Is football's greed coarsening Britain?
2 February 2011
The Daily Mail's City Editor, Alex Brummer, who has campaigned against bankers' bonuses, says the £134m spent by football clubs this week is even worse...
As a Chelsea supporter and season ticket holder, I ought to be cock-ahoop about the sensational developments as football's transfer window closed on Monday night and my team spent £75m on two new players. In a few madcap hours, the club's Russian oligarch owner Roman abramovich bought two new foreign players while other Premier League clubs joined in a total spending frenzy of £134m.
The deals were heralded by the game's cheerleaders on Sky News and Sky Sports as though they marked the Second Coming. It was obviously too much to hope that the so-called 'beautiful game' might put a brake on the obscene levels of spending and recognise that the rest of the country was having to come to terms with the age of austerity.
But no. Football has learnt nothing from the cost of economic catastrophe triggered by untrammelled greed in the City, leading to today's awesome problems. The tragedy is that when money becomes the be-all and end-all of life, and when excessive financial speculation outstrips financial reality, the result is the economics of the madhouse.
Of course, such common sense is way beyond the comprehension of the boorish footballing fraternity.
Apart from a breathtaking lack of loyalty, the ease with which big-name players switch between teams demonstrates an obsession with self and money. Not surprisingly, these men become brutalised and coarsened. Many of these players are paid such offensively large sums of money that they simply can't spend it fast enough. There are the throwaway £180,000 cars, the serial disgusting behaviour in hotels and the bedding of starstruck girls.
Who cares that such people are role models to countless young men and women throughout Britain? The gentleman players of the game of yesteryear — Nat Lofthouse, Johnny Haynes, stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore — have given way to a generation of spoilt, mindless brats. Many of these deeply flawed young men believe that sexual licentiousness is their right and readily partake in drink or drug-fuelled orgies.
Then, when details of such degrading behaviour emerges, they behave like disgraced film stars, business magnates and politicians, and pay expensive lawyers to obtain court injunctions to stop the stories being made public. Invariably, their aim is to seek to hide their true, unpleasant characters in order to protect the value of their lucrative personal sponsorships, which they otherwise would lose.
They are abetted by the courts and by unelected judges who have enthusiastically sought to create a new law of privacy. Quite wrongly, this has shielded these so-called role models from public ridicule and disgust. But what is most offensive is that the world of football seems blind to the economic hardships experienced by the majority of fans — as well as to the severe problems in the national economy as a whole.
Only last week, the Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned about the sheer scale of the problems that people face as government cuts start to bite. Real wages (after surging inflation is taken into account) are expected to fall back to 2005 levels, doom-monger King warned, as he said people were likely to suffer hardships not felt since the Twenties.
Meanwhile, unemployment among the 18 to 25-year-olds (ironically the same age group as those football players now earning up to £250,000 a week) has reached one million. So the question is this: at a time when bankers (whose activities led to the economic crash and who have been bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of £180bn) have been bitterly attacked for their greed in receiving huge bonuses again, where are the clarion voices condemning overpaid footballers?
There is none of the ire that followed the appearance last month of Barclays banker Bob Diamond (who's expected to pick up £9m for his work in 2010) before a Commons select committee when he was seemingly unapologetic for expecting a mammoth bonus.
But at least his work contributes to the British economy by producing a world-leading bank worth £36bn that is on course for profits of £6bn plus. Those are healthy statistics compared with the balance sheets at Chelsea FC, which has just reported a £70.9m loss in the year to June 2010.
So, what is driving the bloated transfer fees, contracts and rewards which have divorced the world of soccer from the rest of Britain? First, football is generally no longer owned by local groups who have their communities' interests at heart. The big spending clubs such as Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool are now the fiefdoms of foreign owners who have taken advantage of Britain's open capital markets to grab trophy assets (sometimes, as with Manchester United, with borrowed money).
Despite swearing allegiance to their new investment's proud club history and loyal fan base, many of these foreigners (just like the mercenary players they buy from abroad) hope they can turn them into profit-making machines like american football and baseball clubs.
Second, and more importantly, is the huge financial influence of television. It was the brilliance of Rupert Murdoch and the first boss of BskyB, sam Chisholm, who realised football was the key to turning satellite television into a profitable enterprise.
Through constant technological innovation, such as high definition, and a willingness to outbid all-comers for the rights to screen Premier League football in the UK and internationally, sky has turned football into a gold mine. Only last week — as two of its sleazy pundits Andy Gray (on an astonishing £1.7m salary) and Richard Keys lost their jobs after making sexist comments — BSkyB reported that its subscriptions had soared by 240,000 in the second quarter to reach ten million people.
Bloated The company will land profits of £1bn in the current financial year. It is no wonder the Murdoch family, having discovered El Dorado in subscription television, is battling to take full control of the 61% of the broadcaster that it does not own.
Of course, the huge injection of money into football from television has not been entirely wasted on grotesquely bloated players' wages and transfer fees. Most leading stadiums have become safer and cleaner places to watch the game. But the problem is the big-money culture which has led to the grounds losing their traditional identities — to be replaced with new arenas sponsored by, and named after, international firms such as Emirates airline and Reebok.
As a result, they are less accessible to the traditional working-class fans who were once the bedrock of their support. Instead, the fan base has changed to include a yobbish generation of supporters who can afford the high ticket prices (anything up to £100 a game).
But their main contribution is an alcohol-fuelled and often ignorant hero worship of the false gods on the pitch. Despite being wealthier, many of these fans are no more than hooligans who mouth racist, homophobic and sexist chants.
Perhaps it is no surprise that the disgorging of such obscene amounts of money into football has led to the debasing of the moral values which once underpinned what used to be a noble sport. The tragedy is that in the process it is coarsening Britain.
