Does Money Indeed Ruin Football?

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For those following the games, rooting for their favourite teams and feverishly discussing their matches between two glasses of ale, football is a mix of entertainment and something to be excited about. These fans are, in turn, a massive customer base for those behind football as a business: their dedication and following is the driving force behind broadcast rights, merchandise, and ticket sales, all of which turn a wonderful sport into a cash cow for those pulling the strings. As long as the game is fair, both in the field and behind the scenes, it’s a win-win for all parties: the players get their salaries, the fans get their quality football, and the business entities behind them, ranging from football betting operators to the teams’ owners, advertisers, sponsors, and such, all get their money. Like in every business, though, there are parties in football that don’t exactly operate according to the rules. Of business, that is.

What many people don’t realize, though, is that football goes beyond being simply a game. As MEP Stelios Kouloglou pointed out in an op-ed published on Euractive this April, football can often flow into different areas like politics and racial bias, pointing out that the emergence of Pelé, one of the best football players ever, was instrumental to significantly reducing racism in Brazil. Yet the democratic nature of football is degraded today thanks to all the money flowing into it. And the best example of this, Kouloglou writes, is the UEFA Champions League.

As he points out, the only clubs that can reach the Champions League semi-finals are from the “big 5” countries – Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Great Britain. And this happens not because there aren’t any talented teams in other countries but because of all the money flowing into the clubs nowadays. After all, not all clubs can afford to pay almost £200 million for a single player, no matter how talented and marketable the player might be. These big clubs with big money behind them syphon all the most talented players from all over the world, offering amazing transfer fees and strengthening their ranks – investing in their future success with the goal of keeping their fans’ attention pointed on them, and making even more money in the process.

And where there’s money, there must be scandals related to money. Corruption and tax avoidance run rampant across football, from the top of organizations like FIFA and UEFA down to local clubs and players, working with financial advisors like Kingsbridge that allegedly help them invest in ways that will grant them tax relief, schemes that “don’t work”, according to HM Revenue and Customs.

A few years ago, an unpopular opinion emerged in the press stating that the influx of big money into football will ruin it forever by attracting the “wrong kind of owners” that see clubs as their “cash cow”, among others. MP Damian Collins went as far as saying that “Running a big football club now is like running a Hollywood studio – it’s a content business. The money goes to the stars”. And this is one of the biggest issues today’s football faces that can ruin it forever.

395 thoughts on “Does Money Indeed Ruin Football?”

  1. "Therefore the question has to be asked. Who exactly are the like of the Union Bears, the Green Brigade and others appealing to?"

    That's a great question wottpi, to which I think the answer is "other deluded, angry men".  It is possible to  relate this to the rise in populism, fuelled itself by a sense of being abandoned, but it has been going on throughout many cycles of general, public trends.  The problem is that the people who run our clubs and our game have convinced themselves that this is where the money is, or more realistically, to stop this stuff would threaten the income stream.  The immorality of this is bad enough but I happen to believe they are wrong.  It's often paraphrased from WW1 that we are "led by donkeys" but I think "led by dinosaurs" is more apt.  Their time is up though, hence the upsurge, it's a lashing out at the death.

     

     

  3. easyJambo 11th March 2019 at 16:05

    Cheers , EJ , but  I omitted to put "Scottish" in the post .

  4. Trisidium 11th March 2019 at 10:27
    22 0 Rate This

    John Clark
    There is of course the argument that the maintenance of sectarianism, racism and tribalism, all of which is readily monetised, is one of the main drivers of corruption in the sport.
    Ridding ourselves of that, despite the best endeavours of the football authorities, at well have a beneficent knock-on effect at Hampden.
    ……………………
    That time the SFA fined Charles Green for making alleged racist remarks.
    https://mobile.twitter.com/ClusterOne2/status/1104792698400268288/photo/1

  5. paddy malarkey 11th March 2019 at 18:33

    easyJambo 11th March 2019 at 16:05

    Cheers , EJ , but  I omitted to put "Scottish" in the post .

    ==================================

    It's OK. I wasn't specifically responding to your post, just adding information on the scale of the "individual" fan issue to the general debate on strict liability.

  6. I was looking back at this from 2017 . 

    http://www.parliament.scot/S5MembersBills/draft_consultation_strict_liability_Scottish_football_clubs_NEW_WEBSITE_OCT_17.pdf

    WE could easily copy UEFA table of sanctions

    The UEFA sanctions are as follows— 16  warning;  reprimand;  fine;  ban from selling tickets to supporters for away matches;  annulment of the result of a match;  order that a match be replayed;  deduction of points (for the current and/or a future competition);  order that a match be forfeited;  playing of a match behind closed doors;  full or partial stadium closure;  playing of a match in a third country;  withholding of revenues from a UEFA competition;  prohibition on registering new players in UEFA competitions;  restriction on the number of players that a club may register for participation in UEFA competitions;  disqualification from competitions in progress and/or exclusion from future competitions;  withdrawal of a title or award;  withdrawal of a licence; and  community football service.

    Some of the club responses are interesting .

    https://jamesdornanmsp.wordpress.com/strict-liability-consultation-responses/

  7. With his solitary cap , how many continuous squad selections would Alfredo have to attain to reach the threshhold of 75% of fixtures in the past two years . To date , I make it 6 World Cup qualifiers , 4 matches at the World Cup and 3 friendlies played . There are 2 friendlies upcoming before 3 Copa America group matches (if he makes the squad) ,plus any knockout matches . I can't see him being eligible for a permit to work in EPL by the end of the next transfer window . As an aside , I emailed SPFL in December and tried twice more , asking for the number of work permits currently in operation in their leagues , but have yet to recieve an acknowldgement or a response .
    PS just noticed that 75% refers to competitive matches only .

