This week, the Crouch Report into football governance and finance has become its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Either you agree with it, and concur that English football has massive systemic issues that have been neglected for too long and require structural change to address them. Or you speak out against it to protect your own self-interest, and prove why English football has massive systemic issues that have been neglected for too long and require structural change to address them.
Brady, Parish, Purslow and Kinnear, a group of club bigwigs that sound like a provincial town accountancy firm, have used their various media platforms to denounce the plans for an independent regulator and to rail against the horrifying suggestion that money should drip down a little more to ensure the long-term future of the English football pyramid.
Their weapons of choice were hollow outrage and more straw men than a Wizard of Oz convention. It reminds of the Brexit debate, bold statements about shadowy, faceless figures from afar threatening to railroad us with their agendas.
Not that the current situation isn’t broken, you understand – none of them have been foolish to suggest that. But they don’t need to; they only need to claim that the alternative is worse.
Of all those reactions, it’s the ones from those whose clubs have recently been in the EFL that sting the most. Christian Purslow, the Aston Villa CEO, does not believe the game needs an independent regulator. Three-and-a-half years ago, Villa faced the prospect of financial ruin if they hadn’t been promoted thanks to a gross wastage on transfer fees and contracts combined with relegation.
Purslow also pointed out the generosity of Premier League clubs, arranging a £250m loan for EFL clubs. That loan will have to be paid back in full by June 2024, which simply kicks the problem down the road. If your retort is “Well these clubs will simply overspend on players and wages themselves so what’s the point in handouts?”, welcome to the party! That’s precisely why the game’s finances need a reset and the game itself needs a more effective regulator.
In his programme notes on Tuesday evening, Leeds United chief executive Angus Kinnear compared the potential implementation of an extra levy on transfer fee spending to “Maoist collective agriculturalism” that resulted in the death of thousands of people. If there’s one club whose modern history might suggest the need for an independent regulator to protect the long-term future of clubs in the case of gross mismanagement, it is Leeds.
Kinnear does not care if this is silly. It is a deliberately ludicrous overreaction designed to be outrageous because it makes the premise itself seem worthy only of ridicule rather than considered thought. This is a PR game. They will lobby the Government to attack the proposals and they will win if we let them. And because this is how things work, they might even win if we don’t.
The general disposition of these people is that they owe the game nothing and it has a duty to provide them with everything. They have persuaded themselves and each other that they retain their position in the top flight purely on merit rather than through financial advantage. In most cases they will retain the support of fans because tribalism has never been more rampant. These people promote their own self-interest because they have a mandate to do so.
Rising ticket prices despite vast broadcasting revenues, selling NFTs as a new way to squeeze extra loyalty out of supporters, a widening gap between the top and the bottom – the business of football is business. And if the leagues below yours are dying, partly due to a global pandemic and partly because of the desperation of clubs fuelled by financial inequalities, so what? We are here and you are there.
At the root of all this is a basic problem: the notion of the game as king is dead because the small percentage of clubs who hold the power do not believe in it. The league that made them super-rich, and the sport in which that league operates, is now beholden to them. They believe themselves to be bigger than it. Anything that challenges their position by trying to reinforce the game’s place at the top of the tree, will be scorned.
And do you know what: they’re right. It has become a self-evident truth because it is their truth and they have the power. The European Super League breakaway was proof that the Big Six believed that they didn’t need the rest of the Premier League. The rush to attack the Crouch Report is proof that the Premier League rest believe that they don’t need the EFL; selfishness drips down quicker than money. Lower-league clubs might develop your players, might form the traditional roots that helped make you successful and you might once have been in their position, but you can ignore that with selective vision.
This is a golden time to be in the Premier League. While you exist in your own bubble, largely inoculated against the financial apocalypse of lower-league life, the rest of the game creaks. That offers you two choices: you can choose the right path, or you can pretend that the path of self-interest is the only choice. Pull up that ladder behind you, and you can just about convince yourself that it never existed.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3ojtFH1
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