Has money fundamentally changed football?

Derby County FC Nice one mate as in the past couple of years Blyth Spartens beat Divison 2 Bournemouth in front of 3000 fans in the 2nd round of the FA for a home match against Blackburn Rovers in which they played very well but got beat by the EPL team with a last minute goal but it was a great night with 4 and half thousand fans at Bylths ground plus ex Newcastle UTD keeper Shay Given was there with his dad i think and stayed to 2 o clock in the morning drinking with all the Blyth fans and players. Iam a Rugby League fan in the north east of England yet i like this level of Football.

Chris Saw Boston United play Blyth Spartans several times whe i trained as a nurse in Boston, happy days. Northern Premier League matches, Leek Town, Leigh RMI, Droylesdon, Marine, Gainsborough Trinity etc. Brilliant. They have what the top teams don't have, a relation and pride in the town. I would suspect most top flight players only know the part of the town which they drive through to pick up their pay cheque.

allblackfan I'm not surprised by the contrast between the camaraderie within the All Blacks and the alleged lack of fraternity at AC Milan. I would assume that, in most National Teams, there is always going to be a stronger bond than within a club. Every player, who has ever played for the Australian National Football Team, consistently talks about how much they enjoy coming in to training camps, and their joking and carrying on at training suggests a genuine affection across the group. Many of the players in the Australian (and other) National teams have known each other since junior days - often their families, too, know each other, having shared transport duties to training, matches and functions before the lads could drive themselves.. By contrast, professional club football is a job. And, just like all work environments, you don't necessarily have much in common with with all your workmates - other than your time on the park. Additionally, at many European Football clubs, there will also be language & other cultural differences that make bonding less easy - with some players and even some managers all not sharing the same native tongue - of the 28 first team squad at AC Milan, there are players, who are citizens of 13 different countries (most A-League clubs, too, have half a dozen or more nationalities represented within their squads).

I can not stand the image rights,Powerade sponsorship driven EPL with there glamour pussies of players yet it's called the English Premiership but there is nothing premier about the English Football team as well as the Football Hooligan element which i can not stand as well as this ULTRA culture which seems to me the so-called Ultra fans don't give a dam about Football. No i can not stand top level pro Football. Give me semi-pro Non-League stuff like Blyth Spartans and Whitely Bay.

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.

I was reading a story recently (can't seem to find it now) between a joint promotional session between AC Milan and the All Blacks (same sponsor) last year in Italy. The article I read said that the AB players and officials were gobsmacked to learn that AC Milan players do not bond as a team. They turn up for training in their Ferraris, train then go their own way. The story goes that the AC Milan players, in turn, were blown away by the sense of brotherhood among the All Blacks. So much so that during dinner, when AC Milan club officials hosted the ABs to dinner, five of the Milan players turned up uninvited (including Ronaldinho, who doesn't even speak English). Apparently this sense of brotherhood is a rarity in world football, which Alex Ferguson has been able to generate. Is this perhaps a symptom of the change that big money has wrought on the world's most popular game?

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.

Phil What is worse about La Liga is that TV negotiations are done by individual clubs. Barca and Real get millions and millions and millions more than the others.

The Spanish League, without rich guys cash injections, is far more predictable than the EPL. Two clubs, that's it. Be it 'natural' or not, a small group of clubs do tend to dominate.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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!

bring back the spew shirt :)

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!).

It's changed football, but it's ruined cricket.