Has money fundamentally changed football?
Columnist By Mike Tuckerman, 1 Nov 2010 Mike Tuckerman is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- football, money in sport, Queens Park Rangers, World Football
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Flicking through the 50th anniversary edition of World Soccer magazine, I was struck by just how many former players said football was a more enjoyable game in the past. Many ex-pros lamented the fact football has become a global industry, even if most accepted it was just natural market progression.
Most of the greats spoke of the game once representing little more than a pleasant pastime, one which existed for the entertainment of local communities before it was turned into the multi-billion dollar industry we know today.
I pondered that fact when perusing an article on Queens Park Rangers vice-chairman Amit Bhatia, who says money is no object in the west London club’s quest to reach the Champions League.
Of course, they’ll have to escape the clutches of the Championship first – something they’ve not been able to do despite becoming one of the richest clubs in England back in 2007.
But Bhatia’s blustering is nothing if not predictable – his father-in-law Lakshmi Mittal is one of the world’s richest men – and it demonstrates the usual disdain most new owners have for the method of nurturing young talent through to the first team.
It’s a formula which has worked down the road at Chelsea, so you can hardly blame QPR for employing a tried-and-tested method, even if it invariably squeezes out local talent.
Unfortunately it’s also a method which brought near financial ruin to clubs like Leeds United and Portsmouth, and which has turned the English Premier League into the exclusive domain of four or five clubs jockeying for the same position every season.
Love it or loath it, at least the salary cap in Australia gives A-League clubs an equal chance of success – even if not all clubs utilise it to its full extent.
It begs the question of whether money has helped or hindered the so-called ‘beautiful game,’ which is now accessible to virtually every corner of the globe thanks to satellite TV and the internet.
That access has helped pump more money into the game, but whether the influx of cash results in better quality players is open to debate.
Certainly, players today enjoy far more luxuries than the generations before them, and sports science and training facilities are now second to none.
But are players as individually talented as they once were, or are they just mass-produced automatons – as many of those in the World Soccer special claim?
Moreover, is it not the relentless chase for European riches which has seen the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool seduced by those who would exploit fan loyalty to line their own pockets?
UEFA chief Michel Platini is trying hard to address the imbalance among Europe’s football elite, with the Frenchman desperate to scale back some of the power acquired by clubs from Europe’s three biggest leagues.
Whether that appeases fans who have grown accustomed to watching the same clubs go around in the Champions League every season remains to be seen, particularly when the standard of football is as high as it’s ever been.
But whether that standard is as good as the football played in years gone by is the question at hand, and if the anecdotal evidence from former players is anything to go by, the modern game is a fast-paced endurance test largely devoid of individual talent.
Lionel Messi is the player many former stars pinpoint as the most exciting to watch, but otherwise it seems team-work has triumphed over individual skill.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Would football be a more enjoyable game if players dribbled as much as they once did, or is it essentially still just a contest of eleven versus eleven?
Money has no doubt changed the landscape of world football, but is it still just a game, a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, or somewhere in between?
That’s the question before us, and I’m keen to hear your thoughts.
Mike Tuckerman is a Sydney-born journalist and lifelong football fan. After lengthy stints watching the beautiful game in Germany and Japan, he has settled in Brisbane and has been a Roar columnist since December 2008. Follow Mike on twitter @Mike_Tuckerman
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- Explore:
- football, money in sport, Queens Park Rangers, World Football
November 1st 2010 @ 7:59am
JottingsOnRugby.com said | November 1st 2010 @ 7:59am | Report comment
Interesting Mike. Not refuting what those players from the 1950s said, and you can tell me to stick to rugby if you want, but money and football (socccer) have been hand in hand since the 1880s when the last of the amateur clubs enjoyed success.
There have been men earning their fulltime living from football since the end of the 19th century. Fearing what had happened to soccer (basically amateurs having no hope/say) would befall rugby was what triggered the great split in the rugby world in 1895.
Money was there in football in the 1890s, 1950s and now. Their lament for the loss of the style of game and the local game over the global game is fair enough, and many from then would agree, but I wouldn’t say that the game of the 1950s was “little more than a pleasant pastime” for the top rank of footballers. It was serious business on and off the field.
