Premier beginnings: Ferguson, Wenger and the rise of the EPL

GOAL STANDARD

- Kunal Pradhan

MO Salah, ageless, charges down the right; Erling Haaland, hulking, makes a run through the middle; Bukayo Saka, smooth as silk, cuts in; Cole Palmer, magical, wiggles through; William Saliba, unrelenting, times a crunching tackle; and Jordan Pickford, omniscient, dives to his left to fend off a loose-ball scorcher by Rodri, the ruthless.

The English Premier League (EPL), whose new season started last month, is today the richest and best-marketed annual sporting extravaganza in the world, igniting the passions of the largest pool of fans, spanning generations and geographies.

There is the historical might of Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, the legacy clout of Bayern Munich in Germany, the power of the purse wielded by Paris St Germain in France, and the romance of the Turin and Milan clubs in Italy, but EPL towers over the other leagues in depth of talent, breadth of competition, and in how it keeps legions of followers hooked week after week.

It wasn’t always so.

Though league football originated in England in the 1880s through the good offices of William McGregor, a Scotsman who ran a drapery in Birmingham and was director of the local Aston Villa club, its impact was restricted to the British Isles over the next century.