Good article that mentions Bayern Munich (whom it seems will be OK) and Chelsea (whom may not be okay). The lower leagues, not surprisingly, have taken the biggest financial hit and are the most ripe for bankruptcy.
Again, I’m of the belief that Chelsea will be okay. The club owes money to Roman Abramovich, not banks. Big difference.
Courtesy euFootball.biz.
I did a post a few days ago about how officials at both the English Premier League and UEFA want to end the January transfer window, with the EPL leading the charge. Well, FIFA has now put in their two cents, saying that that the EPL “cannot impose unilateral changes to the transfer window.”
Some high profile fellows in the Premier League, including Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger and Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson, have also weighed in on the subject. Sir Alex is the loan voice in the wind, saying that he doesn’t mind the January transfer window. Then again, he usually gets his way when it comes around.
Again, I’d be happier if it was gone…would be less drama in football.
Courtesy of euFootballBiz.
Manchester United prodigal son Dimatar Berbatov just nailed a sponsorship deal with Adidas. I mention this because his current club is sponsored by Nike and it may seem like a conflict of interest to some.
Sponsorships deals in football are quite incestuous but can also be lucrative for players. Berba gets none of Man U’s Nike money but he gets to pocket the dough from Adidas.
And yes, he’s a good looking guy as you can see.
These two stories from the Daily Mail UK make me happy.
English Premier League officials will soon be meeting to discuss ending the customary January transfer window in the EPL and instead, letting clubs transfer players throughout the entire season. This change will not sit well with either UEFA (Europe’s governing football body) or FIFA (the entire world’s governing football body). In fact, UEFA prez Michel Platini wants to end transfers window everywhere and not just at the EPL. He would keep the summer one, but slightly adjust it’s timeframe.
Let me quickly explain: the soccer season at the club league level runs from around August to around May. While the various leagues, such as the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga, have different start and end points, the beginning of January is the overall halfway mark. For that entire month, teams are allowed to swap players for players from others teams. This is not restricted to inter-league either and can done with teams from other leagues as well. So a player in the EPL can be swapped for another player in the EPL, but he can also be swapped for a player in La Liga if that’s what all the involved parties want.
The January and summer transfer windows kick off a ridiculous feeding frenzy among the press and bloggers, most of whom react to every rumor that comes down the pike. I paid close attention to this past summer’s window and watched everyone predict which player would go to which club…maybe 5% of the predictions were right. This absurdity reached peak levels when Real Madrid attempted to woo Cristiano Ronaldo away from Manchester United, and there were 20 articles for every half-truth that came out about this.
I’ve always been of the opinion that the transfer windows take attention away from the beautiful game as well as distract players from doing their job, and Platini says the same thing as far as that last point goes. This is why I very rarely post transfer rumors and why these two stories make me happy. I don’t always agree with Platini, but he and I are pretty much simpatico on this.
One of the underlying themes of both articles is that the transfer windows benefit only those clubs with the biggest bank accounts, which is true since the act of swapping players can incur huge costs. How huge? Well, don’t let the word “swap” put images of slavery in your mind because Ronaldo would’ve received a ridiculous salary had the Man United/Real Madrid deal gone through, a salary that was rumored to be £1 million a week at one point.
Stoke City boss Tony Pulis tells the BBC that foreign ownership of English Premier League clubs is wrong, taking direct aim at Roman Abramovich and the Abu Dhabi United group, owners of Chelsea and Manchester City, respectively. He feels that the current crop of foreign owners don’t understand the history club footie and that he would much happier if EPL clubs were owned by those from within their respective communities.
I’m in no way coming to his defense here but while he may be acting protectionist, I see no evidence of racism in his statement. Some of his potshots are directed at Abramovich, who just happens to have white skin.
Also, and quite curiously, he didn’t mention either Manchester United owner Malcom Glazer or Liverpool co-owners Tom Hicks & George N. Gillett Jr., all whom are American and have received a boatload of criticism for not being English. Hicks and Gillett especially.
Pulis is expressing a common sentiment held by many traditional football fans, particularly English ones. I’ve said this before but in my footie learning process, I’ve found that old school fans have HUGE issues with Non-British ownership. It’s a direct result of football’s gentrification, and the gentrification as a whole ticks off the old timers to no end. And in reviewing some past instances, Pulis may have a point. An example of an instance is Roman Abramovich’s constant bumping of heads with then-Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho over team signings and playing styles. The conflict got to be so big (and in all fairness, Jose needs to take the blame for some of the conflict), that Roman eventually had to give Jose the axe.