I don’t think what I am saying is contradicting what those footballers of the 1950s said. It seems to me that the difference from then (the 1950s) to now isn’t money per se, they were paid good money then, but today’s players are getting (arguably) obscene amounts of money.
November 1st 2010 @ 8:00am
Phil Osopher said | November 1st 2010 @ 8:00am | Report comment
It’s still just a game. It just involves a lot of money. Full entertainment product is the mad but so popular pro wrestling show, and football is nothing like that, never will be. You can’t stop people making money out of it, and there’s no point. The game is still the game in its pure form, unlike cricket which has had to jazz it up and water it down for money, so there’s relatively little to get upset about. The only down side may be the dominance of a small group of clubs, which generally annoys me, but it’s kind of the nature of things anyway. The new entertainment may be seeing these clubs burst when things go wrong, and the stable ones surviving. And its not as stable as we all think anyway, look at Liverpool, fighting relegation, a year ago considered as the top four forever. As for style of play, I’d have to say it’s actually improved if anything. You don’t tend to get George Best type players much anymore, but there’s much more quality all over the park, just take a look at Chelsea, who are very easy to watch. Football is generally in pretty good shape. We’ll never be happy, nothing is perfect.
November 1st 2010 @ 9:25am
Ben of Phnom Penh said | November 1st 2010 @ 9:25am | Report comment
I’m not sure to which extent money played a role in the transition of the game towards as a faster paced, team orientated game. Hockey had the same transition in the 80′s, much of which was due to the introduction of artificial pitches. It was soon found that teams that passed the ball quickly and played ‘power hockey’ dominated. Happily for Australia this won us a few gold medals before the rest of the world caught on. If hockey is any example to go by then the change in the game of football is primarily evolutionary.
Money allows clubs to purchase players suited for this game, and to have the sports science to keep them on the park, but from afar it appears the transition itself isn’t primarily money driven, but evolutionary.
November 1st 2010 @ 9:40am
True Tah said | November 1st 2010 @ 9:40am | Report comment
Mike
interesting article…futbol has been the worlds most popular sport since the start of the 20th century and maybe before.
One argument you can run is that by having the top talent in a handful of clubs means that comps like the EPL, La Liga are less competitive, and that weaker clubs will lose supporters to these clubs.
However the counter argument to this is that by having teams full of superstars allows the game to be played at the highest possible level it can be and are a glowing advertisment for the game…Manchester United are a global brand, 350m fans in China alone…this probably makes the game more popular overall, but unfortunately one of the casualties seems to be the local comps in several nations.
November 1st 2010 @ 10:42am
JR said | November 1st 2010 @ 10:42am | Report comment
It’s changed football, but it’s ruined cricket.
November 1st 2010 @ 11:04am
Fussball ist unser leben said | November 1st 2010 @ 11:04am | Report comment
Former England football star, Gary Lineker is alleged to have said:
“Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.”
After the “nightmare of Durban” … not much seemed to have changed in that regard.
For me football is still the same “beautiful game” that captured my heart and mind many many years ago. I can think of only 2 rule changes to the game in the past 40 years: change to the “the back pass to the GK” and introduction of “passive off-side”; so, essentially, the game has been unchanged for generations.
The Game is universal and I know I can go to any corner of the planet and, without knowing the local language, simply assimilate by joining in a game being played in a park, on a beach, in a car park.
At the professional level, yes, football is big business. But, all sport is big business. I’m sure if you talk to Olympians of bygone eras, they will lament that the “spirit of the Olympics” is not what it used to be.
Good or bad? Perhaps, each generation has its bias and generally will claim “their time” produced the best – the best music, the best art, the best movies, the best sports?
There is little that I would complain about in the modern game of Football … but, then again, there was little I would complain about in the football of the 70s, 80s or 90s (although, the hair styles of the 70s and the shorts of the 80s do make me wince!).
