Imagining a Premier League All-Star Weekend

The Premier League is officially through Matchday 20, meaning that we are more than halfway through the 2016–17 Premier League campaign. (Or in the words of the Men In Blazers, “We are now 22/38ths of the way through the season, which reduces to 11/19ths.”) For many American fans, being just over the halfway point of a sports season signals a time for reflection, midseason awards, and more than anything else, an All-Star Game!

Both the NBA and MLB have their respective All-Star Games just over halfway through their seasons, offering a few days off for their players, while offering a fun interlude for their fans. While the Premier League has no such history of an All-Star Game, the league is always looking for new ways to increase its revenue, and just in the past couple of months, articles in The Telegraph, as well as on Bleacher Report have put forward the idea of an All-Star Weekend for the Premier League. As a Premier League diehard, I’m all aboard. Let’s take a look at how this could play out.

The Game Itself

Just like the NBA, the Premier League could decide on a certain team each year to host. Maybe it is a team that has had new renovations to their stadium, or a team that has a historic anniversary that specific season. (Which is perfect since we can start this tradition next year, narrowly avoiding having to travel to West Ham this year.)

The host city could alternate between the north and south, which works well and leads us right into how we would split up the clubs. In the NBA and MLB, there are two distinct leagues (or conferences), and the best players from each are chosen to represent the league/conference and face off with each other. In the Premier League, there is only one league and no conferences, so a new model would have to be settled upon to decide how to fashion this All-Star Game.

North and south seems the most obvious, and would lead to even more intense geographical rivalry. It would also mean that all the London rivals would have to wear the same kit, and that Liverpool and Manchester United players would have to work together towards a common goal. The exact breakdown of the teams in the north and south would have to change each year with relegation and promotion, but what will really matter in an All-Star Game are the Big Six clubs, and they’d be split right down the middle: Manchester City, Manchester United, and Liverpool on Team North, and Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal on Team South.

One idea from The Telegraph article was putting together an entire Premier League All-Star team and sending it off to somewhere in Europe to face an All-Star Team from La Liga or the Bundesliga, but that seems like a pipe dream until we at least get a domestic All-Star Game going first. (That being said, a global All-Star Weekend would be pretty effing glorious.)

The Rosters

With the matter of determining how to break up the Premier League settled, let’s take a look at how the actual 2016–17 Premier League All-Star Game Rosters would look.

First, here are the official clubs on Team North and Team South for the 2016–17 campaign:

Team North: Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Burnley, Hull City, Manchester City, Manchester United, Everton, Liverpool, Stoke City, and Leicester City.

Team South: Bournemouth, Southampton, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, West Ham, Arsenal, Tottenham, Watford, Swansea City, and West Brom Albion (the Baggies might be the only club that would take umbrage with their north/south label).

With those teams to draw from, here’s what a potential Starting XI might look like based on results from this 2016–17 campaign so far:

Team North

G David De Gea

D Nicolas Otamendi, Eric Bailly, George Friend, Leighton Baines

M Kevin De Bruyne, Sadio Mane (or Jordan Henderson… or Adam Lallana… or Philippe Coutinho… man, the Liverpool midfield is stacked), Joe Allen

F Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Jermain Defoe, Sergio Aguero

Can you imagine the possible unintentional humor of having a front three consisting of Zlatan, Defeo, and Kun? How freakin’ fun would that be? How about watching Sadio Mane and Joe Allen work out how to play together in the midfield? Who needs Penn and Teller, this is true entertainment?! (Penn and Teller are still considered titans of entertainment in modern society, right?)

Team South

G Thibault Courtois

D Danny Rose, Virgil van Dijk, Toby Alderweireld, Hector Bellerin

M Dele Alli, N’golo Kante, Gylfi Sigurdsson

F Alexis Sanchez, Diego Costa, Eden Hazard

Just imagine Courtois with a long toss out to Rose who flies down the flank, finds Dele who plays a one-two with Sanchez and then whips a ball into Costa who outmuscles his opponent to put the header just past De Gea in the top corner. That’s the stuff dreams are made of. Seriously, this needs to happen.

Skills Portion

Now that the showdown between Team North and Team South has its teams and its rosters, all that is missing is the filler. NBA All-Star Weekend has the Slam Dunk and Three-Point Competitions. MLB All-Star Weekend has the Home Run Derby. What could the EPL All-Star Weekend have? Glad you asked.

Free Kick Competition

This one is the most obvious. Watching superstars like Christian Eriksen, Dimitri Payet and Robert Snodgrass (that’s right I called Snodgrass a superstar) bend kicks into the upper corners of an empty net would be great fun. It would be even more fun if real life took a page from the video game realm, and set up targets in the upper and lower corners for added points, just like in FIFA 17 loading screens. Speaking of the FIFA 17 loading screen games, we could also have a timed dribbling obstacle course and a penalty saving competition. Considering the net worth of the FIFA video game franchise, I’d have to imagine the Premier League wouldn’t mind ripping a page or two out of the FIFA playbook.

Juggling

This one is more of a throwback, remember when you were a kid trying to see how many times you could kick the ball up in the air without it reaching the ground? Well the pros still practice juggling, and it turns out they’re pretty darn good at it (and creative about it). There could be ground rules (you have to use your non-dominant foot only, or you have to do it blindfolded) to make it so we don’t simply watch Paul Pogba bounce a ball on his foot for an hour and a half, but if the Premier League script writers just got a bit creative, this competition could be wildly fun. I have Yannick Bolasie as my sleeper pick to win this one.

So there you have it, the skeleton for a Premier League All-Star Weekend. The Brits can be a bit stodgy at times about newfangled changes to their beloved historic sport, but even the most old-school of fans would have to crack a bit of a smile watching Andro Townsend and Joshua King race through an Old Trafford-themed obstacle course.