Hello and welcome to your favorite new television program – EMEYAE (Extreme Makeover English Youth Academy Edition)! We are so excited to see you! Basically, after the new EPPP guidelines were passed, a lot of people got angry. Local communities felt threatened that the free movement of individual youth labor would leave them devastated. However, the brilliance of network Television offers a silver bullet and all kinds of odd sounds called a “laugh track.”
First things first, EMEYAE has led to a reform of the EPPP and we’ve pulled the weed up by the root. Basically, capitalism as a system pits individuals against one another, leading to collective action problems whereby our rational self-interests aggregate to global catastrophes. For example, let’s assume I’m a Manchester City fan. I buy a ticket to a game. No worries, right? I watch a game, I enjoy myself, end of story. But, what happens when I buy a season ticket? Or, worse, when my neighbor also buys a ticket? Well, then, collectively, unknowingly, we’ve financed a lovely local club for the plucking by Qatari oligarchs. And it gets worse – these foreigners then buy foreign talent to populate the team and also to attract foreigners watching on TV! What could be worse?
The only way to stop this rock from rolling down the hill is to eliminate individual autonomy. The old English Youth Academy geographic limit kinda served this purpose – players under a certain age had to train at an academy close to home. However, this limit didn’t go far enough. Thus, EMEYAE has inspired a revision of the EPPP that bans transfers of individual players. Yep. Big clubs will have to either buy entire academies or nobody. No more cherry-picking, God be praised! Now, just to answer any lingering doubts, yes the Professional Player Agents’ Association did propose this rule change. However, no money or lobbying per se occurred. This rule was amended in the interests of the players, academies, and local communities. If the agents happen to get a windfall, so be it.
EMEYAE, though, has personally guaranteed a windfall for affected local communities in the most entertaining way possible. With live camera footage, of course. That’s right – for every mega-club that buys an entire academy and plucks that town or city’s talented youth from their roots, that mega-club must….send their first team to the town to paint, remodel, and convert the youth academy into an orphanage, animal shelter, or youth crisis center!
What could be better? Mega-clubs get their superstar, mid level players get to train with the best coaches, and local communities get refurbished orphanages, animal shelters, or youth crisis centers. And TV audiences get wonderful prime time entertainment! It’s win-win-win-win. Only rival networks lose, ziiiinggg! And I can think of quite a few orphans that would love to live at the freshly painted Ipswich Center for Runaway Youth. Did I mention that Michael Carrick himself personally rolled up his sleeves and sanded the trim around the new front door? He certainly has a promising handyman career after football! I hope Fabio Capello was watching!
Of course, thus far EMEYAE has not been all smooth sailing. Nani did hurt himself with a hammer, confusing it for a cosmetic enhancement device. However, Ryan Giggs enthusiastically screwed just about anything in sight, even if Rooney couldn’t keep a grip on his nuts. The initial screen tests show that TV audiences truly & fully appreciate the efforts put forth by Manchester United to compensate for the tiny fixed monetary payment United exchanged to the academy to kidnap a big chunk of the town’s youth. And the Ipswich Center absolutely screams re-birth with those lovely new curtains!
Like all great television series, EMEYAE has its boo birds. Many of these folks want the most talented members of their community to be shackled by the lottery of birth. In a nutshell, they feel that other members of the community benefit from regularly interacting with these “shooting stars.” What they don’t realize is that these shooting stars have dreams, dreams of being an astro or maybe some day a comet. And only by shooting alongside other shooting stars can they become an astro and maybe one day a comet. And to the shooting stars, the surrounding community feels like a buzz killing black hole at times.
EMEYAE would never want to say anything decisive that may offend potential viewers or sponsors. However, surely we can agree that it is visually pleasant to see a shooting star shoot alongside other shooting stars.EMEYAE allows this to happen, but only if astros come and moderately improve the shooting star’s original galaxy. And those astros also take care of all the shooting stars from that galaxy, not just the star that shoots the best at a particular moment. To sum things up – EMEYAE is pro shooting star, pro galaxy, pro astro, and pro comet. And pro TV ratings.
Be sure to catch the next episode when Didier Drogba and his power drill turn a “f’ing disgrace” of a youth academy into a lovely volunteer-ran Goodwill store!
(H/T to Terry Duffelen)