[meandbrenarebaggies]

Should we be disappointed to see how few United Kingdom players there are in the teams that play in the Champions League?  I don’t know much about the sixteen teams currently engaged in this competition so I spent some time looking at their squads and the nationalities of their players and was quite surprised to see just how dependant they are on South American players.  The German clubs seem to retain more German players within their teams whereas English, Spanish and French teams seem to be very heavily reliant on outside talent.  Does any of this matter?  If we were interested in other human activities like Art, Music, Architecture, etc would we be alarmed to see most World class opera singers coming from Italy and many World class architects coming from Britain?  If Sky bought the TV rights to ice-fishing would we be annoyed to see so many Eskimos enjoying the high-life?

So why do we carry on competing in a sport where it’s so obvious that South Americans are, and will always be, (yes I know the Germans did that World Cup thing) the best?  Nationalism is a terrible thing so should we take a purist viewpoint and welcome performances from the best players in the World without regard to their country of origin?  So when I watch City being turned over by Messi and Co, I should not watch with memories of Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee and Franny Lee anywhere in the mix since that was a long time ago and the past is a different country.