All of this been said, it cannot be denied that the money brought in by these foreign owners (particularly Abramovich) has helped all of these clubs. And while we’ve yet to see this money yield many results at both Stoke and Man City, all the others have done well with the cash.
At a FIFA conference in Zurich, the Chelsea F.C. CEO gave his take on the current global crisis and how he thinks it’ll effect football clubs as a whole…including Chelsea.
A couple of things he said caught my attention:
“A lot of people misunderstand debt. Chelsea are not in the same position as other clubs. We pay no interest on our debt as we have no external debt.
‘Our “debt”, such as it is, is to the owner. He has invested the money in the club. And while that is currently in the form of loans, this can be turned into equity. I think our financial structure does give us some strength and competitive advantage.
‘There is nothing inherently bad in financing one’s business through debt. It’s the ability to make the repayments that is the issue. We don’t have those repayment issues. Companies all over the world are financed predominantly by debt, this is normal in business.”
His specific comments about Chelsea’s debt do carry some weight. The fact that they owe money to the club owner, Roman Abramovich, and not a financial institution do give the club a much better outlook than others.
His comments about “nothing inherently bad in financing one’s business through debt” tick me off for a personal reason. I’ve been doing a lot of personal finance reading and research for the past three years and view all debt as the eighth deadly sin. I may not own a multi-billion dollar club but if I did, I know that I would run it without using debt. Just the way my head’s screwed on.
…because said President, Lord Triesman, is suggesting that the Premier League should “share the wealth” and contribute more of their earnings to the annual kick they give to the FA.
Here’s the deal as I understand it: the FA (or Football Association) in England overseas all of the various footie leagues in Britain. There are indeed many, many leagues with the top four being the Premier League, the Championship League, League 1, and League 2. All leagues have to pay some sort of annual due to the FA, with the Premier League paying the most. Triesman claims that this sharing of wealth will eventually result in more equality across the league in terms of player and staff recruiting.
This is actually a good article…very eye-opening as far as the inner workings of the footbal business. Seems “fair and balanced”. Give it a read.
This story is a few weeks old but it’s worth posting anyway. It says that despite the threat of a global recession, the cash cow that is the TV rights of footie will keep those that benefit from it quite liquid throughout the down turn. UEFA netted a nice US $400 billion from this year’s European Cup broadcast and stand to make over US $1 billion from the current Champions League competition. The 2010 World Cup should put a little over US $3 billion in FIFA’s pockets while Manchester United netted US $76 billion after winning the Champions league final last year.
An FYI:, part of Man U’s money came from their share of TV rights. You wanted to know why a Champions League title is so important to club owners? You wanted to know why American businessmen bought Liverpool FC and, on the whole, are looking to buy more European footie teams? There’s your answer: that clubs get a chunk of the TV rights in Europe unlike in the states, where the NFL, MBA, MLB et al keep all the TV loot for themselves.
I don’t agree with FIFA president Michel Platini’s comment that teams with debt shouldn’t be allowed in the Champions League competition though. As far as I know, their debts don’t have anything to do with the CL; therefore, their debts are none of FIFA’s business, let alone Platini’s.
And it appears that Germany’s Bundesliga is about to get into the TV money game as broadcasters compete to broadcast said-leagues domestic games. A while back, I did a post about how sponsorship money is loading into the Bundesliga. Sadly, the link to the story is dead…stupid Yahoo News!!!!!!!!!
I found this really great article which is a case study the inner workings of Setanta. It focuses on their deal with the SPL, which just got extended. This is an great read.
Blog/fansite RonaldoWORLD is reporting that Mirror is reporting that Alex Ferguson is going to hold a serious grudge against Real Madrid after their push to sign Cristiano Ronaldo. I went to the Mirror and couldn’t find it but here’s their post.
Speaking of Fergie, it’s now rumored that he’s going after Theirry Henry. If Henry knows his roll, Man U has the potential to be a cracking team this year.
Ah, Jose Mourinho. Great to have you back in the mix. The Special One claims that the current Arsenal squad is too young, thereby without enough experience to snag the league cup. He also thinks that Liverpool will take the top title this year.
Ghana moves up a spot in the FIFA rankings…GOOD FOR THEM!!!
The FA of Ireland has concerns about their upcoming qualifier in Georgia due to the current conflict over there, and rightly so.
These articles are a little over three months old but are still quite interesting…
This slideshow highlights the 20 teams with the highest valuation. It seems that the more lucrative your licensing deals are, the more your team is worth. No shocker that Man U. is at the top. And apparently, Inter Milan (#14 on the list) needs to nail down their licensing stuff. Each slide has link where you can click to more info on the team.
