It’s a little impressive that a Premier League player has muscled in and forced his way to the centre of Times Square, notably part of NBC’s promotion for this coming season. Madison Square Garden and its tenants help to form the biggest sports market in the world, and yet there he is, Gareth Bale looking down as if he’s a flag bearer for the Premier League.
It would obviously be a little inaccurate if his transfer to Real Madrid comes to fruition this summer, but that’s another thing entirely. Tottenham, of course, would suffer the blow of losing another vital piece of their squad for a second summer in a row, but how will the Premier League fare?
The Premier League surrendering its biggest names to La Liga or Serie A isn’t anything new, though the former is a much more likely destination over the latter these days. Cristiano Ronaldo was obviously the biggest name to depart England for the continent, with the Portuguese a little way off his peak and yet still the best player in the world at the time. There was mourning from Manchester United obviously, but the Premier League has always been about making stars rather than buying them.
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Much of the same was the case with Cesc Fabregas, though you could tell how eager the media were to usher the Spaniard out of England as long as it made Arsenal weaker. Paranoia? Please. Fabregas was the best midfielder in England for four or five years, and even now he hasn’t reached his maximum output as a player. Why not reinforce the defences and create a campaign to keep one of the best players in Europe in the Premier League?
The point being is that it’s about agendas. The Premier League will never lose its appeal simply by selling one or two names, no matter how big they are. It obviously comes to down to the individual clubs who are put in the position of selling their assets, but England has always been a draw for a number of very reputable names, even if at the time of arriving they aren’t the biggest.
Will the Premier League as a whole suffer if Bale walks this summer? Far from it. We may be pushed into that line of thinking, but the Premier League still has Juan Mata, Robin van Persie, Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Jack Wilshere, and an almost endless list that helps to cushion the blow. I purposely left Luis Suarez off that list.
Forget Spurs for a moment, the media in England have done a fantastic job in helping to make Bale what he is today, and they can do the same for anyone else. Surely someone could argue that Mata was the catalyst for Chelsea winning the Champions League. It doesn’t have to be true, but then I’m not about to watch a film about an American president battling hordes of vampires for its historical accuracies; I want to be entertained. Stories like that feed to the masses. It’s like music and film and whatever else; if you force it down the public’s throat enough they will start to accept it.
So the question is who’s going to be the Premier League’s next marketable miracle? In fairness, it doesn’t get much more Hollywood than a soon-to-be discarded left-back who couldn’t buy a win turned Galactico, but they’ll give it a good go.
English football will fondly remember the past; Thierry Henry, Ronaldo, Eric Cantona and many others, but people move on. It’s life and it’s sports. Why drown your sorrows over a player who is long gone? The alternative, obviously, is to go and watch Bale in La Liga. No? Yeah I didn’t think that one would catch on.
Will Bale’s transfer to Real Madrid be a loss to the Premier League in the long term?
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