Become A Major Player (Money in Football)

Name: friendsnut

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Product:	Money in Football
Date:	28.01.06 (276 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: There are no real advantages

Disadvantages: Football is straying away from the working classes

Recently I read a quote from an American with an interest in putting money into Liverpool.

Robert Kraft said "Liverpool is a great brand and it's something our family respects a lot.”

To me these few words sum up where football as a sport is heading. Before the advent of the Premier League, football was generally competitive. Sure you always had your big teams but there would always be different teams challenging each season. You could buy a player from the lower leagues and no you were getting a capable player.

Now it’s just a case of seeing who finishes top of the big four. The rest of the clubs will just fight it out to see who finishes where. Clubs are no longer worried about relegation because they want to stay in the top league. They’re worried more about their bottom line.

Unfortunately football is now a big business in the top league and it is having a damning effect on the lower leagues. Any decent youth players are now snapped up at an early age for nominal fees. It’s very rare that you see the bigger clubs putting their transfer cash into smaller clubs. As a result you’re finding a bigger influx of foreign players and clubs are struggling to make ends meet.

In my opinion the power of players now out shadows everything else. In the last week Norwich City have sold their biggest asset to West Ham in Dean Ashton. This was not a case of the club needing the cash. It was a case of the player wanting to go, in this event the club could keep an unhappy player or simply get the best price they could and move on. All good business you may think. However football appears to be one of the only businesses where a player can make noises that he wants to go and still get a payout from his club. Ashton pocketed around £400K from the transfer, great work from his agent if you ask me.

The notion of bungs has also raised its head recently. Again I’m mystified because I thought agents acted on behalf of their client and took a percentage of the client’s earning from the deal. Yet in football, agents can negotiate a transfer for their client and then expect the club to pay for the privilege. Recently Norwich have forked out over £400k to agents and don’t have a lot to show for it. All the while players bank balances swell and the agents climb into their sports cars smiling.

And who ultimately pays for these expenses? Well it’s the fans. Without them a club loses a good source of income. But they have to break even hence you have hefty ticket prices and empty seats. Paying £40-50 for a standard ticket to see some top-flight games is frankly ludicrous. Fans are bitten at a young and usually taken by their fathers. Well sadly that will dwindle if clubs are asking you to spend £100 for an afternoon out with your kids.

Unfortunately the situation doesn’t look like changing and it will only get worse until somebody in power has the balls to say enough is enough.

Summary: Something needs to be done