Yep, this is, to me, The Problem.
Let’s face it. If you are concerned about greed and money, you have had multiple opportunities to express that over the last thirty years. Perhaps when the PL was created back in 1992 - although not as a closed shop, certainly with enough of a gulf between the elite and the rest of the football pyramid that it would forever distort the game and require clubs to contort themselves into difficulties trying to get in, or stay in, that elite. Perhaps as player salaries soared past 100k, 200k, 300k, creating the conditions where the owners of football clubs would inevitably feel forced to secure revenue streams to manage these liabilities. Perhaps as the desire to expand the football market into the Middle East was deemed more important than the deaths of 3600 migrant workers.
I’m not interested in listening to Neville or Carragher bleating about greed from a Sky TV set. Millionaires complaining about billionaires ruining the game. It’s rank hypocrisy.
Yes, greed is awful. But this project isn’t the invention of greed in football, it’s the logical end point that started with the invention of premier league football and the realisation that, thanks to the mugs we are, this game is a potential cash cow that can be milked indefinitely. That attracted the millionaires, and in turn that eventually attracted by billionaires, and then the sovereign wealth funds got involved, and that left even billionaires wondering if they had enough money to compete. And all the time the games governing bodies did nothing to restrain this. On the contrary, they welcomed it gladly.
So fuck the moralising and handwringing. That horse has long bolted, and the concept of greed in football is a genie that no-one is getting back in the bottle now.
My objections to this are similar to a lot of my objections to capitalism in general. In seeking to monetise and extract maximum value from a product, you will inevitably kill the thing you are selling.
Change in itself is not a bad thing. Change is good. It keeps things fresh and exciting. But the question that always needs to be asked is ‘is this change going to make things better’.
The following statements about sport (maybe even life) are I think objectively true. These things we hold to be self-evident etc
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success is only worth something if there is a risk of failure.
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special occasions are only special because they are rare
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Once something unique is destroyed you can’t get it back.
That’s why I think ultimately this project kills the game. It takes the special and turns it into the mundane and humdrum. It reduces Liverpool v Real Madrid or Manchester United v Barcelona and reduces them to the level of Liverpool v Burnley or Barcelona v Getafe.
The 4-0 victory over Barca wasn’t a once in a lifetime event because it was Liverpool v Barca. It was the context, the peril, the romance and the stakes. You can’t bottle it and release it every season. It mattered because we might not get to play in that game again for several years. Would the players have found the reserves of strength and resolve to do that if we knew we’d play them again next year?
We need to be careful looking at the closed shop idea, because in a lot of ways football has been a closed shop for a very long time. The distorting influence of Champions league money has created soft monopolies in that competition anyway. In some leagues more than others. The UEFA proposal also created a closed shop, and we can’t get away from the reality that any reform to the CL is going to involved some kind of guarantee to the top 15 clubs - who are all carrying the kind of wages and costs that make bring in the CL an existential necessity - that their participation, and therefore income, will be protected.
But of course that just makes competition meaningless, takes away the drama and with it, over time, the audience and the money drifts away.
And that’s what really concerns me about this. Once the ‘legacy fans’ have lost interest - and they will lose interest - then everything that the billionaires are trying to sell goes as well. Whether that’s the passion and drama of a CL semi final or the atmosphere of Anfield. It just makes football a bit rubbish. A non-event, bolstered with plastic hype, over-excited commentators, and CGI explosions on the title cards to create to illusion of importance and drama.
Everything good about football is already clinging on by it’s fingertips. Passionate fans are being priced out in favour of corporate crowds. The chances for a smaller club to rise through the pyramid and compete with the big boys is already practically non-existent. Leagues are already mostly settled by who has the most money. This could be the final stamp on the fingers.
One last point, as I’ve gone on for too long. This, one way or another, is the end of FSG. I think that’s a shame as they have mostly been good owners. But ultimately they either turn football into what they want it to be and kill it, or they realise that they can’t turn football into what they want it to be, so lose interest. I can’t see a third pathway for them at this point.