Post by QPR Report on Aug 29, 2009 7:29:34 GMT
The Times
What's wrong with football clubs breaking even?
Patrick Barclay, Chief Football Commentator
Every year at this time they gather, the great and the not-so-good, to mark the start of the European club football season. The venue is Monte Carlo and you stroll from one opulent hall to another, always with a view of the yacht-strewn bay, occasionally pausing to reflect that “the poor will always be with us” was not one of the Bible’s more reliable assertions.
The draws are conducted for the Champions League and Uefa Cup (henceforth Europa League) and awards are dished out to the leading players from the previous season. Lionel Messi was presented with his by Denis Law, which was a reminder of the days when Scotland, as well as Argentina, bred great footballers.
At a party I bumped into the last of them, Kenny Dalglish, who was with the Liverpool delegation, and also rubbed shoulders with, among others, Michel Platini, our host as Uefa president, and Danny Wallace, the former Southampton, Manchester United and England forward, who had come with a disablement lobby group. Then there was the Super Cup match last night — a chance to watch Barcelona.
It is all so seductive and by day there are so many meetings to attend that the launch of the Dubai Sports Council’s “Globe Soccer” project, which intends to start “new discussions on huge economic deals”, could not quite be squeezed in — even though it promised a heady mixture of high-powered agents and luminaries such as Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, yet another great player of the past, still serving Bayern Munich and head of the European Clubs’ Association.
The initial attraction of that gathering had been speculation that a breakaway European league was nigh, or at least as little as a decade away. This had been heightened by recent remarks from Arsène Wenger. On this occasion, however, the indications are that Arsenal’s wise manager may have got it wrong, for European football is beginning more closely to resemble a family under the enlightened, if sometimes chaotic, leadership of Platini. As the former triple European Footballer of the Year said in his pre-draw address, two years ago he had asked for peace in his time as president and now, suddenly, it was breaking out. Relations with Fifa, the sport’s world governing body, could indeed hardly be more cordial, for Platini remains the most influential adviser to its president, Sepp Blatter. If Platini wants a firm global stance against video assistance to referees, for instance, Blatter obliges.
And, as for the supposed enemy within that our own Premier League constituted, the English are more than evident among the palm trees: Sir Dave Richards, the League chairman, had breakfast yesterday with Lord Triesman, the FA chairman, whose predecessor, Geoff Thompson, is only too proud to have become part of Platini’s Uefa furniture.
Thompson has always been a strong supporter of Platini’s campaign for “financial fair play”, even though it was widely (if wrongly) portrayed as anti-English because leading English clubs carried large debts while succeeding in European competition. At the Uefa party last year Thompson vowed that the reforms would go forward and on Thursday night I admitted to him that my sneering scepticism had been misplaced.
Earlier that day Platini had played his trump card by revealing to a gathering of journalists in which the English were prominent that Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, had been a key voice in demanding Uefa make clubs break even on their football dealings. So much for a bias against the Premier League.
Peter Kenyon, the Chelsea chief executive, confirmed that it had always been the intention to balance the club’s books. A degree of hypocrisy was nevertheless detected, for Abramovich rode a coach and horses through the rules Uefa intends to impose by the start of the 2012-13 season when he loaned Chelsea hundreds of millions of pounds to buy the players and managers required to take them to the Champions League forefront and keep them there.
Now he wants to prevent other rich men from doing the same. Now that Abramovich has one of the best teams in Europe, he wants a nice level playing field on which they can fulfil their ambitions, safe from the danger of fresh challenges from men such as Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi (even though the reforms will come too late to trim the sails of the new Manchester City). Then he can stop losing money.
Yes, it is hypocritical. Yes, it does remind you of how the so-called oligarchs, Abramovich included, harnessed a wind of change in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia and we can never be sure, in a game always ready for “new discussions on huge economic deals”, that Uefa’s reforms are not seen by some as the main chance.
That does not mean that break-even football is wrong. The rich will always be with us, but for hundreds of clubs all over Europe, and not least those in England who, like Portsmouth, have crippled themselves trying to keep up with the hugely indebted elite, “financial fair play” is the right way to go.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article6814254.ece
What's wrong with football clubs breaking even?
