Expert Article

The Beautiful Game?

By Haakon Moller

“Maybe the game has developed in a wrong direction that way, that when a player goes somewhere and cost £37million and he’s earning £200,000 a week he is happy just to get the money. Maybe the focus of playing football is the second most important thing.“ Samii Hyypia, former manager of Bayer Leverkusen

Many say that soccer has lost its passion. Even if increased competition has forced players to dedicate every moment of their lives to the sport to keep up, today’s players are criticized by their predecessors and fans alike for lacking dedication and passion. So, if players are putting in more hours in the gym and on the training field than ever before, how can we say that they lack passion?

The Last Bandiera

The answer is that most soccer fans still have a romantic view of the way the sport is played. Fans expect undying loyalty from those that have the privilege of pulling on their clubs’ storied colors, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for players to provide. Years ago it was not uncommon for soccer players to spend their entire careers with one club, but today doing so is considered an extraordinary sacrifice on the players part. Few players choose to stay at one club their entire careers, and those that do are referred to as bandieras – flagbearers.

Players who spent their entire careers with their hometown clubs are practically extinct in modern football. When Francesco Totti said his tearful goodbye from soccer last summer, after 25 illustrious years with his hometown club Roma, it was said that the last bandiera was gone. The economic landscape in international soccer mimics that of the world as a whole, the rich get richer, while the rest get left behind. Players have a hard time staying loyal to their hometown clubs when they can earn double, or triple their salaries elsewhere. In the early 2000s you had maybe a dozen clubs that could compete for the Champions League, the most prestigious competition in soccer, while today the number of clubs that have a realistic chance is no more than three or four. But soccer clubs have always had very high revenues, so how has a couple of clubs managed to leave the rest in their wake? The answer is that in the last ten years an enormous amount of money from outside sources – mostly oil rich billionaires – has poured into the sport.

                                                (Francesco Totti at his last game)

Financial Fair Play

In 2011, after seeing previous soccer superpowers like Leeds United and FC Parma go into bankruptcy trying to keep up with the spending necessary for success, the Union of European Football Associations (more commonly known as UEFA) introduced Financial Fair Play. FFP is a set of economic rules European clubs have to comply with in order to be allowed into the Champions League, and was meant to create a level playing field for all European clubs.  Under FFP clubs are only allowed to spend 5 million euros more than they generate organically in revenue, which in theory means that ultra-rich owners are unable to inject their clubs with cash in order to buy success. But 2 clubs have managed to find a loophole – Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. What makes these two clubs different than the rest? They are not owned by people, but by sovereign nations. 

The Wealth of Nations

Since 2008 Manchester City has been owned by Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Sheikh Mansour is the deputy prime minister and member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family. Manchester City is not one of the traditional big clubs in England, but since Sheikh Mansour took over they have spent well over 1 billion euros on the transfer market to establish themselves in the upper echelons of English and European soccer. Similarly, PSG has been owned by Qatar Sports Investment since 2011, which is controlled by the Qatari government. But in an era where even billionaire owners have been forced to cut back their spending, how have these government backed club managed to spend more than ever before?

Under the current FFP rules clubs can only spend 5 million$ more than they generate in revenue each year. This has forced even rich owners like Roman Abramovic (who was spending enormous out of pocket sums to make Chelsea competitive in the early 2000s), to rely on selling players in order to buy. Manchester City and PSG have managed to avoid this by using their government influences to generate massively inflated sponsorship deals for their clubs. PSG and Manchester City are both sponsored by companies that are owned or controlled by the Qatari and Saudi governments. This has given them unnaturally high revenues that give them space to spend enormous sums on wages and transfer fees. 

Massive Inflation

The inflated sums that these government owned superclubs can afford to pay has created a ripple effect on the market. The 2 most expensive players of all time, Kylian Mbappe and Neymar may both play for PSG, but the 2 next players on the list, Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembele, play for FC Barcelona, a club owned and run by its own fans. So there are clubs that have managed to spend as much as PSG and Manchester City without having government money on their side. FFP was meant to curb European soccer’s outlandish spending habits and bring a sense of parity, but instead it has created a small circle of superclubs trying to outspend each other. 

More and more money is being spent on the transfer market every year, and the quality of players has gone down. In 2009 the five most expensive players in the world had all won the Ballon D’Or, soccer’s highest individual honor. In 2018 the five most expensive player of all time don’t have a single Ballon D’Or between them. When PSG and Mancester City first came to wealth it was hard for them to attract players because their team was not competitive. This lead to them having to spend more money to attract players to their club, which led to other clubs having to spend more money to compete with these two clubs. The result is a race to the top where only the wealthiest few can afford to keep up. 

What Next?

The situation with Manchester City and PSG is exactly what Financial Fair Play was supposed to stop. Since these two clubs do not have to care if they overpay for players, as they have a near unlimited cash stream behind them, transfer fees and wages increase exponentially every year. The whole reason FFP was created was to make sure clubs did not have the unfair advantage of mega rich owners, but today Manchester City and PSG keep inflating and distorting the market. Until UEFA can close the loopholes in FFP that makes it possible for government backed clubs to inflate their revenues, the whole system is essentially doing the opposite of its intended meaning. Instead of creating a level playing field it has led to a few rich clubs being able to spend as much as they want, while the rest struggle to keep up with Financial Fair Play regulation that stops them from competing with PSG and Manchester City. Financial Fair Play definitely has the right intentions, but at this point it is clear that the system needs a massive revamp.

Sources: Ladyman, Ian http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2421236/Bayer-Leverkusen-boss-Sami-Hyypia-says-English-football-lost-passion.html

UEFA, https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/protecting-the-game/club-licensing-and-financial-fair-play/index.html