November 1st 2010 @ 11:12am
Ben of Phnom Penh said | November 1st 2010 @ 11:12am | Report comment
bring back the spew shirt
November 1st 2010 @ 11:21am
JR said | November 1st 2010 @ 11:21am | Report comment
I just think the standards are incredible and seem to get better every year. That has to be because of better career structure and unbelievably good scouting networks, not to mention training methods and things like pitches and stadia. Have we ever had a period with FOUR players of the calibre of Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, and C. Ronaldo together at the same time? OK, sometimes it seems like there are too many games, the leagues are too uneven, and joy of following a top club is a bit like the joy of being a blue-chip shareholder (ok, bad analogy for current times, but still)…and then we have unbelievable coaches like Mourinho and Ancelotti…things could be much worse. Jeez, I’m getting a thrill out of watching Brisbane…BRISBANE!
November 1st 2010 @ 11:44am
Derby County FC said | November 1st 2010 @ 11:44am | Report comment
Money has changed it, in my opinion it’s knowhere near as good as when i was a kid but not because the game has changed but because it’s so predictible.
The thing that makes football great and why i don’t want any technology brought in is the fact that football is exactly the same from the local youth league to Old Trafford, Pride Park and Wembley.
Give me the Championship over the EPL anyday, Lord… i’ll take the Blue Square North (come on Boston United), at least i don’t know who’s going to win at the start of the season.
The atmosphere has changed, give me a packed Pop Stand standing at the Baseball Ground over Pride Park, but times change and we have to move on, as much as it sucks.
November 1st 2010 @ 2:43pm
Roger Rational said | November 1st 2010 @ 2:43pm | Report comment
O tempora! O mores!
Mike, you write: “and which has turned the English Premier League into the exclusive domain of four or five clubs jockeying for the same position every season”.
But that’s not quite true, is it? In fact, the influx of cashed-up sugar daddies has been the one thing that has shaken up the old cartel. Chelsea hadn’t won the Title since the 50s until Abramovich took over. Man City haven’t won a trophy for 35 years. Both clubs are now major and relatively new players because of sugar daddies.
Arguably, on-field performance hasn’t been more divorced from “off-field financial potential” for a generation. Football in the 1990s, as Marx could have predicted, was heading towards a kind of monopoly in which Manchester United won the league every year because they earned about 50% more revenue than the next biggest club. Moreover, they did so quite naturally (or “fairly” if you like). They are simply a massive club.
In Platini’s world, a perpetual United monopoly would be okay since it would be “natural” and “fair” and built on the fact that Manchester United are so much bigger than everyone else. But I have to ask: does the average punter in Australia really care if a monopoly is natural or not? Doesn’t Mike Tuckerman want to see a bit of a ding dong for the Title each year and does he really care how it comes about? Natural monopoly might well be “fair”, but it’s still very, very boring. And it’s only the influx of sugar daddies that is preventing it. First Jack Walker at Blackburn, then Abramovich at Chelsea, now Mansour at City – three clubs who would never have been able to compete with United otherwise.
Realistically, if Platini gets his way and spending is somehow linked to revenue (and thus in effect to “size of club”) then we are simply setting in stone the pecking order for the next thirty years. I think only Arsenal would have a hope of competing financially against United.
As for the quality of the game itself, I watched a re-run of the 1975 European Cup Final recently and I was amazed at how slow and boring it was. Players took the ball under no pressure whatsoever and merely tapped it about between themselves. Dull. The game is infinitely better now and the flair players are much better protected.
The “it was better then” argument is just a temperamental reaction to the bewildering pace of the change in modern sport. It’s simply not supported by the evidence.
November 1st 2010 @ 3:09pm
Derby County FC said | November 1st 2010 @ 3:09pm | Report comment
It was better back then and we can discuss the issues till we are blue in the face but 25 years ago for example to predict the top four in the top division of English football year in and year out was almost impossible, with good coaching and a little cash anything was possible for any team (like the mighty Derby County:-)). Not only is the EPL dull and predictable the FA Cup is too, over the last 20 years Liverpool, Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal have won the cup 18 times between them (where is the magic of the cup these days). Boriiiiiiiing.
You can dress it up all you like, the quality is better but i’d like quality AND variety, before you had variety but less quality and the atmosphere was better (not the hooliganism) too. The rich get richer and the rest get jaded.
