortcomings in the season just gone. Do you think we will continue to see much of that in the coming years, especially given the stark changes to the economic climate even just since the book was published?
Brassell: I think so. Referencing the book, Leeds are a good example of what can happen when a club are trying to punch above their weight, as are Depor, who ran on a huge debt to finance their years of success and have been paying for it ever since, so I don’t think the global climate of the moment is the only reason clubs would get themselves in a hole. It will always happen. On the other hand, Bayern will always be Bayern – if they’re coming up short, they will go and buy the players they need. Last time they missed out on the CL, they went and bought Ribery, Toni, Klose, etc. And the real giants of the game will always get a degree of credit if they need it.

In recent months, both you and Tim Vickery have signed on as correspondents for World Soccer Daily out of Los Angeles, serving in similar capacities to your work with the World Football Phone-In on BBC Radio 5 Live. Does it feel strange to field questions about European football from a North American audience?
Brassell: Not at all. Unlike a lot of other popular sports (American Football, basketball, cricket. etc), football is a truly global game, and with more players playing abroad than ever before, people will always be interested in following the game outside their own shores, and particularly in Europe, with the concentration of the biggest clubs in the world being there. With particular reference to the US, they have a national team that’s done well in World Cups and regardless of the merits or otherwise of MLS, American players make important contributions weekly all over Europe. It’s nearly 20 years since John Harkes came over to Sheffield Wednesday and started doing away with those stereotypes, so we really should be over it by now.

As for questions from North American listeners, here’s another: Do you feel that many clubs are buying up young American talent before those players are ready to make the jump?
Brassell: It’s not just young American talent. This is an issue for a lot of countries, particularly South American ones, where the clubs rely on transfer cash to stay afloat. Conversely, for players to learn the ropes in the league where they’re going to play – be it in England, Spain, wherever – at a young age can make them develop more quickly in the case of someone like Fabregas, who is mature enough to deal with the lifestyle adaptation.

Looking at the US I guess Jozy Altidore is the player you might have in mind – I know Pellegrini and his staff are very impressed with him and are just biding their time with him. I certainly think Altidore will learn more alongside the likes of Pires, Senna, Cazorla, etc. than he would in MLS.

Between the WFPI, WSD and all your other work, what is the most memorable question you’ve ever been asked about European football?
Brassell: Tough to sift through them all off the top of my head but I loved the one I got on WSD the other week about Torino. Nobody ever asks about them and it’s great to reminisce over what was one of Europe’s greatest footballing dynasties, both pre and post-war before the Superga disaster. Because Juve have been so successful since, people often don’t hear about that.

I noticed that you also work as a DJ. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into that, and also, as someone who’s also a bit of a music buff, do you feel that there are many connections between football and pop music today?
Brassell: I started DJing at university, and putting on my own club nights, and have been doing it ever since. I do try to keep football and music separate, though sometimes it’s hard to resist, especially when you hear something like the bi-lingual single that Basile Boli and Chris Waddle did together when they were both at Marseille (look it up on YouTube, you won’t regret it!). It beats seven bells out of ‘Diamond Lights‘. Andy Cole’s two singles, however…..

As footballers are often big stars in wider media nowadays rather than simply famous amongst football fans, there seems to be a misapprehension that footballers are all on the same cool level as the likes of Kanye West, when if you think about, you know that if this was the ’80s, a lot of them would be driving a Ford Capri and listening to Phil Collins on a loop. I’m looking at you, Gary Neville.

Finally, in lieu of a more general ‘random facts about you’ question, there’s something that I must know: I have found in my research that you have a pet Valencian bat named Joaquin. At what point did you decide that dogs, cats, etc. weren’t cutting it for you?
Brassell: Joaquin is stuffed, and so doesn’t require the sort of attention that a dog or cat would require – and that I wouldn’t be able to provide, as I’m often travelling. He’s an independent kind of a bat, and he understands my football commitments, being a keen follower of El Che himself.

Brassell can be heard on alternating weeks between the World Football Phone-In segment of the Up All Night program on BBC Radio 5 Live, which airs on Friday nights from 9:30 p.m. EST, and World Soccer Daily – he usually appears there every other Thursday – which airs Monday to Friday from 1-3 p.m. EST. Both shows are also available via podcast on iTunes. All or Nothing: A Season in the Life of Champions League, which is out through Trafford Publishing, can be purchased on Amazon.com and also via the book’s website, www.allornothingbook.com.

When the financial and managerial reins to Manchester City Football Club changed hands early on this season for the second time in fairly quick succession on both fronts, this time with the Blues having instantly catapulted to the top of the world football rich list, everyone’s attention immediately turned to the January transfer window. What already looked a fairly competent side on paper, it was thought, was mere months away from becoming a sure-fire threat to retain its UEFA Cup spot – and not via the Fair Play rule this time.

Fast-forward to the past 30-odd days, and the verdict? Yeah, not so much.

While City did make a handful of sensible moves – Nigel de Jong in from Hamburg and only putting Jo out on loan to Everton being probably the best among them – it appeared at times that the Blues, a club with suddenly more money than they’d know what do with…well, didn’t.

Several bids for Blackburn striker Roque Santa Cruz, one of first-year City manager Mark Hughes’ former charges, were turned down by the Ewood Park club, and who could forget the audacious (and ultimately fruitless) bid in excess of £100 million for AC Milan midfielder Kaká, which Hughes seemed particularly gung-ho about until the very end and which club executive chairman Garry Cook had the gall to accuse the Italian giants of “bottling it” on a deal that would have paid Kaká the obscene sum of £500,000 a week at Eastlands and in turn set a potentially dangerous precedence where footballers’ pay, especially in a global recession, is concerned.

