This summer’s transfer market has shown that football is in a world of its own. While the rest of the world struggles through the recession, Real Madrid have taken out loans reportedly adding up to €1bn to fund their excessive spending and Manchester City are throwing money at anything that moves.
Many footballing figures are called for a salary cap to be placed in football to stop the inflated figures from making the world’s most popular sport from becoming solely an expensive plaything of billionaires instead of normal, grounded fans and to increase competition. Yet, any comparisons to a salary cap and draft in the NFL are poorly researched considering the fact that, at least in Europe, extravagant spending occurs across a number of top flights.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter is famous for his laughable hypocrisy and ridiculously obvious bias against the actions of English sides and for sides like Real Madrid on the continent. In 2005, Sep Blatter condemned greed in football and said FIFA were committed to stopping this new trend:
“The majority is fighting with spears, while the greedy few have the financial equivalent of nuclear warheads. It is simply insane for any player to ‘earn’ £6-8m pounds a year
What logic, right or economic necessity would qualify a man in his mid-20s to demand to earn in a month a sum that his own father - and the majority of fans - could not hope to earn in a decade?
What we are faced with is a football society of haves and have nots.This cannot be the future of our game. Fifa cannot sit by and see greed rule the football world. Nor shall we.”
In the above 2005 interview with the Financial Times, Blatter condemned the ‘pornographic amounts of money’ being spent by some clubs in this new era of football. Yet when the extravagant sums of money aren’t being spent by the noveau riche in England of Chelsea or more recently Manchester City, but by Real Madrid, yes, that footballing institution, it seems Blatter has changed his mind. Read the rest of this entry »
When one thinks of legends of Hungarian football, they generally look to those who inflicted the most damage on England in those two devastating displays of attacking football in 1953 and 1954, where England were humiliated 6-3 at Wembley and 7-1 in the return in Hungary.
Real Madrid legend Ferenc Puskas and Nandor Hidegkuti, who hit in a hat-trick in the Wembley match, are widely considered the best ever from the eastern European nation. But what of Bela Guttmann? You may have never even heard of this footballing legend!
Jonathon Wilson, author of the excellent ‘Inverting the Pyramid: A history of football tactics’ calls him the dancing centre-half, a pioneer of Zionist football, and the managing legend that was said to have cursed Benfica. High praise indeed.
Yes, without Bela Guttmann, the Lisbon club may have never won the European Cup, Brazil may have never played 4-2-4 and Hungary may have never humbled England. This Hungarian legend led a nomadic yet an extraordinary life, becoming one of the greatest influences on 20th century football.
Aside from a lack of infrastructure and adequate training for youth players, cultural pressure and racial stereotyping have also affected the development of India as a nation and the prevention of its players succeeding in Europe.
It has been argued that before Premiership clubs attempt to break the Indian market, they should do more to scout the Asian communities living in their areas. For example, 250,000 Asians reside in West Ham, yet not one from that community has made the Hammers’ first team squad.
While the All India Football Federation (AIFF) is slowly improving the efficiency of its own operations, another manner in which youth development is being improved in India is foreign investment from big European clubs. This latest development is unsurprising given the manner in which Indian Premier League cricket raised £1.1bn out of the blue.
While clubs see India as another potential talent pool to tap into, there may be bigger potential to market their own club products and merchandise, given the increase in interest in the European leagues instead of the domestic game. Supporters are likely to prefer to see players such as Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi on the small screen instead of local stars Baichung Bhutia and Sunil Chettri (who had an unsuccessful trial at Coventry City), a trend which could be detrimental to the long-term success of the domestic game.
As explored in the first article in this series exploring Indian football, there are a number of problems surrounding Indian football. The 2007 formation of the I-league (a revamp of the declining National Football League) is just the first step in the solution of improving India’s football scene, by making professional football in India a viable career. The league has been expanded by four sides for the 2009-10 season, with sides formed in Pune and Shillong and Kerala, revealing the growing interest in the game throughout the nation.
The formation of sides such as these are slowly eradicating the term ‘institutional teams’ - the notion that most sides in the country are off-shoots of companies for the social benefit of workers, with Air India FC the most obvious example. Several sides have formed in such a fashion, limiting the potential of the fan base size and economic growth of the club. This is because the majority of the clubs’ fan-base consists of the main company’s workforce. Regional pride is very important in India and clubs representing whole states instead of single companies will do well to spread the interest in the game.
Imagine you are a youngster growing up in India. The odds are that you are likely to idolize cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar instead of relatively unknown Baichung Bhutia. There could even be a possibility you may have never heard of the latter and why not?
The former is one of the greatest batsmen in cricket, while the latter has reached the modest heights of playing for then Division Two side Bury in 1999. Bhutia’s seemingly modest achievement was said to be the breakthrough needed for players from the subcontinent to sign for European clubs (although Mohammed Abdul Salim, nicknamed the ‘Indian Juggler’, was the first Indian to sign for a European club when he joined Celtic in 1937 – he returned homesick after a few games despite his obvious talent (boots or barefoot)).
Barcelona are being tipped to complete a €13m deal for the Brazilian striking sensation Keirrison in the next few days. Yet the striker, on loan at Palmeiras from the obscure fourth division club Desportivo Brasil, will not come without controversy due to the nature of his imminent departure from Palmeiras to Josep Guardiola’s side.
Questions surrounding his third-party ownership by the sports marketing company Traffic and his mentality in a high pressure environment have led to concerns over his suitability to the impeccable standards set by the Catalan club.
After an excellent debut season as an 18-year-old, Keirrison, or K9 as he is nicknamed, scored 12 goals in Coritiba’s promotion drive in the second division of the Campeonato Brasileiro in 2007. Critics claimed that once regularly competing in the Brazilian Serie A, the youngster’s flaws would be more visible.
For a billionaire director of ACS, the a construction, engineering and energy conglomerate that employs 150,000, operates in 50 countries and had revenues last year of just over €4 billion, a third of that profit, Florentino Perez does not live like one. His favourite dish consists of the exotic British fried egg and chips.
The new Real Madrid president lives in the results business, first signing AC Milan midfielder Kaka for €68m and now he looks set to break the world record of €75.1m he paid for French playmaker Zinedine Zidane by signing Cristiano Ronaldo for €94m.
Such high-profile signings come in the first few weeks of his presidency, players, who former president Ramon Calderon (now being investigated for voting irregularities) pined after for two years, failing to sign either and alienating the selling club to the extent that Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson said:
Do you think I would enter into a contract with that mob? No chance. I would not sell them a virus. That is a ‘no’ by the way. There is no agreement whatsoever between the clubs.
Perez is undertaking a high-risk strategy, which he hopes will multiply the club’s profit through merchandising, shirt sales, sponsorship revenue and increased ticket sales due to the high-profile image of Kaka and Ronaldo.