Next up are profiles on the 20 highest paid players. As sign of Roman A’s financial influence, five players from Chelsea are listed here. I’m glad to see that some players are using their fame and paycheck to further philanthropic projects. Also, Wayne Rooney has quite a few endorsement deals. And gee, who could it be at the number one spot? No surprise.
Nice slideshow on the top Arsenal shareholders. More informative than interesting, but interesting still.
Because or their strong showing in this year’s Euro Cup, Russia’s back in Fifa after 11 years. Good for them!!!
Spekaing of FIFA, I just found this great bio on FIFA grand puba Michel Platini.
Kind of a wierd article here. Shane O’Rourke, head of Setanta North America, feels that the 50,000 Setanta subscribers in Canada will watch EPL games that the channel broadcasts instead of the Olympics. “My feeling is anybody who’s buying our channel is watching our channel. After all, they’re paying for it”, he says. Well, yeah they’re paying for it but the article makes no mention of polling data on this subject. And let’s not for get that this is a Tivo/DVR/time-shifted world where people can actually record games and watch them later.
FC Barcelona claims that Samuel Eto’o wants out of the club. I tend to ignore transfer rumours (all the Cristiano Ronaldo stuff annoyed me) but since the article lists Chelsea as one of the front runners to get him, I care about this one.
Sponsorship cash continues to flow into the Bundesliga, and at an increasing rate. Hopefully, teams other than Bayern Munich can use it to snag good players to win a league trophy.
Along with my post yesterday about Angolan officials making sure that stadiums are ready for the 2010 ACON, I learned that punctual stadium construction is key when it comes to high-profile national or international competitions. This great article from Zerkalo Nedeli (a Russian term that loosely translates to “mirror of the world”) thoroughly lays out how there can be no screw-ups when such competitions happen on UEFA’s watch.
The 2012 Euro Cup will be jointly held in the Ukraine and Poland, for now at least. These countries are definitely not the poorest in Europe but in comparison to other countries on the continent, they’re not the most-developed. Because of this, UEFA has concerns that stadiums are on schedule to be ready to go when the tourney begins: they’re concerned about other things of course, but an abundant amount of proper pitches is at the top of the list. Factor in that most of UEFA’s budget for the next four years goes towards funding the 2010 competition, and you have a governing body that will watch you like a hawk and also has a Plan B folder somewhere if you drop the ball. And Plan B (along with Plan’s C and D) is mentioned early on in the piece.
This is a very detailed article…if you can’t read it now, bookmark it or read it at lunch.
Ahh…I’m moving into more positive blogging…
EPL officials are tentatively planning for the top EPL teams to do mini tours of duty during the 2010-11 season. Whatever teams are picked would play " mini-competitions in places like Asia, Australia, Africa and North America, during a 12-day winter break. "
There’s been talk about this for a while but after the strong reception that Man. United got in their recent African tour, the talk has increased and is one step closer to reality. Hopefully, the tour will hit Giants Stadium so I can visit.
Just some things that I found…very interesting:
GAME OF THE DAY: Arsenal v. Real Madrid in a Emirates Cup game on GOL TV at 11AM EST.
Also according to their homepage (which is kinda buggy right now along with the rest of the site), GOL TV will no longer be available on Dish TV, which is a BIG problem for me. But I just checked and it’s on right now, so I dunno. Needless to say, I will have some SERIOUS issues if this happens and WILL consider breaking my contract for a move to DirectTV if this is true. Will call Dish later on today to confirm this. TV rights football have a very interesting role in the business of Soccer-I don’t fully understand this role so I’ll be researching it more and more. (Courtesy GOL TV).
Apparently, Arsene Wenger has expressed interest in Barcelona teen wunderkind Bojan Krkic. As Krkic came up through the Barcelona youth league, Bojan isn’t leaving them anytime soon if you ask me. Still, it must be nice for Bojan to be wanted and to get recognition as a great player from some like Wenger (Courtesy FC Barcelona Blog)
Speaking of Barcelona, Xinhua News Agency discuss how Lionel Messi will be joining Boca Juniors star Juan Roman Riquelme in the midfield of the Argentinian Olympic Soccer team. It’s a general news article BUT it hyped me to the fact the Argentina’s first games is against the Ivory Coast. So it’s Messi/Riquelme/Mascherano/Gago/Aguero vs. Cissé/Eboué/Kalou/Touré/Zokora. That’ll be good. (Courtesy Xinhua News Agency),
Setanta’s got a story that Ronaldo (the Brazilian one) may move to the Premier League. With this, all he’ll have to do is join a Bundesliga squad afterwards and he’ll have played in every marquee football league. Unfortunately the link’s broken as of this post. Will remove it if things don’t shape up (Courtesy Setanta)