Soccer

» dantilles - British soccer's dodgy dealings

If anyone is interested I've just written an article on foreign investment in British soccer teams:

http://britishaffairs.suite101.com/artic...

I'd be interested to know if anyone has any thoughts on this. Are the likes of Abramovich, Glazer and Joorabchian good for English football? Or is this the end of football as we know it?

-- posted by dantilles

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» SimonMelville - British soccer's dodgy dealings

In response to British soccer's dodgy dealings posted by dantilles:
My view is that it's unfortunate but a inevitable consequenece of football clubs being run as businesses.

While it brings increased levels of professionalism off the pitch, the mega bucks that football attracts will also attract people who want a slice of it, like in other industries.

I would argue that transparency had increased as clubs float on the stock exchange -- although the level of info that Manchester United has to reveal as a PLC on the London Stock Exchange is far more stringent than Arsenal has to reveal as a company floated on OFEX.

Take the example given at the below ESPN article:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/sto...
Burnely won the league in 1960 with local sausage-baron Bob Lord as chairman -- how much more information about the club's finances would he give out to curious fans than Roman Abramovich? Very little I'd imagine.

Of course football clubs are not like other businesses as their customer base are irrational, willing to come back tiome and time again no matter how bad the product served is and feel great emotional attachment.

The least committed of the multi-millionaires will soon be on their way when they realise running a club where everyone hates you is just not worth the fuss. The bigger clubs like Man Utd and Real Madrid have been big business for a long time now and a change of ownership every so often will not change anything.

-- posted by SimonMelville

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» Brent Sedo - British soccer's dodgy dealings

In response to British soccer's dodgy dealings posted by SimonMelville:
In terms of keeping a level playing field between the rich and the poor, I'd suggest something crazy like a salary cap, as there is in the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. But I've never really understood the relationship between a transfer fee and the player salary. Do you pay a transfer fee to the other team, and the player's salary on top of that? And we hear about the big stars, but I'm wondering what a second-string defender on a bottom-rung Premiership team earns per season?

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» SimonMelville - British soccer's dodgy dealings

In response to British soccer's dodgy dealings posted by BrentSedo:
The salary cap idea comes up every so often but is usually dismissed because a) it's assumed clubs would get around it somehow and b) it is against EU anti-trust law.

While (a) is a credible threat to any salary cap, (b) seems less secure as an argument because the top division of Rugby League in Britain has a salary cap. Although Rugby League is far smaller than football, the amount of money sloshing around that game is not chicken feed. For all I know, there may be simlar rules for other sports across Europe.

Also, the third and fourth divisions in England have a rule that salaries cannot account for more than 60% of club turnover -- which could be argued as a restraint on trade but seems a sensible ruling to fans and chairmen alike.

Yes, once a transfer fee is agreed between the two clubs you still have to pay the players salary -- up to £100,000 a week for the best paid players. And then you have their bonuses -- not just for winning trophies, but for scoring goals (if they are a striker), keeping clean sheets (if they are a goalkeeper) and even appearance bonuses!

The general relationship between salary and transfer fee is: the better the player, the higher the transfer fee, the higher the salary. But with the EU "Bosman ruling" in 1995 (a European version of the Curt Flood case in the States, I'm led to believe) players can wait until their contracts finish (which can only be a maximum of 5 years now) and move with no transfer fee paid at all -- Michael Ballack to Chelsea from Bayern Munich is a recent example. But some of the transfer fee the buying club saves usually gets redistributed to the player and his agent!

Salaries for low-ranking Premiership players will still be pretty high -- the average yearly salary for a Premiership player is £676,000 (C$1.4m)

More info at this Guardian article: http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Stor...

-- posted by SimonMelville

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» Brent Sedo - British soccer's dodgy dealings

In response to British soccer's dodgy dealings posted by SimonMelville:
Appearance bonuses? Really? So you pay me $2 million (sorry, no British pound sign on my keyboard) per year to play on your team, PLUS you pay me $5,000 per game to show up at the games?

I guess the difference over here is that teams rarely give up cash to get a player who is under contract to another team. You trade assets. My team can't score, your team can't defend. You give me your best offensive player, I'll give you my second best defender AND my second-string goalkeeper. We also have a draft system for young players into the pros, in every sport. So you give me your best player, I'll give you my first draft choice for the next two years. That kind of thing.

That transfer fee seems to seperate the haves from the have-nots. Sure, we'll give up Wayne Rooney. To any team that can come up with $20 million up front. Plus pay him $5 million per year.

Well, that kinda eliminates the Blackburn Rovers from the bidding, don't it?

The piece a couple weeks ago on travelling in the Tube was hilarious, by the way.

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» dantilles - British soccer's dodgy dealings

In response to British soccer's dodgy dealings posted by BrentSedo:
Wages in football (soccer) have certainly become a bit ridiculous now. What I find the most frustrating is the vicious circle of wages getting higher and then ticket prices going up. Presumably (in theory at least anyway), if wages went down then clubs could also decrease ticket prices and still make the same money. Of course I understand that it wouldn't work like this but it is sad that a lot of fans can't afford to watch their team play while the players on the field can be earning upwards of 100,000 per week.

I've always found it strange that America, the most perfect example of a capitalist economy, has such a socialist attitude towards its sports. Unlike soccer, where teams can continually get better and better and richer and richer, from what I gather in American Football the authorities do their best to level the playing field with salary caps and the draft. I've often debated with American friends over which system works better, but i certainly believe that soccer could learn some lessons, especially when it comes to salary caps and the distribution of money amongst clubs.

-- posted by dantilles

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