The Stanford Super Series of Soccer?

Cricket fans will know all about the Stanford Super Series. It’s basically high profile games of exhibition cricket, with billionaire Allen Stanford putting up $20 million in prize money to make it happen and tempt the best possible players into being involved.

It’s been a bit of a circus, with players clearly only interested in the $$$ and Stanford himself pictured flirting with the England cricket team’s WAGs.

However the SSS has been a commercial success, and so now some moneymen in Dubai are apparently planning a football equivalent with big money “super friendlies”.

This is all based on “a source” talking to the Daily Mail. And as Marco Materazzi recently proved, the Daily Mail isn’t the most trustworthy of papers. But here’s what the source said:

‘”The match in Antigua was a huge money spinner, shown on television by almost half the countries in the world. Football would be even more of a commercial prospect.

The game would be played on a designated friendly date and England played Argentina in Switzerland in a friendly a few years ago so there should be no problems about a neutral venue.”

Sounds crazy, but it just might work. The problem with the Stanford Super Series is that there were no “friendles”. Every game already mattered, to some extent. So the SSS introduced cricket to an unprecedented level of shallowness and commercialism that doesn’t sit well with the games history.

But much as we all love football, we have to admit that it’s already gone down the commercial path. And international friendlies are increasingly under fire, their value being questioned. So maybe some high profile friendlies where all the players show up because there’s real money at stake might not be such a crazy idea…

	Soccer Forums	International Results			Travel