The ugly side of football returned with a vengeance this week, as it was revealed that UAE’s favourite club Manchester City has been found guilty of breaking 114 of 115 financial rules between 2009 and 2018, during a period of unprecedented success. No one with half a brain – so that would include me, then – doubts that City’s incredible new found wealth contributed to their golden years, signing up the world’s best coach and many of the world’s best players. The more cynical – again, that would include me – would argue that the new found wealth, and what they did with it, was the main reason they were successful. If I wasn’t already disillusioned enough with football, I might even be angry about it, but I’m afraid, for me, football is almost beyond saving.
City’s wealth is of course only part of the story. Sky’s money has already distorted every aspect of The Beautiful Game, thanks to the obscene levels of money they provide to boost transfer fees, wages and all the rest of it. Overseas billionaires, and whole countries like the UAE, own many of the clubs – if you can actually refer to them as ‘clubs’ anymore – and not just at elite level. Even my old club, little homespun ‘family club’ Bristol Rovers, has come under the ownership of Jordanian man baby Wael al Qadi, until he ran out of money, selling the club to Kuwaiti millionaire Hussain AlSaeed who now bankrolls the club and covers the losses which would otherwise make the club unsustainable. It’s a total shit show and apart from overthinking outliers like me, no one gives a fuck, so why would I bother? Mostly these days, I don’t.
There’s a column on the BBC website written by, or perhaps ghosted for, former football manager (and former Bristol Rovers player) Tony Pulis in which he calls for the authorities to strip Manchester City of the FA Cup they won when defeating his club Stoke City in 2011. Pulis says he feels “cheated“, adding, “We lost, but to a team that have been found guilty of breaking the financial rules set out by the Premier League.” I did feel some sympathy until I remembered that Stoke themselves are owned by Denise Coates and her family, who have a net worth of £9.7 billion, making them 17th on the UK Rich List, of which Denise herself has £8.1 billion. The Coates made their money through gambling via their lucrative business Bet 365, something Pulis readily acknowledges in his article, so in my black and white world, his argument is tarnished. The Coates family doesn’t have more money than the UAE but their club, Stoke City, is still part of the bloated and financially distorted modern world of football. Sorry, Tone. In their own way, Stoke City, whose owners got rich by way of gamblers, including no doubt many problems gamblers whose lives have been ruined, are not fit to stand on the moral high ground.
I listened to the first half and watched the second half of England’s plucky defeat to magnificent Spain last night and while there were elements of joy, mainly Spanish, where I could still remember the aforementioned Beautiful Game, I could not shake off my disillusionment.
England’s best player Jude Bellingham, one of two world class players in the team, dived cleverly to ‘win’ a penalty that our other world class player Harry Kane blazed onto the crossbar, and towards the end Spain employed the entire Barcelona midfield, the same Barcelona whose name has been a byword for unsustainability and financial doping for as long as I can remember. The excellent BBC Radio Five Live and terrible ITV commentators frequently referred to players ‘earning’ and ‘winning’ free kicks by clever and nefarious means, as if what was actually cheating was somehow praiseworthy. “You have to admire that,” said one, meaning you have to admire some blatant cheating. As soon as ITV’s gormless co-commentator Lee Dixon called for a penalty following Bellingham’s theatrical dive, I felt like switching off and I might even had done so had Kane not missed the kick itself.
We’ve got the best part of three weeks in this ‘international break’ and vast swaths of the English football calendar have been postponed because of player absences. Why? Take Liverpool. Their entire first team and much of their squad has been called up to their national teams, but only Rio Ngumoha is in the England squad. Okay, cancel a game when English players get called up, but why do the same when the rest of the squad gets called up to countries all round the world? If clubs field mainly overseas players, isn’t it tough shit if they then get called up to their non English countries? Isn’t international football what it’s all about? Well, it used to be, but not anymore. International football is more of an irritation these days, getting in the way of nation states and hedge funds owning brands and distorting competition.
By all means strip Manchester City of all their titles and relegate them to the National League North (my preference) but they’re only doing what most clubs are doing: living beyond their means on the basis of overseas ‘investment’, albeit within the somewhat liberal laws employed by the authorities.
“The game’s gone“, as cynics are fond of saying and as a cynic I endorse that view. Sure, there are flashes of what football could be like and used to be like, as illustrated particularly by the brilliant Spaniards, and more sporadically by England, at Wembley last night. For me, the state of modern football overshadows everything, even the glorious tiki-taka, and with each passing day I care about it even less.
