Modern Football And Billionaire Owners: An Oily Relationship

Guest AuthorAi??Gautam Viswanathan talks about the paradigm shift in the game that the influx of money has brought about.

Air travel is expensive. Unless you fly Ryanair of course. Then itai??i??s downright dangerous.

But the bills his regular flights would have racked up would have been the least of Suleyman Kerimovai??i??s concerns as he watched with alarm the mounting expenses that were required by him to maintain his Anzhi Makhachkala side.Ai??Expenses that were too high to maintain for a man Forbes magazine values at $7.1 billion. But Kerimov is only one of a new wave of owners who have pumped their vast fortunes into football clubs in the hope of getting international recognition, only to see them pull out because balancing the books at a football club has of late become non-viable.

Because truth be told, unless this balancing act is conducted very carefully, things can go horribly wrong for all those who are invested in a football club, and the global economic recession isnai??i??t helping.

The Rise

Suleiman Kerimov recently pulled out his stakes from Anzhi Makhachkala

Clubs that are ai???upliftedai??i??Ai?? by billionaires such as Kerimov give their fans license to dream, for these super-rich individuals do not target clubs that form the crA?me de la crA?me of world football but those that are firmly stuck in mid-table mediocrity, or worse, have flirted with relegation on more than one occasion.

A quick glance at clubs now owned by the super-wealthy would confirm this. Manchester City FC, Chelsea FC, Rangers FC, Portsmouth FC and Malaga CF were never clubs one took notice of before their coffers were filled with such eye-watering wealth.

AS Monaco FC and Paris Saint-Germain FC were at one point one of Franceai??i??s best clubs, butAi??les MonegasquesAi??have only recently returned from relegation and PSG were consigned to the shadows because of the emergence Olympique Lyonnais and Saint Etienne, who have between them 17 Ligue 1 titles.

The Fall

But those dreams, much like the clubs that these supporters follow, come crashing down to earth when those who own them decide to cease their investments because funding a football club (as they have found out) is frightfully expensive.Ai??And when that does happen, it is not the owners who have to deal with the fallout, but the fans and club management, who have loyally supported the club for years, partly in the hope that one day, their club will achieve the sort of glory that they have been seeking for so long, but has so far not come.

There exist many reasons behind a financial takeover at a football club. Economics, surprisingly, is near the top of the list. Football clubs today are global brands and that you are the figure behind the intended rise of a football club means you have put yourself on the industrial map.

Status is another. Who doesnai??i??t like being called the owner of a football club? ai???This is Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Clubai??i?? may be a sentence with only nine words but it carries with it a respect that makes everyone in the immediate vicinity turn and take notice. More often than not, those who do rub shoulders at occasions which owners of football clubs normally frequent form a very small part of the worldai??i??s elite who tend to hob-nob quite frequently on matters of business and industry.

But what they have done in buying these clubs is irrevocably change the face of football, and not in a good way.

The Old Guard V/S New Money

The old guard, the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Marseille, Juventus, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Barcelona have taken decades to reach where they are today.Ai??Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Fabio Capello, Johann Cruyff, all instilled in the clubs they managed a footballing philosophy that is reaping continuous rewards at present, even if not instantly tangible.Ai??It is because of this philosophy that these clubs have risen to become the leviathans of the game. Footballers join clubs such as these because they want to be part of that rich history that makes a football club great.

But the likes of Manchester City and Malaga were never known for being one of the best. You need to be the best to attract the best and simply put, they werenai??i??t. What they did not have in terms of heritage they replicated in the form of money. Players were therefore more attracted by the money that was up for grabs, with football finishing a close second. With salaries so astronomically high, players were more content in picking up a pay-cheque than contributing to a clubai??i??s accomplishments on the pitch.

And therein lies the source of the mercenary culture that has now spread in football. Players will move to another club which offers them better wages, because few of the old guard can afford the inflated salaries that the new can afford.

The Malaga Story

What is surprising among this new wave of owners is how shocked they are at the costs that go into running a football club, despite the staggering amounts of personal wealth they possess.

Much was expected from Malaga when they were bought by Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Abdullah al Ahmed al Thani in 2010. They qualified for the Champions League and at long last, it looked like someone had arrived to challenge the Real Madrid-Barcelona dominion.

(c)alarabiya(dot)net_abdullahbinnasser_malaga — Malaga suffered similar fate to that of Anzhi

But underneath the surface, things were not all well at Malaga. Four players complained to the Spanish Football Players Association and it turned out that so deep in debt were Malaga that their new Arab owner ai??i??Ai??whose family is worth billions ai??i??Ai??was not keen on spending the large amounts of money required to erase the clubai??i??s debt.

