Efl? Wtf!

I’m happy to admit that I’m a traditionalist when it comes to the Football League. After all, it’s oldest organisation of its type in the world (there are older Australian Rules leagues) and only the Argentinian and Belgian competitions were playing before the turn of the twentieth century.

However the announcement last week that the Football League will be renamed the English Football League next season is as depressing as it is ridiculous as it is inaccurate. It’s not hard to see why rebranding should have been considered as an option: since 1992 the top tier of English football has been known as the Premier League, even though it’s not a ‘league’ in the strict sense of the word, it’s a division. In a world dominated by social media, the Premier League is usually abbreviated to EPL or BPL (the ‘B’ being the initial of the current title sponsor) but the Football League has been left behind by all this modern stuff. It doesn’t appear to have any kind of instantly recognisable hashtag – which is a pain in the backside when it comes to promoting these posts on twitter and Facebook – and was clearly caught flat footed by the Conference renaming itself the National League.

The problem is that #EFL is internationally recognised as the abbreviation of English as a Foreign Language and the three letter airport code for Cephalonia in Greece: then there’s also the fact that the oldest football league competition has now been reduced to a letter – we’ve got the A-league, J-League, K-League and presumably now the E-League. EFL is also one letter away from both an energy provider and a far right political party. Before anyone mentions the NFL, that organisation has been operating under that name since 1920, when they felt that the American Professional Football Association was a bit of a mouthful: that’s almost a century ago.

The social media aspect of this rebranding is only one part of the exercise – the derision that greeted the logo was almost universal as it looks like a load of blue bubbles swirling around a washing machine as much as it does a football. Presumably the logo will feature on arm patches and balls next season, although it remains to be seen if Sky Bet English Football League Championship will fit on them in anything other than a really small font. In fact, I wonder if The Championship is going to be a thing of the past: it’s been the title of the second tier for over ten seasons, which is an eternity these days. I’ve supported my club for over two decades and although they haven’t been outside the second and third tiers of English football over that period, those competitions have had their titles changed six times – and that’s not even counting the title sponsors.

In conclusion, changes could have probably been made to have given the Football League a higher profile, but the results have been widely derided and rightly so. I’ll be back next week.