[MisterBastahrd]

No they don't.

They want to see an underdog BEAT a global power. Which means that the average game is a bitter disappointment. Gone long enough, the ESL would have presented a gigantic competitive advantage for its own teams when vying for star talent. And they're still likely to do it in the future anyway. They just needed a longer runway.

If the Premier League can't have its "tradition" without Man U and Man City, then it isn't tradition that they care about in the first place.

[username90]

Seeing a good team beat a bad team is fun. I've watched soccer where everyone knew "our" team would win, the question was if it would win small like 4-0 or big like 10-0. Watching sports isn't just about the suspense over who will win, there is so much more to it than that.

And it is hard to appreciate how good a team is without seeing them play against worse teams. Similarly from the bad teams side it is fun seeing them just make a single goal against a good team, you don't have to win.

[MisterBastahrd]

A great team proves themselves by beating great competition, not bad competition. Anyone can throttle a punching dummy. I don't know why people sit there and pretend like if you put the 12 squads together in their own league that the games would all be evenly matched. That's never the case. It's much more interesting for most people for a game to be close than to watch a blowout with an overmatched opponent.