The Daily Mail's City Editor, Alex Brummer, who has campaigned against bankers' bonuses, says the £134m spent by football clubs this week is even worse...
As a Chelsea supporter and season ticket holder, I ought to be cock-ahoop about the sensational developments as football's transfer window closed on Monday night and my team spent £75m on two new players. In a few madcap hours, the club's Russian oligarch owner Roman abramovich bought two new foreign players while other Premier League clubs joined in a total spending frenzy of £134m.
The deals were heralded by the game's cheerleaders on Sky News and Sky Sports as though they marked the Second Coming. It was obviously too much to hope that the so-called 'beautiful game' might put a brake on the obscene levels of spending and recognise that the rest of the country was having to come to terms with the age of austerity.
But no. Football has learnt nothing from the cost of economic catastrophe triggered by untrammelled greed in the City, leading to today's awesome problems. The tragedy is that when money becomes the be-all and end-all of life, and when excessive financial speculation outstrips financial reality, the result is the economics of the madhouse.
Of course, such common sense is way beyond the comprehension of the boorish footballing fraternity.
Apart from a breathtaking lack of loyalty, the ease with which big-name players switch between teams demonstrates an obsession with self and money. Not surprisingly, these men become brutalised and coarsened. Many of these players are paid such offensively large sums of money that they simply can't spend it fast enough. There are the throwaway £180,000 cars, the serial disgusting behaviour in hotels and the bedding of starstruck girls.
Who cares that such people are role models to countless young men and women throughout Britain? The gentleman players of the game of yesteryear — Nat Lofthouse, Johnny Haynes, stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore — have given way to a generation of spoilt, mindless brats. Many of these deeply flawed young men believe that sexual licentiousness is their right and readily partake in drink or drug-fuelled orgies.
Then, when details of such degrading behaviour emerges, they behave like disgraced film stars, business magnates and politicians, and pay expensive lawyers to obtain court injunctions to stop the stories being made public. Invariably, their aim is to seek to hide their true, unpleasant characters in order to protect the value of their lucrative personal sponsorships, which they otherwise would lose.
They are abetted by the courts and by unelected judges who have enthusiastically sought to create a new law of privacy. Quite wrongly, this has shielded these so-called role models from public ridicule and disgust. But what is most offensive is that the world of football seems blind to the economic hardships experienced by the majority of fans — as well as to the severe problems in the national economy as a whole.
Only last week, the Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned about the sheer scale of the problems that people face as government cuts start to bite. Real wages (after surging inflation is taken into account) are expected to fall back to 2005 levels, doom-monger King warned, as he said people were likely to suffer hardships not felt since the Twenties.
Meanwhile, unemployment among the 18 to 25-year-olds (ironically the same age group as those football players now earning up to £250,000 a week) has reached one million. So the question is this: at a time when bankers (whose activities led to the economic crash and who have been bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of £180bn) have been bitterly attacked for their greed in receiving huge bonuses again, where are the clarion voices condemning overpaid footballers?
There is none of the ire that followed the appearance last month of Barclays banker Bob Diamond (who's expected to pick up £9m for his work in 2010) before a Commons select committee when he was seemingly unapologetic for expecting a mammoth bonus.
But at least his work contributes to the British economy by producing a world-leading bank worth £36bn that is on course for profits of £6bn plus. Those are healthy statistics compared with the balance sheets at Chelsea FC, which has just reported a £70.9m loss in the year to June 2010.
So, what is driving the bloated transfer fees, contracts and rewards which have divorced the world of soccer from the rest of Britain? First, football is generally no longer owned by local groups who have their communities' interests at heart. The big spending clubs such as Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool are now the fiefdoms of foreign owners who have taken advantage of Britain's open capital markets to grab trophy assets (sometimes, as with Manchester United, with borrowed money).
Despite swearing allegiance to their new investment's proud club history and loyal fan base, many of these foreigners (just like the mercenary players they buy from abroad) hope they can turn them into profit-making machines like american football and baseball clubs.
Second, and more importantly, is the huge financial influence of television. It was the brilliance of Rupert Murdoch and the first boss of BskyB, sam Chisholm, who realised football was the key to turning satellite television into a profitable enterprise.
Through constant technological innovation, such as high definition, and a willingness to outbid all-comers for the rights to screen Premier League football in the UK and internationally, sky has turned football into a gold mine. Only last week — as two of its sleazy pundits Andy Gray (on an astonishing £1.7m salary) and Richard Keys lost their jobs after making sexist comments — BSkyB reported that its subscriptions had soared by 240,000 in the second quarter to reach ten million people.
Bloated The company will land profits of £1bn in the current financial year. It is no wonder the Murdoch family, having discovered El Dorado in subscription television, is battling to take full control of the 61% of the broadcaster that it does not own.
Of course, the huge injection of money into football from television has not been entirely wasted on grotesquely bloated players' wages and transfer fees. Most leading stadiums have become safer and cleaner places to watch the game. But the problem is the big-money culture which has led to the grounds losing their traditional identities — to be replaced with new arenas sponsored by, and named after, international firms such as Emirates airline and Reebok.
As a result, they are less accessible to the traditional working-class fans who were once the bedrock of their support. Instead, the fan base has changed to include a yobbish generation of supporters who can afford the high ticket prices (anything up to £100 a game).
But their main contribution is an alcohol-fuelled and often ignorant hero worship of the false gods on the pitch. Despite being wealthier, many of these fans are no more than hooligans who mouth racist, homophobic and sexist chants.
Perhaps it is no surprise that the disgorging of such obscene amounts of money into football has led to the debasing of the moral values which once underpinned what used to be a noble sport. The tragedy is that in the process it is coarsening Britain.
