Maybe it's an age thing. I get far more pleasure out of watching The Big Match Revisited, old football DVDs from the 60s, 70,s and 80s, current international football, and, strangely enough, the latter stages of the Champions League in pre-pandemic times than I do any of the domestic leagues in Europe.
But it's not really age - it's the realisation that domestic club leagues in England and Europe are fantastically rigged. There was always wealth and inequality, but there was still competition. That's now gone in the Premier League outside of City, Chelsea, and United. Arsenal are a case in point: a mid-table club as if Graham and Wenger never happened. We've been mid-table for 30 years. Newcastle are strugglers, Leeds and Villa yo-yos, Spurs irrelevant.
The World Cup and Euros benefits from the fact that players cannot simply "transfer" between nations, unless they are Brazilians to Qatar... That keeps those competitions compelling, if not necessarily top quality. The latter stages of the Champions League is compelling because pretty much all of the last 8 are mega rich and so can compete on some level. But domestic football? Rigged. Look at Spain. Clubs cravenly submit to the big two in terms of TV deals and financial regulation. We won't mention France where PSG have simply hoovered up galacticos where their rivals are Lille. Even in Germany, where there is a huge competition from 2nd to 18th, Bayern are in a different financial league (albeit one they created organically through superb management with no need for oligarchs and sportswashing rogue states - while their peers Hamburger SV, Schalke 04, Werder Bremen, 1860, and Kaiserslautern managed themselves into the lower leagues).
As an Irishman, the hurling is where it's at for me. Real amateur sportsmen doing amazing things without the utterly rigged circus we are all obliged to pretend doesn't exist in football. Looking at Messi crying last week, I can only surmise that football has jumped the shark. The money paid to these players now is beyond obscene. Not that Messi, a megastar, is overpaid (even if he is) - more that mediocrities in our squad can clear 50k a week simply for turning up for training.
The competition is gone in most leagues and tournaments, so enjoy the football for the talent and restrict your enagagement to those that offer real jeopeardy - the international tournaments, the CL last 8, and our matches against Southampton, Norwich, and Newcastle.