The Kaká narrative is what the January window should (and will) be most remembered by in the blue half of Manchester, especially as, much like with City’s successful bid for Newcastle and Republic of Ireland goalkeeper Shay Given, it was one that would have sent the wrong message to those players in the Blues’ current lineup. Throwing the two transfer targets together for the sake of argument, bringing in both Kaká and Given would have been seen as replacements for Stephen Ireland and Joe Hart, arguably City’s two best players so far this season.

The transfer window has left Hart especially unlucky. The 21-year-old keeper has been a rock for City since coming back from loan spells in 2007 at Tranmere Rovers and Blackpool, rarely if ever putting a foot wrong since taking over the starting job at Eastlands. What’s more, Hart is arguably the reason City are still alive in Europe, having made two saves in a penalty shoot-out at the end of the club’s UEFA Cup qualifier at FC Midtjylland back in August, a shoot-out that City really only made it into by accident after a late own-goal from the Danish side gifted City what at the time was a largely undeserved shot at reaching the competition’s first round proper.

Bearing that in mind, while City are bringing in another reliable goalkeeper for what is believed to be in the vicinity of £8 million, something will invariably have to give there. Hart will likely not remain a candidate for a regular spot in the full England squad any time soon if he’s playing the understudy at his club team, and it therefore seems inevitable that either he or third-stringer Kasper Schmeichel – who at one stage looked a solid prospect for an international call-up for Denmark or possibly even England as the Danes haven’t yet capped him – will be on their way out in the summer.

With what we know about what has transpired over the last month and change, then, it’s hard to look at City’s dealings in the transfer window as anything much better than one step forward and one step back. The Blues did manage to shore up a couple of their shortcomings so far this season, but at what cost? City stand to lose one if not two solid goalkeepers come the end of the season on account of lack of first-team playing time, and they’ve loaned out for more or less the same reason a player they had spent a reportedly estimated £19 million on to another Premiership side that’s still in with a shout to be back in the fold for European football again next season.

Then again, if the new signings fail to help steady the ship, how other clubs in the Premier League’s top half are getting on will be the least of City’s worries.

EPL Talk’s ex-pat and Anglophile readers familiar with the classic British sitcom Only Fools and Horses will likely remember the program’s 1985 Christmas special, “To Hull and Back,” in which Del Boy and Rodney unwittingly end up in the northern English city of Hull on their way to picking up smuggled diamonds in Holland.  When it dawns on Del Boy that he’s ended up in Humberside, though, he angrily demands that his brother rush him back to London as “otherwise I’ll be saying ‘Hey-up’ and breeding whippets before I’m very much older.”

Now, Yorkshire accents, sighthound-breeding and shipping ports as far as the eye can see are all well and good, but OFAH’s depiction of Hull doesn’t give the impression that there’s much else going on in the town.  It’s a picture that many North American soccer fans following the English game probably presumed out of ignorance up until Dean Windass’ volley in last season’s Coca-Cola Championship promotion play-off final against Bristol City brought England’s largest city previously without having ever tasted top-flight football into the Premier League.

Now that Hull City A.F.C. is finally in the limelight, however, the Tigers are milking it for all its worth, and that apparently includes making inroads on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Following the lead of Oldham Athletic chairman Simon Blitz, Hull have launched a publicity campaign in North America in an apparent bid to build the Tigers’ name recognition abroad and, with any luck, also bring in potential new supporters.  The bulk of the campaign so far seems to be emanating from Los Angeles, where, in recent days, both manager Phil Brown and club chairman Paul Duffen have been interviewed at length on World Soccer Daily, a popular caller-driven satellite radio program that is also downloaded by approximately 290,000 listeners worldwide each weekday.

Bringing Brown and Duffen onto the show has been a major coup for WSD – which in recent months has been unveiling increasingly high-profile regular guests such as Robbie Earle, Tim Vickery and Andy Brassell – but it also stands to pay dividends for Hull City, a club vying for fans’ attention on two fronts: Not just abroad, but also even in its own stadium.

In terms of support, the Tigers face the same problem that Premier League rivals Wigan Athletic have been made to endure: They play in a city that is crazy about rugby league.  It is perhaps not such a big surprise, given that rugby league originated in Yorkshire, but have fun telling that to Hull City, who share the Kingston Communications Stadium with Hull F.C., the city’s Super League rugby side.  Both the Tigers and Latics play in multi-purpose stadia, which theoretically keep the football teams on par with their rugby league counterparts where facilities are concerned, but when it’s butts in seats that means more to the clubs financially – which is where the football clubs are getting the short end of the stick – it’s hard to blame either for branching out to recruit new supporters wherever they can.

Bearing that in mind, what Hull City have done in building bridges over the Pennines, across the Atlantic and into North America is perhaps as wise a PR move as we have seen from any Premier League side in a good while, and they stand to add to their fan base because of it. They probably would have had a little more luck with the campaign had they launched it earlier in the season when their place in the Premiership table indicated more feast than (the current) famine, but nevertheless, given the club’s apparent enthusiasm to embrace the North American market, new fans to the game on this side of the pond could do much worse than to hop onto the black and amber bandwagon.