New world order Welcome to the new era of excellence of the Premier League

New world order? Welcome to the new era of excellence of the Premier League

At the beginning of the season, the Premier League seems to have everything to please. But this new world brings new challenges to all

Call me my burning golden bow. Bring me back my European finals entirely in English. Bring me my cycle of national TV rights of £ 5 billion over three years. Bring me my Amazon Fire Staff.

The Premier League has always been an imperial and expansionist force. From the beginning, the goal was to fill the skies, to build a new luminous world super league on England's own green and agreeably deregulated terrain.

Sometimes it was a bit like a commercial argument, the Premier League radiating its best smile, Don King, and declaring itself the biggest and most splendid of all football leagues, even as big teams and great players raised their own European era. club football domination elsewhere.

So far, it is. Welcome to the new world. As the new season prepares to move up a gear, we need to remember where we left off. Four English teams had already reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League before Liverpool and Tottenham met in Madrid on the first day of June. Arsenal and Chelsea blocked the final of the Europa League in Baku. With the arrival of spring, Manchester City and Liverpool were the only appropriate title races in the main European leagues.

Meanwhile, the cash registers continue to ring, this miraculous tide of high finance locks through the double machine of English football. According to Forbes magazine, nine of the 20 most lucrative clubs in the world are in England, including six in the top 10. The league has even begun to produce - among all - local talent, its elite academies are the envy of the same European teams that English football considered with a keen sense of inadequacy a few years ago.

Look at our works, you powerful and ... well, what exactly? If it sounds like the culmination of something, a moment to catch one's breath and lower one's eyes, briefly, on sight, it's also a point of uncertainty on many fronts.

Last season's race was of course a pipe dream. The first two fought each other, but the gap with Chelsea, third, was surprisingly 25 points. The Wolves, seventh, finished with 41 points behind the champions. A title race should be the proof of a shared strength, of a system capable of producing contenders for equivalent championships with its own resources. Last year was exciting. But it was also a stroke of luck, a rare coincidence between the two best teams of the same generation during the same season.

It may seem strange to be alarmed by excellence. The genius of the champions of the city and Liverpool's ability to match them were marvels of the age of football in the clubs. Both teams produce football runs to equal or exceed the best of the recent period.

But it is a challenge that every team outside this elite pocket must strive to meet. The good health of the league is based on real competitiveness. The key to this idea lies in the fact that it can always provide sport in its purest form, that all teams are able to fight against each other rather than simply offering a backdrop to the shine of the elite.

The Premier League has increasingly split into segments in recent years: the A-Listers; second enthusiastic evaluators; forage in the middle of the table; minority at risk. Inside that, there has been an increase in the number of matches where possession becomes fastidiously asymmetrical, where fleeing with a respectable defeat is a desirable outcome.

There were notable exceptions last year: Crystal Palace's willingness to put pressure on Manchester City at home and elsewhere, for example. But the fact that they are remarkable tells his own story. It is a process that will only intensify with the increased share of foreign television rights funds for larger clubs, and a movement among club owners to dilute the principle of equality of shares.

Can someone fill the gap on the first two? The ghost ship of a Manchester United team continues to be on the list, unable to divest itself of its skeleton crew or add enough new life. Chelsea has entered a fascinating sleep mode, which could eventually prove beneficial. Tottenham are probably the best placed. Harry Kane is in one of his periods of crisis between periods of injury. Tanguy Ndombele may take some time to settle down, but he already looks handsome.

Likewise, Nicolas Pépé is an ambitious signing for Arsenal and another indication of the popularity of moderate to high-priced purchases, characteristic of city planning in recent years.

Still, challenging the top two seems a daunting task. Rodri will strengthen the seams of this wonderful midfielder in the city. And the champions and Liverpool will improve with a new summer in the hands of Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp.

Best of all would be another discussion team. Currently, Leicester and Wolves seem best placed to put pressure on the teams that finished above them last season. Below, you'll find the usual middleweight group, like survivors on the Raft of Medusa, anxious to stay afloat and continue to enjoy the extraordinary rewards of stasis in the Premier League.

It is a concentration of wealth that affects everything else, from domestic cups devalued to the basic health of the ever-narrower pyramid below. At the top, there will be once again a lot of entertaining football in this mediocre pack. It's a sign of the richness of the Premier League that the fear of stagnation reigns even as teams like Bournemouth and Watford have such great attacking talent in their ranks and a club with managerial experience Burnley continues to perform at such a high level.

The promoted teams will again face a significant advance. There has already been some degree of fatalism about the Sheffield United and Norwich prospects, but Aston Villa seems a decent bet to extend the growing Midlands recovery. The strange scenes taking place in Newcastle this summer suggest that a good start is essential to avoid a difficult season.

Beyond that, the most notable change will occur via another television intrusion. For the first time, the video assistant referee will follow the field. The problems with VAR remain the same: a bad VAR is really bad; good VAR is a welcome addition. The obvious fear is that the same issues that emerged at the Women's World Cup will eclipse such tedious topics as football.

It is a sport with asperities, which plays constantly on the edge of the rules, some of which now seem changeable and vague when they are subject to this level of vigilance without fault. The balance is delicate here. As always, the failure of VAR will depend on the humans who design and operate the system.

The other major change is the introduction of a winter break in February. This has been a cause so famous for so long that his arrival may have been a little implied. In truth, the winter break was never the answer to many, and certainly not to the repeated failures of the England team, the fruit of generations of improper training, tactics and management. If players are allowed to rest, if it prevents a group of ligaments from pinging, a hamstring or two from entering the red zone, then this will be a wise addition.

And so to the final countdown. A first televised match on Friday night at Anfield, where Norwich greets visitors, is another indication of the financial muscle of the Premier League. The list of Boxing Day games live on Amazon Prime indicates where it may be in the future.

As always, the task is to negotiate a path through this hell of greed and competing interests. Despite all the power of its global brand, the new Jerusalem of the Premier League is a fragile entity, more dependent on what it might want to believe on specific details and on the goodwill of the fans who have supported it since its birth in the middle of the Victorian era. The new season already appears as a decisive step in another stage of this existence.