WE GET FUNNY LOOKS, BUT AMERICANS KEEP LOVING THE PREMIER LEAGUE
A Dodgers owner is stuck with a 148-year-old stadium, but Stan Kroenke wants to build his championship case at Arsenal while Tom Brady, LeBron James and J.J. Watt have investments in English football
LONDON — A bombing happened on the pitch below me. This wasn’t a soccer rout, bloke, but the Luftwaffe blitzkrieg of 1940. Do not bother me about the redevelopment of Wrigley Field, Fenway Park and Lambeau Field. The grass of Stamford Bridge was singed by Hitler’s armed forces during World War II.
So when I suggest a soccer stadium must drift into previous centuries, there is one that is too primeval to be iconic. It is 148 years old, and one of the people who bought Chelsea — Todd Boehly, among owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers — has heard by now that Henry VIII enjoyed the cosmic view with his six wives. He was the King of England between 1509 and 1547 and would have chopped heads before standing in a beer queue as I once did inside the relic. Nor would he have landed tickets, for Sunday’s Premier League opener against four-time defending champion Manchester City, from a hotel ticketeer who promised the afternoon of a lifetime.
Through it all, Boehly is mocked online — as the Connor Roy of English football who takes advice from “professional tub-o-lard” James Corden, while loathed among those who don’t care the last owner, Roman Abramovich, was a Vladimir Putin goon. Boehly has invested in this sub-royal mess with billionaire Behdad Eghbali, who runs Clearlake Capital in California, and has a better chance of starting World War III than replacing Stamford Bridge. The men paid $5.3 billion in 2022. All they’ve seen is Manchester City repeatedly win the trophy, in a run of six titles in seven seasons, which galls those of us who smell Spygate in the champion’s midst.
I’m not sure who controls the Premier League — beyond NBC, which is paying $2.7 billion through 2028 for weekend morning matches in America — but chief executive Richard Masters is letting another season start without addressing City’s 115 alleged breaches. They involve financial missteps, not videotapes, and the issues occurred for a 10-year period ending in 2018. In our country, sports crooks are slammed with major suspensions and fines, if not worse, when they don’t cooperate with investigations. The league says City has lagged in operating with “the utmost good faith.”
A deduction of points? A relegation? A year of sitting in a room and listening to the Oasis brothers, the Gallaghers, fight about who’s bigger in Manchester? The majority shareholder of the team is Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. He keeps skating. For how long? For how many more titles? “There is no happy alternative to enforcing the rules, which everyone has agreed at the beginning of each season,” Masters told Sky Sports News. “They have looked each other in the eye and shaken each other’s hand and said ‘We will abide by these rules.’ So the Premier League has to enforce rules.”
Then, why not try? Or just call it a scam?
Arsenal is considered a threat to break the streak and is owned by Stan Kroenke. You know him. He recently celebrated three of his U.S. teams — the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche — winning championships. The man is owning the global sports landscape with Walmart money, having married Ann Walton in 1974. He is hardly alone in controlling a Premier League team. Liverpool is run by Fenway Sports, founded by Boston Red Sox owners John Henry and Tom Werner while using an investment from LeBron James. Manchester United is run by the Glazer family, owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Fulham is run by Shad Khan, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Bournemouth is run by Bill Foley, owner of the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Tom Brady is a minority owner of Birmingham City. Wes Edens, owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, is atop Aston Villa. Josh Harris, owner of the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia 76ers, has money at Crystal Palace. J.J. Watt has tossed retirement dough into Burnley.
Anyone else? Joe Biden?
When Arsenal learned actress Anne Hathaway is a fan of the team, forward Leandro Trossard shot a video message. She saw the tape on NBC’s “Today” show. “No, no, I am shaking,” she said. If the U.S. can’t figure out its men’s crisis — Mauricio Pochettino signed on as coach, after leaving Team Boehly this year — our passion for the Premier League is legitimate. Manchester City and Arsenal drew 2.12 million in March, among the six biggest U.S. audiences in the last 16 months. This is bigger than “Ted Lasso.” This is bigger than Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney helping Wrexham succeed.
“I used to feel so much pride when I saw a Premier League shirt in America. The Premier League was a little bit, ‘If, you know, you know’, almost whispering. That has changed,” NBC anchor Rebecca Lowe told The Athletic. “Partly, it is the exposure and the quality of the football. But then, if an athlete or an actress or a pop star thinks something’s cool, the world follows. And that is happening.”
We are a savage and undomesticated nation when it comes to football, of course. We are not replacing our football with their football. But we watch. And we invest.
And we wonder if Chelsea’s 40,341-seat potting shed, like London Bridge, will take on song lyrics: “Stamford Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, Stamford Bridge is falling down. My fair lady.” The NFL likes Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for its annual visits. So do I.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.