|
New around here? If so, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow on Twitter |
The title is meant to be a joke. A satirical stab at the billion-dollar influx of blood money and political capital pumped directly into the sport of soccer by oil tycoons and ex-Prime Minsters. Its a wry statement- one that’s been beat around the press by many a journalist throughout the summer. Take it lightly, and its humor at its high-brow best. But dig deeper, and the realization sets in: players today are nothing more than pieces of fruit being bartered to the highest bidder at the local flea market on a Saturday morning.
The game has changed so much in the last five years, its a shadow of its former self. It used to be that the only way a player could get to another team was through a Bosman Free Transfer (Free Agency). Players would wait for their contracts to expire, and instead of re-upping with their current squad would play the field and latch on to a new team. Now, with the way the game is conducted, any player (see Cristiano Ronaldo) can decide to forego their current contract (four years left be damned) and invite bids from any suitor interested in forking over the cash. Ultimately, it comes down to the owners desire to part with the player. But if a player is lobbying the press to leave for greener pastures, how many owners are going to ef you cee kay with their locker-room chemistry? Ramon Calderon (Real Madrid General Manager and scum of the Earth) had to give in eventually and part with Robinho after realizing that a mutiny was brewing if the player stayed.
To be fair, not everyone is lobbying to be the most cutthroat businessman on the block. Unless you can afford it, you’re probably just going to quietly conduct your summer recruiting outside the sphere of public inquisition and get on with another season. You won’t make any splashy signings, the press will not write any damning articles about you, your fans will be giddy as hell because you’re being ‘slept on’, and ultimately you’ll finish somewhere between number 7 and 13 in the league. Harry Reddknap (Portsmouth Manager) claimed a three weeks ago that he felt the game was on the verge of falling apart thanks to the big-wheelin’ spenders ability to price the rest of the competition out of the market. He’s right too. How the hell can a team like Wigan convince a Deco to play for them when the prospect of going to Chelsea for more money and to compete alongside future Hall-of-Fame talent is there?
This new landscape has made it harder for teams to protect their star players from the lucrative grasp of competitors as well. Its impossible for a Real Betis to keep an emerging player from a Real Madrid or FC Barcelona. If you’re a mid-level squad playing in the first division (i.e. the Colorado Rockes or Atlanta Hawks), you’re generally owned by a guy that doesn’t have the deepest of pockets. So when the chance to sell a young prospect emerges, you jump at it and take that cash to cover the debt you’ve incurred to keep the team relevant against super-giant squads with infinite war-chests. In this vein, many teams stave off interest in players by setting massive buyout clauses in contracts. Take the case of Robinho, who was just purchased by Manchester City for a British record 32.5 million pounds. He had a buyout of 25 million, meaning that anyone who wanted him had to first come up with 25 mil just to talk about the idea of buying him! Kaka over at AC Milan has a 100 million buyout, and Bojan Krkic- the Barcelona starlet striker- has an 80 million buyout at the age of 18. Absurd stuff.
But these buyouts, which were once daunting barriers, are now nothing more than baseline amounts for minimum bids. With the number of foreign investors surging, its easier for clubs to finance record-transfers without feeling the sting in their pockets. Yesterday, Manchester City was sold by former Thailand Prime Minister Thakshin Shintawara to a Dubai-based Investment Consortium. Today they financed the single most expensive British transfer on record, for Robinho. Let it be known that unless your club is owned by a billionaire with cash reserves, you’re probably not going to be a relevant force during the season.
What does this mean for the game today? It’s hard to say. In any sport there will be dominant squads, and those scraping to break into the top four echelon. There will always be another billionaire owner that surfaces, buys a poor squad, pumps them with cash and turns them into an overnight sensation. But for every Tottenham there is a Blackburn around the corner. Players will continue to be used as pawns in a growing game of chess. Buyout clauses will increase, transfer records will be smashed, and so on and so forth. The short-term implications are obvious; the long term effects are of concern. As Sepp Blatter recently remarked, players are nothing more than slaves being negotiated amongst owners over cocktails at the local country club. Its a chilling indictment on the globalization of the game- how players have become human capital instead of human beings. It speaks volumes about the current crop of ownership- ruthless tycoons and conglomerates that are used to doing whatever it takes to win- regardless of the object of their desire.
It worries me and then again it does not. Why should I care what is happening to these players? They’re being compensated for their presupposed ‘troubles’. They get to play a game for a living, and are local celebrities wherever they land. Why then, do I feel as if we’re on the verge of something far more sinister?
On a lighter note, let me finish this by saying that, in the context of fruit, if you leave your house in the morning and decide to buy an apple, and you wind up spending 32.5 million for one, it better be the best fucking Washington apple the world has ever seen.
