The Premier League is in full flow and it’s impossible to escape the hype but it’s pampered and overpaid professionals have got nothing on amateur footballers who play in college, small sided, and Sunday leagues for nothing but the love of the game. Here’s Playfinder‘s 5 reasons that Amateur football leagues are far superior to the flashy Premier League.

What makes amateur football leagues so great

No nonsense

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An average day watching Premier League football tends to involve about two hours of advertisements, three hours of pre match build up and then just 90 minutes of football, with some more ads crammed in at half time. What makes it worse is having to listen to Thierry Henry and Michael Owen drone on with pointless observations. Compare this to your average Sunday league game. ‘Pre match analysis’ is simple and to the point. ‘Who is the most hungover?’, ‘Who pulled last night?’ and ‘Do we have enough players to field a team?’ Simple. At half time there is no nonsense either. A bit of Lucozade to restore energy levels and quick cigarette for the centre back and it’s straight back to the action, safe in the knowledge that you’ll be playing downhill for the second half.

Jerseys that work
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It happens every year, the season is about to start and your favourite team unveils their new away kit, a lovely beige and orange skintight number with purple shorts and grey socks. What’s the point in away jerseys anyway? Amateur leagues do it best. Show up in roughly the same colour as the rest of your team and pray to god that the other team wears a different colour. Even if the opposition do show up in the same jerseys you know who your own mates are, right? Shirts and skins anyone?

Corners

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There is nothing worse. Why is it that a trained ‘professional’ on £300,000 a week can’t get a ball past the first man in ten attempts but some lad who has been wearing a hat and hoody all game just scored a hat trick directly from corners? Every Premier League player who fails to beat the first man with a cross should be fined a years wages and sent to the local park to learn from the amateurs. A corner or free kick should be a free chance at getting the ball into the danger zone, anything less and it’s a criminal offense. In amateur football even the keepers manage to get the ball into the opposition box on occasion.

Diving

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One of everyone’s pet hates is seeing minimal contact causing fully grown men to roll around on the ground as if they’ve been shot. 30 seconds later, after winning a free kick, they miraculously hop back to their feet and carry on without even needing the magic sponge. Amateur football prevents this on all but the rarest occasions. There are several factors that cause barriers to this behavior in the amateur game. Firstly being seen diving onto the grass in your local park is more likely to get you ridiculed than win you a free kick. Secondly your pitch is probably not maintained to the same standard as Old Trafford or The Emirates and nobody fancies taking a mud bath just to win a free kick in a Sunday morning kickabout.

Predictability vs Entertainment

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We all know the claims, the Premier League is “The best league in the world” and “anyone can beat anyone” but when it boils down to it those sayings tend to be a load of old rubbish. Nine times out of ten it’s painfully predictable. The big teams beat the smaller teams consistently, and then when everyone gets excited about a top of the table, Super Sunday clash it inevitably ends 0-0. On the other hand if you head down to your local park for some weekend football it’s far from predictable. On a bad day you see a 10-0 demolition. On a good day you’ll see a dog drag a traffic cone onto the pitch, the referee fall over it because he was busy talking on the phone instead of paying attention to to the game, and the players going wild at the fact that the opposition winger just kicked his throw in into the goal. True top drawer entertainment.

If you want to show up the Premier League stars with your superior skills why not check out Playfinder for Dublin’s best football pitches.