Patrick Barclay, Chief Football Commentator
Every year at this time they gather, the great and the not-so-good, to mark the start of the European club football season. The venue is Monte Carlo and you stroll from one opulent hall to another, always with a view of the yacht-strewn bay, occasionally pausing to reflect that “the poor will always be with us” was not one of the Bible’s more reliable assertions.
The draws are conducted for the Champions League and Uefa Cup (henceforth Europa League) and awards are dished out to the leading players from the previous season. Lionel Messi was presented with his by Denis Law, which was a reminder of the days when Scotland, as well as Argentina, bred great footballers.
At a party I bumped into the last of them, Kenny Dalglish, who was with the Liverpool delegation, and also rubbed shoulders with, among others, Michel Platini, our host as Uefa president, and Danny Wallace, the former Southampton, Manchester United and England forward, who had come with a disablement lobby group. Then there was the Super Cup match last night — a chance to watch Barcelona.
It is all so seductive and by day there are so many meetings to attend that the launch of the Dubai Sports Council’s “Globe Soccer” project, which intends to start “new discussions on huge economic deals”, could not quite be squeezed in — even though it promised a heady mixture of high-powered agents and luminaries such as Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, yet another great player of the past, still serving Bayern Munich and head of the European Clubs’ Association.
The initial attraction of that gathering had been speculation that a breakaway European league was nigh, or at least as little as a decade away. This had been heightened by recent remarks from Arsène Wenger. On this occasion, however, the indications are that Arsenal’s wise manager may have got it wrong, for European football is beginning more closely to resemble a family under the enlightened, if sometimes chaotic, leadership of Platini. As the former triple European Footballer of the Year said in his pre-draw address, two years ago he had asked for peace in his time as president and now, suddenly, it was breaking out. Relations with Fifa, the sport’s world governing body, could indeed hardly be more cordial, for Platini remains the most influential adviser to its president, Sepp Blatter. If Platini wants a firm global stance against video assistance to referees, for instance, Blatter obliges.
And, as for the supposed enemy within that our own Premier League constituted, the English are more than evident among the palm trees: Sir Dave Richards, the League chairman, had breakfast yesterday with Lord Triesman, the FA chairman, whose predecessor, Geoff Thompson, is only too proud to have become part of Platini’s Uefa furniture.
Thompson has always been a strong supporter of Platini’s campaign for “financial fair play”, even though it was widely (if wrongly) portrayed as anti-English because leading English clubs carried large debts while succeeding in European competition. At the Uefa party last year Thompson vowed that the reforms would go forward and on Thursday night I admitted to him that my sneering scepticism had been misplaced.
Earlier that day Platini had played his trump card by revealing to a gathering of journalists in which the English were prominent that Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, had been a key voice in demanding Uefa make clubs break even on their football dealings. So much for a bias against the Premier League.
Peter Kenyon, the Chelsea chief executive, confirmed that it had always been the intention to balance the club’s books. A degree of hypocrisy was nevertheless detected, for Abramovich rode a coach and horses through the rules Uefa intends to impose by the start of the 2012-13 season when he loaned Chelsea hundreds of millions of pounds to buy the players and managers required to take them to the Champions League forefront and keep them there.
Now he wants to prevent other rich men from doing the same. Now that Abramovich has one of the best teams in Europe, he wants a nice level playing field on which they can fulfil their ambitions, safe from the danger of fresh challenges from men such as Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi (even though the reforms will come too late to trim the sails of the new Manchester City). Then he can stop losing money.
Yes, it is hypocritical. Yes, it does remind you of how the so-called oligarchs, Abramovich included, harnessed a wind of change in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia and we can never be sure, in a game always ready for “new discussions on huge economic deals”, that Uefa’s reforms are not seen by some as the main chance.
That does not mean that break-even football is wrong. The rich will always be with us, but for hundreds of clubs all over Europe, and not least those in England who, like Portsmouth, have crippled themselves trying to keep up with the hugely indebted elite, “financial fair play” is the right way to go.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article6814254.ece