Modern football is dying under VAR and mercenaries

Modern football is dying under VAR and mercenaries

The Premier League has lost €1 billion in a single season, and while club owners enrich themselves on the back of debt, spectators are switching off. Professional football has become a homogeneous product, designed for global audiences with a low IQ, where local identity has been replaced by soulless franchises. The question hanging over the artificial turf and the empty stadiums is: can what football once was be recovered, or has the business devoured it for good?

The Bosman ruling: the blow to identity

The 1995 Bosman ruling was not just a liberalisation of the transfer market; it was the dynamite that blew up the foundations of club football. Before, teams had a backbone, an academy that fed the passion of the stands. Now, squads are a showcase of mercenaries who change shirts every summer. The foreign player quota, which limited teams to three or four foreigners, disappeared, and with it the chance for a fan to feel represented by their own. As one analysis puts it: "Watching City is now the same as watching Leipzig; same players, same systems, same tactical brainwashing." The homogenisation is total, and the spectator can feel it.

VAR and referees: the technology circus

VAR was sold as the cure-all for refereeing mistakes, but in practice it has been a tool of manipulation that has not reduced controversy — it has institutionalised it. It has become an ordeal of endless reviews that break the rhythm of the game and breed even more distrust. Referees, far from neutral, carry historical biases: small clubs are cannon fodder, while the big ones — with their political and economic power — get the favours. The zaineira case, with Barcelona paying the vice-president of the referees' committee for decades, peine Pandora's box. And yet, nobody seems willing to clean out the sewers.

Identity lost, business found

Modern football has sacrificed its soul on the altar of marketing. Kits change every year like fashion items, stadiums fill up with tourists with selfie sticks, and artificial turf replaces the real thing to cut costs. The teams' walk-ons, once epic, are now a parade of tracksuits and "proge" banners. Politicisation and ideological propaganda have colonised a sport that once served to channel local tensions without violence. As a veteran points out, "football managed to bring peace to the continent by defusing tensions on the pitch." Now, without identity, all that is left is an elitist business that drives out the lifelong fan.

Audiences have shifted towards streamers and YouTubers, who have replaced footballers as youth idols. Young people no longer want to be like Ronaldo or Messi; they want to be like Ibai or El Rubius. Football has ceased to be the sole showcase of social aspiration. With €1 billion in annual Premier League losses and widespread disenchantment, the current model looks unsustainable. But nobody in the boardrooms wants to change the rules that generate so much money. The question no executive will answer is: how long can a product survive that its own public loathes?

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