What is the best way to run football?. Who knows and how do you measure it?. We have gone down the route of outright no holds barred individual team competition (mainly financial) is the perhaps sole determining factor in who gets to the top and stays there. Other countries like the USA and Germany have different systems where they see the viability of the whole league as the priority. To be fair Sky money is equally distributed money to all clubs in the Premiership. Bosman also makes sense from a personnel point of view but not for UK football overall. Our system generates a brand which attracts the world's best footballers to our best league but flows through to a crap national team. You pays your money? Despite the disparity I still believe our lower leagues are among the best attended. (Average Championship to date 17152, European equivalents are France 6728, Italy 6398, Spain 7325, Germany 18795)
Whatever the rights and I have to say mainly wrongs of the billions of pounds that English football is worth as a product, the fact is that very few clubs have gone to the wall, where they have actually ceased to exist. Recent ones I guess are Scarborough, Rushden & Diamonds, Boston, Darlington, Maidstone United, and before them the likes of Workington Town, Barrow and Bradford Park Avenue in the 1960's/1970's/1980's. However, I believe that the vast majority of those clubs are still in existence, even if they no longer play where they use to and play in regional leagues. We've also seen the rebirth of Accrington Stanley. There will always be rich people and consortiums who will bail clubs out, no matter how dire the financial circumstances. You only have to look at the likes of Portsmouth who by rights shouldn't exist now, and I dare say someone will rescue Bolton and write off nearly £200m of debt into the bargain. The domino theory suggested decades ago that if one league club went to the wall then a whole host would follow has never materialised.
With all of the foreign owners, players and agents who are now part of the fabric it makes me wonder just how much of this great wealth goes abroad and out of our sphere of influence.(worded carefully)
You have to assume that the game is also riddled with backhanders and illegal approaches and payments that are magiced away by creative accounting lies and deception. That is the price to pay when you make a sport and it's participants rich beyond what 95% of them deserve to be. Yet for all of this money in the game at the highest levels, the smaller league clubs struggle with gates of 2,000 and with some players being paid BELOW the minimum national wage.
No matter what industry you talk about the sad fact is that money talks. Look at supermarkets and how they exploit the farmers. We are all pawns in someone's game .In football the fact is that Sky is the main sponsor for all our professional leagues. In my opinion we should be grateful for that fact. While the sharing out of the pot may not be fair it reflects its worth to the sponsor. While I appreciate some people may see Sky money as evil, I see it as a necessary evil.
I do like the American Football rules where the bottom performing team that season gets first pick of the American footballing schools and it feeds upwards. This is why you don't really get a domineering team for long periods. Hate the sport though but like the system.
Don't disagree with you but we are where we are and have absolutely no influence in the way we run our leagues
But FIFA is really all about the World Cup. Like it or not the Yanks would do things properly. They have the stadia and the marketing know how. I think they are the only country who actually made a profit on the Olympics. The problem with FIFA now is that Europe wants to have more say and that is another question. As far as football in this country it is the FA who need to sort things out but I don't know what clout they have
There have been backhanders and financial fiddles ever since football started and probably the only difference now is that at top clubs, it is rare for cash to be handed over to a turnstile operator as in former times. But any organisation will be able to "launder" cash if they really want to and have the accounting staff to do it. Football and sport isn't any different to your local plumber or window cleaner in that respect.
My plumber has only to deal with a few drips, most football clubs have many. It drives me round the bend