  9. Meantime, the Liquidation process of the Rangers Football Club of my grandfather's era (that is, of 1872 vintage), the football club of the four young men on Glasgow Green, continues on its inevitable ending in 'dissolution'. 

    There is some piece of routine action in Court tomorrow notified as a further  'unstarred' motion 

    "..P115/17 Note: RFC 2012 Plc for Orders under Para 75"  before Lord Doherty.

    No appearance of Counsel required, so there is nothing to be argued about, merely some judicial rubber-stamping of some procedural arrangement.  ( Who knows, though: perhaps Henderson and Jones reached an agreed settlement, with BDO happy to avoid a court battle?)

  10. John Clark 11th March 2019 at 20:36

    Meantime, the Liquidation process of the Rangers Football Club of my grandfather's era (that is, of 1872 vintage), the football club of the four young men on Glasgow Green, continues on its inevitable ending in 'dissolution'. 

    There is some piece of routine action in Court tomorrow notified as a further  'unstarred' motion 

    "..P115/17 Note: RFC 2012 Plc for Orders under Para 75"  before Lord Doherty.

    No appearance of Counsel required, so there is nothing to be argued about, merely some judicial rubber-stamping of some procedural arrangement.  ( Who knows, though: perhaps Henderson and Jones reached an agreed settlement, with BDO happy to avoid a court battle?)

    ====================================

    That case is BDO's action against the administrators (competence/negligence).

    The case no. for the H&J action is P997/17

  11. paddy malarkey's link at 19.07 this evening to the Strict Liability consultation document and the replies thereto [ what a brilliantly crafted series of intellectual arguments in support of their 'opposed' was provided by club 1872. Not Socrates, not Plato nor yet Aristotle could have matched it] made me turn to a Parliamentary debate about the abolition of corporal punishment in schools 

    https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1981/jun/08/corporal-punishment

    I've been reading it on and off this evening. 

    Because I remembered:

    there was a fight at dinner time one day in 1955, on waste ground outside the school. 'Fight, fight, fight' was the cry, and I think every pupil who heard the cry was present to see as bloody a 'schoolboy' fight as ever was seen. 

    It happened that a wee wumman passing by stopped to try to break it up. She was hunted- and someone threw a clod of earth at her, some of which made a mess on her coat; and the fight carried on.

    When we all got back to our classrooms, we, that is, every class,  were asked 'who threw the clod'.

    No one owned up. 

    Result: the whole damned school got the belt.

    Even as a 13 year old I thought that a bit excessive- we had only just been reading about the Roman Army, where they were content just to punish one-in-ten!

    A more mature understanding of that and similar, one-classroom, experiences makes me instinctively opposed to SL. There can be no justification for punishing the 'innocent.' Doing so is essentially an admission of defeat, and a resort to the unprincipled behaviour of the bad guys. 

    We on this blog are strong in our condemnation of our Football Governance body's contempt for truth and justice when it comes to applying basic rules of sporting integrity: we should not , I believe, compromise ourselves by suggesting that there is a 'greater good' that can be served if we ourselves dispense with notions of fairness and truth and justice.

     

  12. From ET last week;

    "6th March

    Alex McLeish: Allan McGregor won't take the huff with Scotland over his SFA rap

    By Stewart Fisher

    ALEX McLeish will confidently name Allan McGregor in his Scotland squad next week – putting an end to fears that the Rangers goalkeeper could take his recent brush with the SFA’s disciplinary department out on the national team…

    "Are there any concerns about Allan?" said the Scotland manager. "No, I don’t think so. The SFA are the governing body and we are all part of it but no, I don’t think so. That would be like me back in the day going up for one of my disciplinary hearings and shouting ‘Jock, Mr Stein – that’s it, I’m not playing for Scotland any more’. That won’t be an issue with Allan, he is bigger than that.” …

    Then 5 days later, from the ET today;

    "Rangers keeper Allan McGregor steps down from Scotland duty

    … [he] has announced his retirement from Scotland duty…"

    ============ 

     

    Good to see the Scotland manager has his finger on the pulse WRT his team…

    enlightened 

  14. easyJambo 11th March 2019 at 21:12

    '..The case no. for the H&J action is P997/17'

    **********

    Aye, eJ, I should have checked the list! broken heart Just hoping for some interesting development.

  16. StevieBC 11th March 2019 at 22:15

    '..Good to see the Scotland manager has his finger on the pulse WRT his team…'

    **********

    And good to see that the unfaithful, 'committed'  manager who so contemptuously walked away from the Scotland job( but got it back) is so oo oo understanding of  McGregor's hissyfit.

    Honest to God!

    How much crap can we take from  our Football Governance body?  

    Leave aside Truth: have they no bloody idea of how to lie in any kind of integrated manner?

  17. I hope that one of the new rules is that the SLO is present among the supporters , especially at away fixtures .

  18. PaddyMalarkey@22.45

    There’s no Hampden gigs on that list however Eminem played Hampden a few years ago and I know from personal experience there were a large number of that particular artists’ fans arrested on the night. There were also the same issues when Oasis were at Hampden. The Robbie Williams crowd are no angels either.

  20. From BBC website today

    Referee Steven McLean phoned Steven Gerrard to apologise for missing a foul in the lead up to Hibs equaliser on Friday night

     

    crying crying

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