What followed was an exodus of the players the club had drafted just a season ago. Santi Cazorla, the clubai??i??s most expensive signing, moved to Arsenal. In winter, Nacho Monreal joined him in London. The club were subsequently banned from European competition for the current season and more players have leftAi??La RosaledaAi??including Martin Demichelis, Joaquin Sanchez, Jeremy Toulalan, Julio Baptista and the clubai??i??s most promising young player Isco Suarez, touted to achieve great things in the future.

And you cannot help but feel sorry for the fans who expected so much from the club, but have ultimately been let down because of poor management at the top. Fans who expected so much when the likes of Suleman Al Fahim and Ali Al Farraj came through the revolving doors at Portsmouth, or Craig Whyte, who bought Rangers for A?1 from David Murray after allocating the rest of the A?18 million he had put forward to buy the club towards the debt the club had accrued.

The Transfer Market Inflation

Because of the vast amounts of money these nouveau riche clubs spend on players, the mark-up value of the rest of the players also increases, which puts them out of the reach of clubs who have at best a moderate budget to spend on transfers.Ai??What we therefore now have is a very small pool of world-class players whose inflated transfer fees are only affordable by a select clique of clubs. Arsenal submitted a final bid of A?53 million for Luis Suarez in order to prise him from Liverpool, but the Anfield hierarchy did not consider that adequate.Ai??Real Madrid smashed their transfer record once again when they paid A?88 million to Spurs for Gareth Bale, who at the age of 24, has played only one season in the Champions League, has never featured in a major international tournament, and has a solitary appearance in a cup final. Is he really worth the money?Ai??Edinson Cavani was valued at A?11 million when he made the move to Napoli from Palermo in 2010. Three years on, he commands more than five times that amount, which few clubs in the world can afford. Ditto Radamel Falcao, who was valued at A?25 million when he joined Atletico Madrid two years ago, but left for A?53 million this summer.

Much like the economic times we now live in, the gap between the rich and not so rich clubs has increased. Take for example last seasonai??i??s Champions League finalists.Should you remove every single Bayern Munich player who started that Champions League final at Wembley, you still have a very competent team packed with talented internationals. But could you say the same about Borussia Dortmund?Ai??Take out one player from that starting XI and the rest of the team implodes. It is the same with every club that has promoted youth through its ranks and relied on a few imports to challenge for honours. Ajax Amsterdam, four time winners of the European Cup, the same club that gave birth to Patrick Kluivert, Edwin van der Sar, Dennis Bergkamp and Clarence Seedorf were once the toast of Europeai??i??s elite.Ai??But because of the arrival of this new breed of clubs, they are forced to sell their best players to those who can afford them. Results in turn suffer, which is why the Dutch club now struggle to get past the group stages of the UEFA Champions League.

Will Youngsters Get A Shot?

Proponents of these new owners may argue that they have brought with them a more level playing field for the elite. But at what cost has it come? It is only the surface of the clubs that are being developed at present.Ai??Where are the youth players at Manchester City to join Micah Richards and Joe Hart? Ryan Bertrand aside, where are Chelseaai??i??s youth? How will the youth systems of these clubs flourish if they are never given a chance to prove themselves at the top?

Manchester City have started work on an Elite Development Squad, but that will take years to produce players who can fit into their first XI, and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, despite his vast wealth, cannot keep spending the sort of money he has since his takeover in 2008.

He wonai??i??t be allowed to, anyway.

With Financial Fair Play around the corner, there is no way clubs can continue to spend as extravagantly as they have now. UEFA have taken the right decision in ensuring that clubs are only allowed to spend self-generated funds on new players.

Abramovich continues to invest in Chelsea

And that is where Chelsea are the exception to this rule. Roman Abramovich is a football man who knows that the FFP regulations will hit them hard, which is why they invested in a host of young players including Marco van Ginkel and Andre Schurrle this summer, who along with the likes of Kevin de Bruyne and Oscar Emboaba will ensure that Chelseaai??i??s first team emerge relatively unscathed from the fledgling years of FFP, which is sure to bite a few clubs who will need to look to new avenues for funding.

The Premier League has gone one step further and announced a wage cap next season onwards, where clubs will only be allowed a 5% hike to their wage bill.

Eastern Europe, which has seen massive expansion in terms of footballing development, will be hit rather hard. Fans there are used to seeing top quality football in the form of the Champions League and while stadiums are packed for European games, the same cannot be said of attendances during league games, where a large number of seats are left empty.

The arrival of oil money in the world of football has resulted in a very skewed playing field. UEFA are looking to right that, so that the means for viability do not remain in the hands of a few, but are accessible to all, in a manner similar to their scrapping of the elitist G-14 group of clubs, which was then replaced by the ECA (European Clubs Association). The needs of the many must always be met since they outnumber the needs of the few.

Written by THT Guest AuthorAi??Gautam Viswanathan

Modern Football And Billionaire Owners: An Oily Relationship

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