World Soccer Presents - The Prem Era #2 (2022)

(Maropa) #1

T


he first15 years of the Premier League was a time of English football
emerging, bleary eyed, into the daylight of a more global, less insular
approach to the national game, while still not quite shaking off some
old habits. As the newly-rebranded top flight sought to establish itself
on the global stage, it was an era characterised by exotic signings, topsy-turvy
seasons and chaotic football.
The following15 years has had plenty of the above too, plus more.
The 2007-08 campaign, where our story resumes, is the perfect place to
begin. The season finale saw, for the first time ever, two English teams meet in
the Champions League final, as Manchester United and Chelsea locked horns
on a torrential night in Moscow.
That final fell in the middle of a sequence in which there was an English
presence in six out of seven Champions League finals. Since then there have
been two more all-English finals (Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool in 2018-19 and
Chelsea v Manchester City in 2020-21), as the Premier League has become
the destination for some of the world’s finest players and coaches, rather
than a stepping-stone or retirement home.
Without doubt, finances have played a hugely significant role in elevating the
quality of the league. Shortly after that final in Moscow took place, Manchester City
were bought by the Abu Dhabi United Group, an event that – just like Roman
Abramovich’s purchase of Chelsea a few years earlier – changed the face
of English football forever.
Yet those two billionaire owners have not provided the only injections of cash.
Liverpool were also the subject of a takeover, while the Glazers turned Manchester
United into a profit-making machine. For everyone else, just keeping pace with
the big boys has required major spending, which has been fuelled by the highly
lucrative, ever-increasing TV deals, as the Premier League’s global audience
continued to grow.
With increased foreign money came increased foreign influence. At the start of
the1992-93 season, every manager in the league was British, with the exception
of Wimbledon’s Dublin-born bossJoe Kinnear. By 2007-08, that number had
dropped to14, and by 2021-22 it was down to six.
The days of every team lining up in a 4-4-2, under managers pursuing very
similar ideas, are long gone. The modern Premier League is a breeding ground
of tactical ideas and innovations, with some of Europe’s finest coaches seeking
to prove themselves against the best.
In many ways, it is a league that is completely unrecognisable from its early years


  • in some cases quite literally, with West Ham United and Tottenham among the clubs
    to be playing at different stadia to where they played at the inception of the league.
    Yet other things have not changed. It remains a league obsessed with transfers
    and gossip; where narrative and storylines are just as important as the sporting
    action itself; and where a glaring spotlight is often placed on individuals, players
    and managers ahead of the teams.
    In the following pages, we’ve pored further throughWorld Soccer’sarchiveto
    pick out some of the most significant players, managers, stories and transfers
    to have taken place in the past15 years of the Premier League.


Jamie Evans,World SoccerAssistant Editor

From the


editor


2 THE PREM ERA


A new era...a West Ham United supporter looks over Upton Park during its last-ever game

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