Every time a British soccer pundit opens their mouth they seem to be branding England’s top flight as “the best league in the world.” This throwaway statement became cliche because for so long it was true. But can we, in all good conscience, continue to call the Premier League the greatest club competition on planet football?
Nearly a quarter of a season into the new campaign and aside from Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea juggernaut, we are watching a lower-calibre Premier League. If last season was a cutting edge piece of computer software, this season is a dodgy alternative, available for free download. It fulfills the same purpose but does not look nearly as polished.
The last two transfer windows have seen the league’s best player swap a wet night in Stoke for a balmy evening in Eibar. The Premier League is still stunning theatre but when Luis Suarez followed Gareth Bale into the proverbial sunset, he made the cast that bit less star studded. So what happens when the leading man quits the production?
Four of the last six summers have borne witness to the departure of the country’s biggest footballing asset. After strutting his way to three consecutive titles, Cristiano Ronaldo filed his walking papers and penned a world record deal with Real Madrid in 2009 and two summers later the league’s most talented midfielder, Cesc Fabregas, returned home to kit out for his childhood team. In the same week they lost Samir Nasri to Manchester City and 8-2 to Manchester United, Arsenal had their captain plucked from the nest.
Former Liverpool co-captain Luis Suarez is now having his wages paid in Catalonia having left his former manager in the lurch. Last season’s most exciting team looks a shadow of their former, sparkling selves as Mario Balotelli tries (ish) to fill the gaping chasm left by Suarez and the league is worse off for it.
By far in a way the most damaging loss to the Premier League, however, was Gareth Bale. One can tolerate a Portuguese fulfilling a childhood dream, a Spaniard moving to his hometown club or a bitey Uruguayan being sent packing but seeing a homegrown superstar move abroad cuts a little deeper. His departure in 2013 was remedied no better by Tottenham than Suarez’s was by Liverpool. Seven new recruits that summer and several more since have failed to replace the goals, assists and panache which Bale took with him to Madrid.
This poses a burning question: can a league which loses its best player nearly every summer be considered the best in the world? Don’t answer that.
