Maheta Molango warns soccer chiefs to protect players: 'The quality of the spectacle is suffering'

For Maheta Malongo, the message couldn’t be clearer: soccer is dying, and the organizations in cost within the sport are culpable in main it to its dying.

The chairman of the English Skilled Footballers’ Affiliation believes that there’s a severe risk to the gorgeous sport, with new competitions saturating the calendar and including extra bodily stress to gamers who already play so many video games every year.

Molango, who has been PFA chairman since 2021, has expertise of different soccer cultures too after presiding over Actual Mallorca as their CEO from 2016 to 2020.

Two weeks in the past, he participated in an fascinating presentation on the International Soccer Discussion board awards along with Ferrn Soriano (Manchester Metropolis), Karl Heinz Rummenigge, Mikel Arteta and Cesc Fbregas about the way forward for soccer.

There, Molango issued a stern warning to soccer chiefs to guard gamers higher or danger watching the multi-billion product change into much less entertaining for viewers.

“We’re shut to a degree of no return. For the primary time, we’re realizing that it isn’t only a drawback of some privileged gamers who earn properly and play loads,” Molango mentioned.

“We now have reached some extent the place folks notice that that is beginning to have an effect on the standard of what we see on the sector. Even probably the most skeptical followers notice that they need to see their finest gamers and plenty of cannot give what you need.

“There’s the instance of Pedri in Spain. While you attain a sure stage, with a lot strain of video games in a row, there’s a second when your physique does not give it, and irrespective of how a lot cash they earn, that does not make it simpler.”

The place England goes flawed

The PFA chief additionally pointed to the NFL mannequin, the place groups play fewer video games however nonetheless deliver in additional income than English golf equipment: “We often have a look at different fashions after we have an interest. The American mannequin is totally different, you do not have to match issues that aren’t utterly comparable, however you notice that in america within the NFL the groups play 17 video games all through the season and make 10 billion in income.

“Within the Premier League, which I believe all of us agree that, with the permission of La Liga, is a very powerful league on this planet, soccer makes 4.2 billion in 38 video games. So we’re doing one thing flawed.”