Man Utd did become great naturally to an extent but it coincided with THE EPL and global coverage and massive amounts of money pouring into the game at a time that coincided with their success, they might not have an ‘Abramovich” , they had Asia instead, that’s not very natural.
November 1st 2010 @ 4:09pm
Roger Rational said | November 1st 2010 @ 4:09pm | Report comment
Yes – but let’s be clear about why football has become more predictable since the 70s. It’s not because of sugar daddies. It’s because of the natural and inevitable commercialisation of the game and the increasing importance of “size”. The formation of the EPL and the move to allow home clubs to keep 100% of their gate receipts changed everything. But you can’t turn the clock back on this. It’s in the very nature of competition that clubs will develop off-the-park to better enable them to compete on-the-park. As in business, this has the potental to produce self-perpetuating oligarchies or even monopolies.
My specific beef with Tuckerman is that he’s conflating separate factors. There’s the natural capitalist development of soccer which we can all cry about, but which is never going to change. And then there’s the sugar daddy factor, which Tuckerman is lumping in under the category “money” and which is therefore supposed to be a bad thing – but which, if he stopped and thought about it for a moment, he’d realise is actually the one thing keeping things interesting at the moment. No sugar daddies = No competitive Chelsea and no competitive Manchester City = A very, very boring league.
Platini is barking up the wrong tree. His reforms will make the game more predictable and more dull and football will become ever more about fleecing fans for replica shirts and being “big in Asia”.
November 1st 2010 @ 4:16pm
Ben of Phnom Penh said | November 1st 2010 @ 4:16pm | Report comment
interestingly Derby County, a number of Khmers have abandoned Man U as they no longer like the style of football they play. I’ve heard the same thing said to be by about 4 or 5 people now.
November 1st 2010 @ 7:38pm
Tortion said | November 1st 2010 @ 7:38pm | Report comment
I think it is a problem for all the major sports now Mike. I am personally finding that sport is becoming a more and more soulless affair. I often think what really connects players to the fans and I can’t help but answer in the vast majority of cases that it is money whether in the hundreds of thousands or the hundreds of millions.
November 2nd 2010 @ 5:17am
DERBY COUNTY FC said | November 2nd 2010 @ 5:17am | Report comment
Tortion
I think you make a very good point, football is soulless (at least at the top level), generic stadiums, ruthless players playing for obscene amounts of money and a generation of supporters that think this is normal.
I sincerely would rather watch Boston United (as i did when i was a student nurse) week in week out than an EPL team.
Then again, football nowadays is safer, stadium facilities are great and the standard of football is better. It’s just, as you say soulless.
November 2nd 2010 @ 9:06pm
Tortion said | November 2nd 2010 @ 9:06pm | Report comment
It is a real shame Derby. I have been to a few EPL matches lately and tried quite hard to justify the money they earnt based on what I saw but I couldn’t even come close. I have been to Wembley a number of times and I am always left a little disappointed. It is a rather soulless place and I feel unlucky not to have seen the original stadium despite all its flaws. Don’t get me wrong it isn’t just football. There is a lot of talk of Bath rugby moving from The Rec to a new flash stadium which would be disappointing in many ways and the move is largely driven by the desire to increase capacity for financial reasons. The Landsdowne Road redevelopment is also a bit of a shame. And while we are talking about soulless have you been to the cricket in Australia lately? I used to love it but last time I went the fun police had crushed the atmosphere. Thank God for the lower leagues I say.
November 3rd 2010 @ 5:49am
DERBY COUNTY FC said | November 3rd 2010 @ 5:49am | Report comment
Tortion
Yeah, i live in Sydney and am going to see England in the ODI’s (are you coming out for the Ashes?), the fun police will be in full effect, oh well. I can understand to an extent, some people take ‘fun’ too far and turns families off i guess.
I went to the old Wembley but oddly enough for the old American Bowl matches and the London Monarchs (only saw a football match there once, Derby v Cremonesie in the final of the old Anglo-Italian cup – we lost) it was pretty good, would love to see the new Wembley though, old grounds have a certain ‘something’ that the new, shiny, sparkling ones.
I think the thing is supporters can’t relate to top paid players and they can’t or don’t want to relate to us.