In what was, even by my standards, an unusually grumpy mood a few weeks ago, I settled down to watch Manchester City play Tottenham in the Premier League. Tottenham were wearing black. This makes no sense.

Usually Tottenham wear white. Manchester City wear sky blue. White and sky blue are colours that are easily distinguishable, and have been since the sides first met in the first round of the FA Cup in 1909. City v Spurs is in no sense a special rivalry, but it is one of the great old fixtures of English football, one that had been played 147 times before, the most notable two being their meeting in the 1981 FA Cup final and its replay. It's a game that oozes history, and a tradition of which English football ought to be so proud. And Tottenham wore black.

 

Doing so was a rejection of over a century of history in order to try to increase sales of replica shirts. Spurs are far from the only team doing it (City, in fact, wore an execrable dark blue away kit for no good reason at West Ham this season) but this, it seemed to me, said everything you need to know about modern English football: tradition defiled to flog a few more shirts. Given the obsession with the transfer market and the extraordinary throughput of players, how long would it be, I asked angrily on Twitter, before football became just a random assortment of few dozen of the world's best players wearing randomly assigned shirts?

"Like the IPL?" somebody replied, which perhaps isn't entirely fair, but it does get to the heart of the problem with the franchise model.

Eoin Morgan was talking about it again recently, arguing that the fact that English T20 was still based on the 18 counties diluted the quality too much. "Do I think the franchise model might have a place in England? Yes, I think it would," Morgan said. "The difficulty comes because we have so many counties. So having a franchise system would mean that the majority of counties miss out, but financially I'm sure they would be rewarded."

None of this makes a huge amount of sense. Morgan also called for T20 games to be played in one block so that more foreign stars could be brought in. Fewer teams, more foreigners… where exactly is the space for young England-qualified talent to develop? (English cricket seems to have lived with this paradox for years: there are simultaneously too many teams and, thanks to overseas players and Kolpaks, too few opportunities for young English talent).

But there is an argument beyond that and it's one that modern sport needs to face, and that's what the sport is for. Morgan seems to suggest that the most important thing is money - and so the counties who would miss out by a franchise scheme would be "rewarded". And maybe in modern sport that is the biggest issue.

Quality is another factor, but then how far do you concentrate the talent? If you really just want to see the "best" sport, maybe you need only two teams, an endless North v South roadshow, in Manchester, Nottingham, Leicester, Canterbury… rotating players in and out of the side according to form and conditions.

Or perhaps you want the sport to mean something. Perhaps you want the teams to represent an area or an ideal, something with a sense of history and groundedness in its community. When Yorkshire play, they do so with the ghosts of Sutcliffe and Hutton and Trueman grumbling in the background. Play Middlesex and you're also playing the memories of Edrich and Compton and Titmus.

There's a history and a tradition and a meaning that can't be conjured by a bunch of freelancers thrashing around for London Blues against another bunch of freelancers playing for Leeds Reds. Maybe in time a franchise can develop a personality and a history, but the possibility is always of further reform and restructuring. Destroy what has developed organically over centuries and the new entities have an unhelpfully protean quality: the Wessex Wildcats would always be contemplating merger with the Wales Werewolves.

How much, really, can you ever love a franchise?

And that, to me, must be the most important factor. Money is important, yes, and so too is quality (even if far more people stream to watch conference football than county cricket), but there must also be a sense of permanence, of the clubs representing something beyond the abstract dream of a financial planner. If that means the quality is less, so be it. Maybe sport does mean something beyond generating revenue. Soul is important, especially if it's wearing the right kit.