You really must see Stoke one day.

Wealthy people aren’t just visiting the city famous for its pottery industry history, they’re moving there.

And why not? You could do all kinds of exciting things in Stoke, such as touring Wedgwood. The Potteries Museum is pretty cool and it includes a Spitfire fighter aircraft. There’s Trentham Estate with its beautiful gardens, a monkey forest and a shopping village. Then… there are more pottery factory tours. And more museums… with pottery.

I know of four guys who have chosen to move to Stoke after living in Barcelona. So forget including the Catalan capital in your next European tour. The West Midlands is the place to be.

In other news, we’re just days away from the first weekend of the 2015-16 English Premier League season.

For many fans around the world, it can’t begin soon enough. The EPL is the biggest domestic league in soccer and one of the biggest sporting shows on earth. Only the major competitions in the United States (which has a population more than five times the size of Britain’s) have higher yearly revenues.

The EPL’s ascendancy drives soccer hipsters to despair. They would rather identify themselves as supporters of Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund or some other romantic club from continental Europe.

They will tell you there is as much or more quality in the leagues of Spain, Germany and Italy; remind you that England’s only World Cup win occurred before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon; and ask you if you realise that no English clubs made the quarter-finals of last season’s UEFA Champions League.

But most fans around the world either don’t know how good some other countries’ leagues are or (more likely) they do know but don’t care.

Before the EPL was formed in the early 1990s, The Football League ran England’s four professional divisions. The main motive for creating the breakaway Premier League was to give the top division independence (from the lower ones) in negotiating broadcasting deals.

The first TV rights deal, covering 1992 to 1997, was worth £191 million. For 2016 to 2019, it’s £5.1 billion.

Some of this phenomenal success does have its roots in the pre Premier League era.

Is Stoke-on-Trent the new Barcelona? Image: Chris Allan

The English may not have been as good at making money out of the game back then but they still sent it around the world. The result being that people in many countries could follow English soccer on television or radio while there was little or no access to broadcasts from other top leagues.

I remember those days – only one hour of soccer on TV each week. From England. If you didn’t watch it, you didn’t watch the sport at all.

The first club I became a fan of was an English one. I also support a team in Italy and most of my family lives near its home ground. But when I wake on Sunday mornings (and haven’t been watching matches through the night), the first result I look for is Nottingham Forest’s. By the time some footage from the rest of Europe found its way on to Adelaide television, I’d been following Forest for years.

It’s a common story and that’s why so many people without English heritage have English teams they’re passionate about.

Other factors that contribute to the EPL’s global popularity include the English language’s prevalence, connections through the Commonwealth and, it must be said, slick marketing.

And though there might be arguments about which country has the best league, informed observers couldn’t seriously say the standard of the EPL isn’t high.

It may continue to improve thanks to the new broadcasting deal. Already 20 of the 23 highest earning clubs, in TV rights, are the 20 in the Premier League. All of them are behind Real Madrid and Barcelona and only Italy’s Juventus is preventing the English clubs from filling spots 3 to 22 on that measure.

As so much of that television money goes to players, financially, the best destination for anyone who can’t get a contract in Barcelona or Madrid is likely to be a city in England that hosts a top division team. Perhaps Newcastle or Southampton.

Or Stoke … currently home to four former Barça players.

Paul Marcuccitti is InDaily’s soccer columnist. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 11am on Saturdays.