Every football club in Europe must operate within the parameters of UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations but the rules do not encourage competition and seem only to serve teams with a global brand already in place.
D. Ray Morton, 16th January 2015.
British transfer record signing Ángel Di María will not be Manchester United's last mega purchse
Some comparisons were made in the past week about the managerial records of Manchester United's current manager, Louis van Gaal, and last year's horror show ran by David Moyes. At this stage of last season, United had accumulated the same amount of points (though their league position is superior). It begged the question, just how well is van Gaal really doing and how can United push on and become the force, again, that they were under Sir Alex Ferguson? Their solution? Cash. Having spent a fortune last summer, including the British transfer record signing of Ángel Di María, they are set to do the same again between now and the end of next August. There is talk of spending €150m on three targets: AS Roma's Kevin Strootman, Borussia Dortmund's Mats Hummels and Southampton's Nathaniel Clyne.
In this supposed period of austerity and responsibility in football, how is it possible for United to shell out such vast amounts of money whilst other clubs remain hamstrung by revenue limitations? It is all about the size of the brand. There are maybe a handful of teams with this luxury. United are one of them. A huge corporate brand that flogs merchandise throughout Asia in the manner of which smaller clubs can only dream of. Barcelona, Real Madrid and arguably Bayern Munich are also amongst this elite. Nouveau riche sides like Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris St. Germain do not have this luxury as their spending comes from wealthy individuals as opposed to generating revenue through merchandise sales and sponsorship deals. Although Chelsea, City and PSG aspire to dominate Europe, they are still outside that top bracket when it comes to flogging replica kits globally.
This global brand gravy train for the few brings about many questions. Seeing as these few clubs can continue to spend massive amounts of money thanks to the strength of their brand, does it not make football less competitive from a strictly capitalistic sense? Spend all you like as long as it is not from some rich man's pocket. This is something that is new to football. Though many clubs would produce their own players in the past, teams really only improved considerably when they were bankrolled by a wealthy owner. Who could imagine a Brian Clough in this era, a great manager famed for bringing small provincial clubs from the lower divisions to challenging in the top flight? That was done through old-fashioned investment and sound coaching.
This global brand gravy train for the few brings about many questions. Seeing as these few clubs can continue to spend massive amounts of money thanks to the strength of their brand, does it not make football less competitive from a strictly capitalistic sense? Spend all you like as long as it is not from some rich man's pocket. This is something that is new to football. Though many clubs would produce their own players in the past, teams really only improved considerably when they were bankrolled by a wealthy owner. Who could imagine a Brian Clough in this era, a great manager famed for bringing small provincial clubs from the lower divisions to challenging in the top flight? That was done through old-fashioned investment and sound coaching.
Brian Clough, though a socialist politically, cleverly used his owners' capitalist endeavour to reach success
FFP removes this possibility because every investment made needs to be backed up. There are inconsistencies, such as the building of Man City's development centre which does not fall within the jurisdiction of FFP. The idea is to try and spend a fortune developing home-grown players rather than spending it in the transfer market. Either way, such projects will just become "player factories" where young players will get moved on in order to generate money for the main team. These players will never get a look in. Since City have funded this ambitious youth system, not a single player from it has made a first-team appearance. Chelsea do similar things in that many of their players get loaned out to feeder club, Vitesse Arnhem, where their price rises without any true chance of breaking into Chelsea's real first-team.
So there is a glass ceiling there for these just-off top clubs. Is this really good for football? Is it just financial reshuffling that ensures the rich stay rich? When UEFA came out with the idea for FFP, it seemed like money in football was finally going to be cleaned up. It has not been. It has only been moved around differently leaving smaller clubs with a sense of limitation, frustration and confusion.
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