One of us has missed a **** load of updates Piskie. My understadning is that we still owe £240m or thereabouts, we re-structured the loan to reduce the annual payments but are not due to completely pay off the loan/debt for anotehr 20 years. Does anyone have any solid updates ?
Well I must admit that I had no idea it was anywhere near that sort of figure, over that kind of term. Would be interesting to get a definitive
It should also be remembered that, in all, 16 German club stadiums were upgraded for the 2006 World Cup at no cost to the clubs themselves. The German boost in crowd sizes dates from the upsurge of interest generated by hosting the World cup - and is confined to their first division - crowds sizes in their lower leagues are lower than in England. In addition many top German clubs have a whole city to themselves (Or only a smaller rival such as 1860 Munich, St. Pauli or Stuttgarter Kickers) - there is no equivalent of a city like Manchester or Liverpool with real shared support for 2 clubs. On the playing side Germany benefits from being in the centre of Europe and from most of their immigrant populations being from other football playing countries, Turkey, Poland, Italy, Spain etc. In contrast British football profits little from Indian or Pakistani immigration. Higher rates of naturalization, and the utilization of this by German football, have led to a multi cultural German national team: Klose and Podolsky (Polish), Mario Gomez, Sammy Khadira, Meset Ozul, Boateng and several others - a new and refreshing change in German football - which may go some way towards changing Germany's image in the World.
Agree completely. The point about British football failing to benefit from Indian and Pakistani immigration should probably be laid at the feet of the game in this country, though. It's not like the interest isn't there in those communities, it's just not picked up on by virtually any clubs, unfortunately. Another issue that needs to be addressed as part of the inquest into the failing youth system, I think.
The scant representation of Asian players in our leagues is symptomatic of the failure of the grass roots to really engage local communities. There are plenty of Asian lads playing football for fun, but when it comes to professional level their representation is practically non existent.
I'm not sure. It's been cited before that Football isn't really in the Asian psyche as much as Cricket, but you would have thought that 2nd and 3rd generation asain lads would have the same cultural interests as English lads (as far as sport, music, popular culture etc goes). I don't know if it's a stigma thing, how many Asain coaches are there ? Or an aspirational thing - i.e. no Asian players playing at the top level to aspire to, or whether it's something else ? As I say, there are plenty of asain lads playing football in school, and for sunday league teams etc, but when it comes to professional level they are badly under represented. It's obviously not a skill thing, just that they don't make the next step up.
The single thing that most affects youth football (in my opinion) is the conceit of junior coaches in believing that they can identify a future world class talent under the age of 13 say. Just because someone has successfully done it, doesn't mean that it is possible, it just means that occasionally even a blind squirrel finds a nut! Given the way that boys develop physically, it is almost impossible to pick out pre-puberty which children are going to be better than the rest at 18. Often, it depends more on their ability to think the right things even if they will be unable to execute, until they are 5 years older. So there are two ways to get picked by a coach as a future champion (even if you accept, as I do, that the whole notion is ridiculous). Either you have a lot of money and pay to go to an expensive club/academy, or you develop faster than the other kids and you help your team win at an early age by being bigger/faster/stronger than the rest at an earlier age. I would say that (and please understand I am talking generally here) Asian kids tend to develop later than those of European and African heritage, and their families are less-inclined (or able) to spend money on the high-price route. Thus less Asian kids in top flight football.
