The beautiful game has become a football cash cow and fans will pay the penalty

When I was young there was no finer feeling than waking up on an early autumn Saturday morning with thoughts of that day’s ­possibilities.

Those poncey summer sports were distant memories and football was getting into a free-flowing gallop before the icy cancellations of winter. But that was then.

For the second time in a month the is forced into a fortnight’s break by the suits who run the world game as an opportunity for them to make more money flogging club players in pointless international kickarounds.

Their aim is to drain every last drop from the football cash cow. Hence, over a month next summer, 32 teams will be made to play in the inaugural , taking so much out of tired players that Manchester City want the Premier League to postpone next season’s opening fixtures.

have dominated the sports pages this week, not because of their exciting football, but a they have taken out against the Premier League as part of an ongoing business war between Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and American venture capitalists.

So, instead of fans talking about sumptuous hat-tricks and defence-splitting passes we’re trying to get our heads around profitability and sustainability regulations, associated party-transaction rules and 175-page legal judgments, as football’s drama moves from stadium to courtroom.

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As Nick De Marco KC, one of 13 barristers involved in the case, breathlessly pointed out: “We are living in the most exciting time for sports law.” Not sports, mind. Just the law. Wow.

The top end of English football is no longer about who has the best team, or youth structure or fanbase, but who can hire the richest lawyers. The game has become a plaything for mega-rich foreign owners who are in it for profit, power or sportswashing their ­country’s tarnished reputation.

And it’s the fans who ultimately foot the bill for their greed. Take’s who, on their much-anticipated return to the were made to pay between £85 and £97 for tickets.

That’s because the people with the power don’t give a toss about football’s lifeblood, the local working class whose forefathers invented the game as a Saturday afternoon distraction from life’s drudgery.

Nearly half of the Premier League clubs are owned, or part-owned by American venture capitalists. When their number reaches 14 they ­effectively run the show.

Meaning our football will simply be a lucrative branch of US showbiz, with fixtures moved at will to Cincinnati and Los Angeles to satisfy their home market.

How did it come to this? Before the Premier League, admission to top football grounds used to be roughly the same as going to the cinema. Now, you’re lucky if you can get a ticket for lower than £40 with many of them snapped up by tourists paying fortunes to spivs for seats.

It’s why you hardly see any kids in stadiums – like the excited young me, who could turn up to every game and gain entrance with my pocket money.

Coincidentally, I have just bought a ticket for’s Champions League game in Germany against . It cost £13.47. So at least in Germany, where many clubs are owned by the fans, the soul of the game is still intact.

English football has eaten its soul and the putrid taste leaves most fans as nauseous as a parrot.