I just want to start enjoying Everton again. I can't connect to these players/the manager at all and it just feels like such a slog. Have been watching less and less games since carlo left
I tend to agree with you. Poor Godfrey got injured yesterday and while I found myself feeling sorry for the lad going through that painful ordeal, I didn't really feel a sense of loss at all for the team. You know when you lose a big player to injury, you feel the effect in your gut for a week after? Not this time. Why? Probably because I don't rate the lad at all - and possibly because I don't think there is a single player in our squad who is anywhere near the standard of where we need to be. I see lots of millionaire mediocrities. Not the players' fault - they are earning what they can while they can - but it's a symptom of how obscene the professional game now is that bog standard second rate players are basically set for life after a few seasons at a club like Everton who make a speciality of winning nothing.
I think, actually, a lot of this feeling is down to age/experience. I am 50 now. I have see the great 80s team. Everything since has been a monumental let down. I look at the economics of the game - I have a degree in the subject - and shake my head that the average fan seems to talk as much about the club's finances as any of our players or matches. I see the likes of Godfrey - still considered "young" despite being 25 next January - and compare him with the 22-year-olds and 23-year-olds that festooned our 80s side - or the likes of Rooney or Lukaku who we saw since. I wish the lad well, but he is one of a whole collective of deeply underwhelming players on eye-watering contracts with little to nothing to show for it on the pitch.
I'm probably no longer the target audience for professional soccer any more. I find the Champions League tedious these days - though I appreciate the standard - and will watch the World Cup in winter despite my uneasiness at how even that has been utterly corrupted. I've been watching hurling this summer and absolutely marveling at the skill, conditioning, and mentality of amateur players. I get so much more out of that authentic endeavour than I do out of football now. And this from a man with 1,000 football DVDs in my collection! It's not just amateur sport that is showing up the Premier League in my world. Snooker, too, seems far more impressive to me these days. The rewards are very moderate by comparison with football, but nobody can tell me that Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Selby, John Higgins, Mark Williams, or Judd Trump are not comparable to Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, or De Bruyne in skill, mentality, and execution.
I suppose I've become my father. Happens to all of us eventually.
