"Alright lads, what time should I make the next withdrawal?"
A friend of UF, Wanker’s Doom, is more than a little distraught with the economic doom lurking over so many storied clubs.
I don’t know when the genie came out of the bottle. I don’t remember the name of the first club who opened football’s Pandora’s box. Maybe it was when a German side lured away my beloved Kevin Keegan from his home shores in the 70s. Perhaps football “jumped the shark” when Real put together its first batch of Galacticos.
What I do realize is that the hens have come home to roost and the greed that permeates our favourite sport is within an eyelash of hurting it badly.
Greed comes in many forms. There’s the obvious desire of the players to garner as much moolah as their all-too-brief careers permit. Then there’s the pretty clear ego of owners who tie their sense of self and penis size to the performance of their clubs (note to Portsmouth – uh oh). Finally, there is the insatiable desire of the home team fan to win, win and win. It’s no surprise that Supporters United is getting their knickers in a twist in the one season in the last umpteen that the Red Devils are looking markedly mortal.
So, now we’re in deep kimshe. I like Everton and Spurs and Brum and Hull and especially, Fulham. Smartly-run clubs that don’t have a needle’s chance in a haystack of winning the CL or the Prem. Every now and again, they’ll pick up an FA Cup (Pompey managed that trick recently, and look what a shambles they are now as the pay the piper for paying for the pursuit of their dreams).
It’s like we’re just shy of economic Armaggeddon, so much so that one gets to witness the dual absurdities of Roman suggesting economic reforms and Arab owners begging for relief down South.
England’s top flight has two well managed clubs with a shot at honours. Arsenal, a poster child for responsibility gifted with a brilliant, iconoclastic Arsene Wenger and a board that gets it and Chelsea, whose billionaire owner converted the entirety of the club debt into equity while stealing, errrrr, contracting other smaller teams’ best players. And Arsenal hasn’t won a trophy of consequence in more than 4 years.
On the continent, it’s not much better. Italy is dominated by the Turin and Milan sides, Spain by 2 squads called Barca and Real and Germany apparently only gives titles to teams with Bayern in their name.
And of all of these squads, I’d hazard a guess that only Barca is in decent financial shape (it helps when one has a fabulous academy and captures 6 trophies in a single year).
Football needs revenue sharing. Football needs a salary cap.
Football needs a truly level playing field and partnership between players and owners.
Football needs this or the only thing left in Pandora’s box, Hope, will soon be flying the coop.
I’ve felt this way for a little while now but I think it will require more clubs plummeting into disaster before anything changes. And UEFA as a whole is going to have to accept it.
I think we may be seeing the beginning of the impetus for change, but it’s probably gonna be a few years before any serious talks start happening.
I can’t be the only person who thought this was stunningly hypocritical.
>Football needs a truly level playing field and partnership >between players and owners.
yeah, sure…
>Football needs revenue sharing.
Ideally each league should have revenue sharing since even the greatest teams can not get fans to come if there is no opposing team to play against.
>Football needs a salary cap.
Wishful thinking. Caps only can work in league settings, ideally like the american leagues where there are no interactions with other countries (canada doesnt count since its a banana republic in sports).
The money problems and lack of self control arent because United or Chelsea spend to beat Wigan or Bolton, its because teams are trying to beat the Milans and Barcas.
A cap would help a national league but would of course be impossible as soon as you compete with teams from other countries.
Basketball, football and other european sports rely heavily on european club events so analogy to self contained american leagues is useless.
MCR: It’s a guest post. By which I mean, it doesn’t reflect the views of UF necessarily.
But that should also be amended with the statement that UF itself doesn’t always have a unified opinion on many if not most things.
I think the answer is sort of skated over in the post: Barcelona. Every professional team should be owned by the community in which it resides. That should be the model. Even here in the US (I totally admire the Packers for sticking with this).
PR: I know. I’m not criticizing you, James or UF. I’m criticizing a post that to me to be stupid.
As for Barca being the answer, maybe. You’ll notice, though, that non-community-owned teams in the US have done ok, even without salary caps. It requires owners willing to live within their means. Unfortunately, the entire system of promotion and relegation, and the lure of European competitions, encourages gambling on players, leading to ruin. Ownership won’t solve this issue; Barca would be in deep s**t if they hadn’t been one of the traditional powers of Spanish soccer, just like Real, and just like the Milan and Turin sides in Italy. As for Germany, Wolfsburg won last year with fairly modest spending.
I understand that there are tremendous financial problems in soccer. I don’t accept that revenue sharing and a salary cap will do anything to fix the problems, as long as the promotion/relegation system exists and piles of cash are available to teams that qualify for Europe. Instead, what leagues need to adopt from the US is truly rigorous fitness tests for ownership groups. That’s where the problems have started.
My charge of hypocrisy was leveled primarily because I thought the author was a Chelsea fan. I withdraw that charge.
Hey MCR:
I am a Chelsea fan, but I am far more a lover of football. It’s why I address the marked absurdity of an owner like Abramovich acting as a lead gun for spending relief. While his ideas have merit, he’s entirely the wrong mouthpiece for them. He did, after all, pour huge amounts of jet fuel on a simmering blaze 6-7 years ago when he bought Chelsea.
Even the American leagues struggle mightily with revenue sharing and salary caps. The NFL has done it well, whilst Major League Baseball has a structure that almost guarantees a lack of fair competition. And while I completely concede your point about relegation, I am not sure about the pieces revolving around CL and the internationalism of leagues.
In terms of CL pay, that’s also money that can be split. Much like the gates between home and away teams, a system could be easily evolved where the CL teams themselves get some extra love, but a significant share of the proceeds get split amongst the remaining teams.
And since you do concede that domestic leagues can have balanced competition and salary caps, at the very least the attempt should be made. We can all see where this ends, with multiple clubs in receivership and a continuation of 5 clubs competing for all the trophies$
No way a salary cap ever takes hold in Europe. If one league tries it, the players will start to move to an uncapped league in another country. Don’t think FIFA can mandate it across all leagues because of EU labor laws (not positive on that, but I recall seeing that in some media outlet when the idea has been floated in the past).
Abramovich is suddenly upset that someone with more money has come along and ruined his monopoly of stupid overspending. So he now finds religion and wants to change the rules? That’s kind of a dickhead move.
United ‘failing’ might be the best thing for football (for a while at least) as it might scare a few owners into reconsidering how they manage their funds. Then again it might not. Leeds’ administration and double relegation punishment didn’t do much.
Salary Caps? They only limit the free market, and allow for the owners to make more money, and limit the players pay.
Also, how do you suppose to implement this across multiple leagues? Because if the EPL implements a salary cap, wouldn’t that just drive more players looking to cash in out of the EPL?
How do you regulate the salary cap? By a combo of wages and transfer fees?
Revenue Sharing? Is the TV money not shared? Besides how can you monitor the revenue created from other revenue streams? This is a nearly impossible task.
Even if you put in place Salary Caps and Revenue Sharing, it is not going to stop owners/management from spending poorly, and overspending what they can afford.
The teams you mention, Everton, Spurs, Fullham, and Arsenal all are financially responsible teams, and will continue to be provide the same ownership/management stay in place.
You cannot regulate the game to baby-proof it from the stupidity of ownership/management groups who put their teams in financial trouble (you can’t save them, since they are incapable of saving themselves).
The only way to promote financially responsibility among clubs is to reward financial responsibility, and harsher punishments against the fiscally irresponsible. If the Administration were used more frequently, as there are clearly opportunities to so (Portsmouth, West Ham before sale), teams wouldn’t go down these roads as frequently.