We've looked back, now it's time to look ahead. In the companion piece to this story, we reflected upon the people and teams that made the biggest impression over the last 12 months. This time out we consider some of the major stories to keep an eye on for next year.
2012 sees the London Olympics, the European Championships and the African Cup of Nations, though, many of the big stories of last year - corruption at the top of the game, the corrosive effects of money - will be played out again against a backdrop of what we hope to be brilliant, beautiful football.
Financial fair play. Yes, we’re all happy Manchester City cannot buy the Champions League. This year. It’s a reprieve, though, folks.
The massive amounts of money flowing into the big clubs is turning the Premier League into La Liga, and has turned La Liga into Scotland meets France. Only the Bundesliga, that charmingly, chillingly rational bunch in Germany, have figured out that unfettered capitalism will eventually eat this sport alive - we’ll see how long they stick with it in the face of petrodollars and foreign oligarchs. And let’s add that when a club like Arsenal - not exactly pikers - look like a 'selling club', you know you have a problem.
What to do? A good place to start would be to enforce contracts, punish tampering and move towards a fixed salary cap system. Unfortunately, not one of these things will happen and instead we have the dubious Financial Play Rules.
These rules look nice on paper but have loopholes large enough to drive a truck through. Case in point: Manchester City’s naming rights deal for their stadium.
This is a story that’s not going away. In the best-case scenario, the big clubs band together, make common cause and form a European Super League that preserves the smaller clubs’ abilities to retain players. In the not-so-good scenario, things keep going exactly as they are, and we see a spiral of financial failures.
The women. Last year’s feel-good story for everyone - well, everyone outside of Soccer House in Chicago - was Japan’s Women’s World Cup win.
Japan will look to build on its thrilling Women’s World Cup victory at the London Olympics (Getty Images)
The nation, devastated by a tsunami and a reactor core breach that threatened to flood the nation with radiation, badly needed a lift and their women gave it to them. This year should see the same attention paid to the women’s game at the London Olympics, where the United States is among the nations expected to compete for gold. (Qualifying begins in January, and full coverage will be on FoxSports.com and in real-time on game-days on @FoxSoccerTrax)
The off-field stories about the women’s game aren’t as rosy. WPS is teetering on the brink and went through a difficult off-season that saw the league lose a team, be sued by a former owner and have to fight to gain a waiver from USSF to stay alive. One former GM, Peter Wilt, even argued against the waiver in a provocative column, saying the women’s game needed radical change to survive.
The truth is that as a professional sport, women’s soccer might not have a future in America. The costs have proved to be too high and the crowds too small. Women’s soccer draws attention during big events, but hasn't attracted the needed support on a week-to-week basis.
There does not seem to be any easy solution here and that’s sad, given the joy that the American women brought sports fans this past summer.
Corruption at FIFA. How many scandals did we have in 2011? How many ex-FIFA big shots were brought low, or, depending on your point of view, sacrificed to keep others out of the firing line? Don’t expect things to get any better in 2012.
Major stuff is brewing in Brazil where long-time soccer boss Ricardo Teixeira is being investigated by the cops. The ISL papers are expected to be released in January, detailing exactly who got what in FIFA’s last major scandal.
Don’t think the battle over the World Cup bidding is over, either. Expect more on the email hacking investigation that has come to light around the England and USA bids. That doesn’t even bring into the equation the fact that match-fixing continues to be a major problem, with rigging scandals rocking Korea and Italy last season. In other words, this year promises to be as messy as the last.
Didier Drogba suffered a head injury in this clash with Norwich goalkeeper John Ruddy. (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
Real talk about concussions. Candidly, this is a story that I hope we see, but one I do not expect to. After all, our own sports had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight over this issue, so why would football be any different?
Soccer has, in the past, spent a great deal of time heading off a scare campaign against heading the ball, but what the sport has not talked about is the head injuries that occur in the air, game after game after game.
Each weekend, at least one Premier League player takes a hard shot to the head. Sometimes he is removed from the game; sometimes the team admits he was concussed - but never do neurological experts inspect a player who goes down after a head-to-head collision, an inadvertent elbow, or a meeting with a keeper’s fists. We now know that concussions cause lasting damage, have been strongly linked to depression, and have ruined countless lives and careers. For what?
A suggestion on how to end it: Any player removed after a head injury is not allowed to return to the game by a doctor, but can be replaced without charging the team a substitute.
Finally, a story that I would love to read: The Premier League wakes up and plays games abroad.
Premier League teams are too content with money-spinning pre-season tours. (Stanley Chou/Getty Images)
This is so obvious and logical that it will never happen. Why? Common sense doesn’t work with the clubs in the Premier League. So, let me appeal to something much baser - xenophobia.
England, remember when you used to have an empire? Don’t you hate that you don’t have one anymore? Would you like to have one again in the sport you claim to have invented?
You can! All you have to do is send your biggest clubs to play one in-season game in Asia and America.
Your Premier League could instantly clear the table of all other competition, and seal up loyalties to your teams for a generation. Italy? Feh! Spain? For weaklings that can’t stand the cold! Playing a game abroad would give your players of the future the one thing any player craves: total attention worldwide, every week.
Have I mentioned the money? Do you know how much money the NFL makes? Would you like to make far, far in excess of that? Send Arsenal and Tottenham to play a game in Singapore. Send Liverpool and Manchester United to play a game in New York. Dispatch Manchester City and Chelsea to the Rose Bowl. Placate your fans by dangling all the new top-level players you can buy with the proceeds. Tell them they can make fun of all the Americans buying your jerseys to boot!
One stinking game, guys. That’s what a smart league would do. Unless of course, you’re not real smart.
