I have been thinking lately about what players I have seen here in the Swedish Alsvenskan league would make it at Watford if/when we make it up to the Premiership. The problem I see is the jump in standards between playing in the leagues of countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway and even lesser quality leagues like Finland and other Baltic countries. These leagues have a lot of talent both home grown and imported but unless the player is exceptionally talented they more often then not tend to struggle to adapt to the better standard of football. This got me thinking about how many players in these leagues move first to the Dutch league to further there development and then move on from there. Take Andreas Granqvist as an example. He was started with Helsingborg and much like our own Joel Ekstrand show great promise developing into a standout Alsvenska player. He then got his big move to the Premiership with Wigan. He never made it at Wigan then after a brief loan back at Helsingborg settled in Holland with Groningen. After three years in Holland he caught the eye of Genoa in Serie A and has now been rumoured to be a target of Liverpool. Do you think it would be smart for the Pozzo's to buy a Dutch club as a feeder team for the hopefully future big three. I know it might seem a little premature to be thinking so big, but I have seen a lot of wasted talent not reaching full potential because of going to bigger better clubs to soon.
Doubt that the Pozzos will be in a position to take on another challenge for three to five years to be honest
I know that it may never happen (The Pozzo's buying another club), but over the years of watching football here in Sweden I've seen some very exciting players with the potential to player at a much higher level make too big a jump too quickly and loss there way. The Pozzo's way is to buy potential and develop it. They loan out a lot of there players to other teams to get experience, yet these teams will have little interest in there long term development. If the Pozzo's owned a team like FC Utrecht or FC Groningen they would have a team that is a stepping stop to Serie A, La Liga and the Premiership. There potential stars of the future would have a better platform to develop and progress. Obviously not all signings would need to spend time developing there but it would be a benefit to many and would I think increase the chances of potential being realised.
Better still, they could start a new A league franchise in Christchurch so I could have more than one or two game a year to go to. The points you make are good, Sweden.
I thought the Pozzo family had tried in Holland with de Graafshaap or another team but that did not work for them.
I agree that Scandinavia is a potential source for a huge amount of talent, particularly when you consider how many successes we have had from there (If you include Iceland as well) - Helgusson. Gunnarsson, Alan Nielson and so on. However, I do not think that the Pozzos`would want to have too many projects on the go at one time - they tend to succeed first somewhere and then move on to the next step. Also, the regulations in some other countries regarding football ownership are not as Laissez Faire as ours in Britain. To quote a few examples here. In both Sweden and Turkey 100% fan ownership is so well established that no other form of ownership is now allowed. In Germany the 51% club member ownership rule prevents individual investors (Or groups) from taking over anything more than a minority of shares. In Spain there are few regulations (as yet), but the tendency is towards fan ownership schemes. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna Pamplona are all 100% fan owned and this tendency is growing, albeit on a smaller scale, at other Spanish Clubs. We tend to presume that millionaires can simply buy clubs at will because that happens to be the case in England (Which is one reason why the Pozzos are here) but this is not the case everywhere - the Pozzos operate where they can ie. where there is a loophole. I have no idea how easy it is to buy a football club in the Netherlands, whether it is as open as in England, or more restricted as in Germany, the lack of investors in Dutch football suggests it might be the latter.
I think my main concern is the Pozzo's finding the most effective way of fulfilling the potential of the players they buy. As I said before there are so many players that move from much weaker leagues to the top leagues and just don't make it. I know some will never develop into top league players no matter how you develop them, but there are many that would. I tried to look into there involvement with de Graafshaap All I could find was a link to a forum with a rather angry Watford supporter not liking how his club has been ruined by the Pozzo's, there was no official evidence of any link . If they have tried to create a link in Holland and it didn't work I'll just trust they did there best and leave it be.
We have quite a mixture in France with some clubs being owned by wealthy people, eg Paris SG or Marseilles, while others playing in the same division eg Saint-Ãtienne are still a part of a sports club that elects chairmen or presidents. Clubs have been close to bankruptcy, but local businesses and town councils have bailed them out. Many stadiums are owned by the local council who rent them to the club. Chateauroux are part of a multi-sports club and I doubt that they would see the advantage of being owned by an individual. There might be a club that wants to compete with the big boys, but I am not aware of which one it could be.
Sir,the club that WILL (Hi Mitch)win the league this season by the name of Lyon(s) -privately owned ?
