Gorging globally

 Somewhere in St. Louis right now heads are bobbing knowingly, because they've seen this movie, too. Nobody has to tell them what a grasping fluffhead Stan Kroenke is, on account of St. Louis doesn't have a football team anymore.

Kroenke took care of that, whisking the Rams off to L.A. in one of those naked cash grabs the NFL never seems to mind so long as the TV numbers in a particular market are fat enough.

Well. Now soccer fans across the pond know what that feels like.

Kroenke, see, holds the controlling interest in Arsenal, one of the Premier League's most iconic sides. Their fans are passionate, not entirely rational and loyal right down to the ground -- in other words, they're English soccer fans.

And they don't like money-grubbing slicksters gorging themselves at every trough any better than folks in St. Louis do.

Which brings to the sad saga of the abortive European Super League, a money-grubbing scheme cooked up by some of Europe's wealthiest sides. Among those were six Premier League sides; among those was Arsenal.

The idea was Europe's power elite would form its own league, thereby undercutting the established Champions League. The best American analogy I heard came from some radio talking head, who compared it to college basketball.

The Super League, he said, would be as if all the college hoops royalty -- your Dukes, your North Carolinas, your Kansases and Kentuckys et all -- played for their conference titles like usual, then conducted their own postseason tournament separate from March Madness. That way they wouldn't have to share the proceeds with Mercer and North Texas State and the rest of the riffraff.

The fans of the riffraff schools would no doubt howl. But there's howling, and then there's howling.

And Stan Kroenke and the rest of the American owners sponging off European soccer sides have never seen howling like soccer-fan howling.

And so Premier League fans rose up as one, and pretty soon all six PL sides had pulled out of the proposed Super League, which caused the proposed Super League to fall down and go boom. And now Arsenal's fan base is demanding Kroenke's family sell the team.

They say they won't, but in my notoriously over-active imagination, I can see a come-to-Jesus meeting starring the Kroenkes and a few hand-picked Arsenal supporters. It would be held in some blue-collar pub, and the conversation would go something like this:

Arsenal supporters: Sell the club, you wankers!

Stan Kroenke: I'm sorry, but that's simply out of the question.

(A tinkly smashing sound as Will'um and Georgie and Artie the Fist break their ale bottles on the bar and brandish the jagged remnants)

Arsenal supporters: Perhaps you'd like to rethink your position, guv'ner.

Of course, in real life, Kroenke merely apologized to Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta for his money grubbing, saying he understands now that "the soul of this sport belongs to the fans."

And from across the pond in St. Louis, where Kroenke trashed the fan support on his way out of town, the sound of bitter laughter.