2015 – Bad for the big egos, good for the game

WHAT A YEAT IT'S BEEN! A year when there were not merely shocks but when Planet Football came off its axis. In the Premier League, bottom became top, little frequently beat large and the Special One was sacked before Christmas with King Louis a dead ego walking.
But as earth-moving as all this was, it was nothing that Mr Richter couldn't handle. In the wider world what really gave the tectonic plates a jolt was that the unthinkable happened - an asteroid hit home right between Sepp Blatter's beady eyes.
We never thought it would, of course, and the bonus was that it took Michel Platini with him. Nothing Lionel Messi did on the field could quite compare with the ousting of the two biggest despots off it.
Their corrupt ancien regimes looked set to misrule forever, siphoning off the riches and making a mockery of the beautiful game.
But they had reckoned without the determination of an unlikely opponent – a Baptist minister's daughter from North Carolina.
It's not even football territory but Loretta Lynch, the US Attorney General, decided enough was enough when she found that not only had the US been beaten by an oil-rich speck of desert to host the 2022 World Cup, but that the FIFA freeloaders were laundering their ill-gotten gains through US banks.
The dawn raid on their lair in Zurich, the suspects hiding their shamed faces with expensive bed linen as they were bundled into waiting cars may not have felt like an historic turning point.
But it set in motion a process that has seen the biggest dominoes fall and, we can only hope, leads to a thorough sluicing of their Augean Stables.
Blatter is probably the bigger fish but to us fans it feels that Platini is guilty of the greater treachery. As a wonderful player, the man who kissed the ball, we had hopes he would not only preserve the romance but the roots and run the game properly.
But by voting for Qatar he instantly disqualified himself from such a fanciful notion. And that was before the grubby deal by which he allowed Blatter a free run at remaining boss of FIFA.
Even in the season of good will, schadenfreude is hard to suppress when it comes to such hubris. Nothing pleases us more than seeing the self-proclaimed mighty fall and so it is with Chelsea and Manchester United and their most recent managers.
The two clubs have diced for the 'anybody but' crown of the past dozen years, not least while respectively playing second fiddle to the self-aggrandised auspices of Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal. As brilliant as they have been as coaches, you always felt it was all about them and, in the end, their precious egos got in the way of their judgment.
If the dominant theme of the year has been dancing on graves, their burials were, you might say, for the good of the game. Indeed, it has been an overwhelmingly positive year for football with arguably the best team ever flaunting it on the field.
Barcelona recovered from a hiccup that briefly looked terminal to reinvent and rule the roost yet again. When they lost to David Moyes' Real Sociedad in January, it looked like the end of a dynasty. Messi had the hump, Luis Enrique did not appear in control, the club were under a transfer embargo and their head honchos faced trial.
But they got their act together – word is that Xavi told Messi a few home truths – and with Neymar and Luis Suarez formed an irresistible trident (MSN) that took all before them. Fine-tuning their tiki-taka and with greater finishing power than they ever had, the current side can lay claim to rival that of Pep Guardiola in being the best club side of all time.
Barca, along with Real Madrid and Bayern, formed a trident of their own at the very top of the European club game and it certainly put the efforts of the EPL into perspective. But what we are seeing in England is the levelling of the playing field and it is not an entirely bad thing.
There is so much TV cash now that it is filtering down to the lesser lights, enabling the Stokes, the West Hams and the Leicesters to buy decent players.
Look at Bojan, Arnautovic and Shaqiri turning up at the Britannia and recently putting both Manchester moneybags clubs to the sword.
But Leicester are the story as they did not need this cash influx to land their current stars – Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy arriving for £400k and £1m respectively. If they could hold on to first place, it would rival Forest's title triumph in 1978 about which a movie has come out. It's called I Believe in Miracles. A Leicester title would take some believing too.
With no respite for the big boys and no winter break, English dominance of the Champions League could be a thing of the past but thanks to the fairer distribution of revenues, at least England won't be subject to those one, two or three-horse races that are the norm elsewhere.
Another positive for the game in general was the arrival of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool.
You began to fear this great football institution was in decline with even the kop silenced, stars sold and so many second- and third-rate players signed. And once again, an ego was getting in the way.
Mourinho disciple Brendan Rodgers talked too much and, although not in the same super league as his mentor, paid for being too self-absorbed – self-portrait on the wall, envelopes and all that claptrap.
The lack of atmosphere told you what the locals thought. But Klopp looks to have the charisma and knowhow to rebuild even before he's spent a dime of the American owners' money.
Although the field for successors to Blatter and Platini does not excite, we can expect an end to personal fiefdoms and Machiavellian wheeling and dealing.
We must fervently hope the 2022 World Cup is taken from Qatar and given to a country that has stadiums without reverting to slave labour and a population that can appreciate the game. Not to mention sparing the European game of three chronically disrupted seasons to accommodate it.
Even if not all those wishes are granted, we will remember 2015 with affection.