I started supporting the Spurs in 1948 and through the 40s the 50s and the 60s loved the games against the traditional “football to feet” sides such as Burnley, Forest, Hammers etc and even enjoyed the long ball specialist of the time Wolves It was fascinating watching Shankly turn the Pool from nowhere team into the passing side with dash that he turned them into and during a similar period watch Billy Nich finish polishing the pass and move Spurs into a top top European side playing the best football the old first division had seen Man U moved into a footballing side during a similar period and again a tradition was built by hard working coaches/managers who dragged soccer out of the Charles Hughes dark ages Now! The spiv oil money has deprived forward looking coaches / managers from performing similar tradition building feats Money buys the best players; players now (rightly) look for the biggest payday and to hell with adventure of building club traditions Man City were always well supported and played with a devil may care dash, now they simply go out and spend another 100m of oil money Chelsea never made it above a small to middling club with no known playing style, now! Spend another oil money wedge but no definitive style In the earlier days I refer to clubs could progress upwards via footballing courage and finesse whilst building their own particular styles of play with that style infused in youth squads that produced next year’s squad Football is the smaller an adventure and the bigger a spivs market Money should not be the dominating factor in the challenge for championship honours and the continual grab for more money in the European cash assault Will football tradition building ever overcome the chase for dollars? no
I'd have to agree. The process of repair would require an extremely brave FA to cap overall spending and demand an even higher percentage of British players, something which this FA will never do. Unfortunately, its only in the extremely unlikely event that all the major sponsors of the league put back spending drastically that this will ever happen. For the money to drain from the game, the money has to make the first move.
In many ways professional sport has always been dominated by money. The key word is professional and you can't really expect football to behave any differently form any other business in this modern world of multi-nationals & world banks. If something is popular there will always be people and organisations ready to profit from it. We have gone from a situation where players were exploited to one where players can extract huge fees for their talents. Some people still support their local amateur team and I respect them for that but most of us want to watch the top players performing at the height of their powers. Thousands, no Millions of fans all over the world are ready to part with their money to watch professional football. Huge income is generated and that attracts the biggest money men to take an interest. As long as we all pay to watch, money will dominate. What surprises me are the number of fans who are interested in the money side of the game. The transfer fees the profit and loss of the clubs and so on. I always try to put this out of my mind so that I can enjoy the game. Hearing all the details about players like Campbell, Berbatov and now Modric does get in the way of my enjoyment of the game, so I try to let this wash over me and just watch the football. Football should be an escape from everyday concerns and it's the game we all love. When I listen to music I am not concerned with how much the performers are getting I just enjoy the music. it's the same with football or perhaps it should be.
Perhaps we can go the next step it is also media driven. Not a day goes by that we hear so and so is worth x millions or club(any) has bid x millions for a particular player and it is all over the tv and internet. It does wind me up when I see one of our players (no names necessary) pose in the club shirt says he is delighted to be there and in a blink he's off because some dodgy agent turns his head with the promise of a bigger pay day. Sometimes the catalyst can be a completely inaccurate article in one of the red tops,no facts just guesswork.
We won't win the title or CL in the foreseeable future unless ENIC sell up, or start spending big-time. Simple as.
There needs to be a limit that a team can spend on salaries in any one year. Average £50,000 per week per player over 25 players = £1.25M per week =£65M/year. On top of that allow another £15M a year for under 21 players and £5M a year for acadamy players. So say a total of £85M a year. It would stop teams paying silly money for bench warmers.
Yet the modern fans of the small to middling club feel they have some sort of rivalry with us, on par if not greater than the north london gipsies, a current thread on this board proving it...nothing but a bunch of Johnny Come Lately's with some very big heads! On topic, my general view is, there's obviously a saturation point where there's no more money to be made in football, because not everybody is interested in it. Until a figure is known what the 'industry' is worth and what potential slice of that a club can expect to potentially maximise, its hard to say. Only then will the owners be able to guage if their money will give a quicker/bigger return invested elsewhere than football. Over the last couple of decades its been a bit of a boom, and i don't see it ending just yet either. As always there's a flip side, you can only hope people with some intelligence opt to buy your club, I'm still shocked at Rangers tbh, how a club of that stature can be infiltrated by idiots that couldn't run a bath let alone a business is astonishing. Portsmouth have also suffered epic mismanagement, so for us fans its a reminder how easily it can all go wrong too.
Personally, I don't like the idea of being able to buy instant success, changing the entire ethos or demographic of a club in the process. Far better that ther be some form of capping which places greater emphasis on the skills of the club, management and players to generate success. However, I fear that the gate is now wedged open and the entire stable has long since bolted!! Only issue I would have with the OP is the generic title of 'oil money' and later reference to 'spiv oil'. Some of the massive investment has come from states with linked domestic revenues in energy, but other clubs such as Anzhi Makhachkala and a lesser extent PSG are owned by individuals or investment authorities with disparate interests. In effect, very little different from the groups that own clubs like..... Spurs.
If you ever play Poker, there is one simple rule you should insist on before you enter the game - Table stake. In other words, each player starts with a preset and agreed sum of money. This prevents, for instance, you starting with £100 and another player starting with £1000. All that will happen is that the player with the more money will simply " buy the pot" in other words, you can't stay in the game as you don't have the same amount of money, and will simply be forced to stack your hand, no matter how good it may be. So yes, I would like to see some sort of similar " levelling of the playing field" brought into football. at the moment the field is being made even more uneven by ridiculous sums of unearned income being pumped into some clubs by mega-rich owners. In other words, they are simply buying the pot. Left unchecked, there will be, in a very few years, just a small handful of clubs, globally, that will realistically be able to compete for any major trophy.
The problem with leveling the financial playing field is that, in a free market, it is impossible to enforce - mainly because enough people will complain to the respective courts to have it overturned. It is possible to enforce in an enclosed league - the NBA, NFL and NHL can do this, because they're self-contained. However, no football league in the world is self-contained (with the possible exception of the Vatican City league), so it cannot be enforced. Financial Fair Play is the way to go, but only if they actually enforce it to the fullest extent. I'd go into more detail, but dinner's ready!
Of course it would have to be, at least, Europe wide. If the will is there, I see no reason that it can't be mostly enforced. If the penalties are clear, and are enforced vigorously. The alternative is game dominated by,literally, a handful of clubs. I can't believe that the governing bodies want to see that anymore than we do. If they are prepared to allow that to happen, then they're even more bent than I had already assumed.
if sky ever stop showing football,then a lot of money will go out of the game,it's thier money input which spoilt the game,moreso than oil money, imo
