Doc Lynam
Helping police with their enquiries
- Jun 19, 2011
- 7,408
Excellent piece in the Guardian:
The fall of “Big Sam” Allardyce, the manager of the English national football team who resigned after 67 days in the job, is a tragedy in the sense that it is a human drama of hubris, followed by nemesis. Allardyce is a man who, as the recordings obtained by subterfuge show, can be lured by promises of cash into making unguarded jibes about his peers and colleagues. For a potential £400,000 he was prepared to say the unsayable. Pride fuelled by greed saw him brag of ways around banned financial schemes where players become the property of speculators. Over the next few days more tales of football’s dirty deals are promised. The beautiful game will be besmirched. There was no need for Big Sam to sit down with the fake businessmen. He was already being paid £3m a year to be manager. The flower of English football is being eaten by canker worms of money and avarice.
Since television money flowed into the sport in the early 1990s, the Premier League has become less a local English affair and more a global one. That has some benefits: better facilities and bigger names on the pitch. However, with top-flight clubs owned by foreign investors and English players making up a third of Premier League teams, there is a feeling that English football is becoming detached from its roots. Such is the concern that Andy Turnham, the Labour mayoral candidate for football-mad Manchester, thinks a quota on foreign players is needed.
While England’s top flight has become the richest league in the world, it is not the best. On Uefa rankings the Premier League is behind both’s Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga. It’s been five years since an English club – Chelsea – won the European championship. There’s simply not enough bang for the television big bucks. Last year the Premier League sold television rights to its live games for a record £5.14bn. That’s more than £10m a match, up 70% from the last time. Yet there is no evidence that the quality of the basic product – football matches – has improved. Coaches too often put results ahead of entertainment, in part because of the enormous sums at stake. Packed stadiums are more to do with clever marketing than better football. The television cash is largely swallowed up by players’ wages, managers’ contracts and agents’ fees. England’s team of millionaires being beaten by Iceland, whose top division is a part-time league, shows how little money is related to talent.
To correct this market failure, politicians should restrict the number of games broadcast on pay-TV and set aside some top matches for free-to-air TV. More people will watch the games. The BBC would be able to showcase an expression of national cultural identity. Commercial free-to-air channels could benefit from advertising. Highlights on the BBC draw millions more than a single match on pay-TV. With competition from free matches, TV deals will shrink. Clubs will reduce player salaries. The wealth of club owners and media tycoons will drop. There is an argument that there will be less money available for the grassroots. Yet the dearth of homegrown English players shows that not enough is being done. True, today’s stars are undoubtedly fitter and better trained. But what counts is people’s enjoyment. Players will still emulate their heroes: Zidane, Schmeichel and Platini. All of whom pleased fans without being paid the sort of sums that are now morally and financially bankrupting football.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ls-crisis-tv-money-is-the-root-of-the-problem
The fall of “Big Sam” Allardyce, the manager of the English national football team who resigned after 67 days in the job, is a tragedy in the sense that it is a human drama of hubris, followed by nemesis. Allardyce is a man who, as the recordings obtained by subterfuge show, can be lured by promises of cash into making unguarded jibes about his peers and colleagues. For a potential £400,000 he was prepared to say the unsayable. Pride fuelled by greed saw him brag of ways around banned financial schemes where players become the property of speculators. Over the next few days more tales of football’s dirty deals are promised. The beautiful game will be besmirched. There was no need for Big Sam to sit down with the fake businessmen. He was already being paid £3m a year to be manager. The flower of English football is being eaten by canker worms of money and avarice.
Since television money flowed into the sport in the early 1990s, the Premier League has become less a local English affair and more a global one. That has some benefits: better facilities and bigger names on the pitch. However, with top-flight clubs owned by foreign investors and English players making up a third of Premier League teams, there is a feeling that English football is becoming detached from its roots. Such is the concern that Andy Turnham, the Labour mayoral candidate for football-mad Manchester, thinks a quota on foreign players is needed.
While England’s top flight has become the richest league in the world, it is not the best. On Uefa rankings the Premier League is behind both’s Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga. It’s been five years since an English club – Chelsea – won the European championship. There’s simply not enough bang for the television big bucks. Last year the Premier League sold television rights to its live games for a record £5.14bn. That’s more than £10m a match, up 70% from the last time. Yet there is no evidence that the quality of the basic product – football matches – has improved. Coaches too often put results ahead of entertainment, in part because of the enormous sums at stake. Packed stadiums are more to do with clever marketing than better football. The television cash is largely swallowed up by players’ wages, managers’ contracts and agents’ fees. England’s team of millionaires being beaten by Iceland, whose top division is a part-time league, shows how little money is related to talent.
To correct this market failure, politicians should restrict the number of games broadcast on pay-TV and set aside some top matches for free-to-air TV. More people will watch the games. The BBC would be able to showcase an expression of national cultural identity. Commercial free-to-air channels could benefit from advertising. Highlights on the BBC draw millions more than a single match on pay-TV. With competition from free matches, TV deals will shrink. Clubs will reduce player salaries. The wealth of club owners and media tycoons will drop. There is an argument that there will be less money available for the grassroots. Yet the dearth of homegrown English players shows that not enough is being done. True, today’s stars are undoubtedly fitter and better trained. But what counts is people’s enjoyment. Players will still emulate their heroes: Zidane, Schmeichel and Platini. All of whom pleased fans without being paid the sort of sums that are now morally and financially bankrupting football.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ls-crisis-tv-money-is-the-root-of-the-problem
