Football’s fat cats have ended any hope of equality and fair play
|
Version 0 of 1. By his own admission, Harry Redknapp is not the first person you’d consult on matters of economic importance. He told police investigating him for tax evasion a few years ago that he was “completely and utterly disorganised”. Nevertheless, the Queens Park Rangers manager was on to something when he recently criticised the financial fair play rules that threaten to bankrupt his club in the not entirely implausible event of its relegation to the Football League. Redknapp didn’t bother with the legal case against QPR, which comes down to alleged overspending, but instead focused on the principle of fair play. “Fair play would be everyone having £30m a year to spend,” he said, sounding like a man who isn’t in danger of mistaking Das Kapital as some unknown side from the Bundesliga. “To make it fair play,” he added, in case there was any doubt about his egalitarian point, “we should be able to spend as much as Manchester United have spent before we play them on Sunday.” As it turned out, QPR were not able to match the £151m United have splashed out this season, and promptly lost 4-0. That’s football, but is it fair? The British are renowned for a sense of fair play – or at least we tell ourselves we’re renowned for it. We don’t dive in football, and we always walk in cricket. And the Loch Ness monster is a unionist – which is not to say there isn’t a residue of truth in the myth of sporting decency. Simulation is at least still seen as fundamentally dishonest. And even if there’s a tendency in some quarters to accept it as part of a modern professional’s tactical portfolio, there persists an ideal of fair play, albeit one that’s more recognised in the breach than the observance. So when certain foreigners – José Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, comes to mind – want to flatter us, they speak of this ideal as a cultural fact. Yet what does a dive here or there matter – after all, referees have the power to punish divers – when the whole business, and therefore game, of football is rigged in favour of the super-rich? Football has never been an exercise in equality. There is no such thing in sport – or life – because the talented and the dedicated will invariably triumph. Going back to its humble beginnings, when it grew out of workers’ associations, football was always a meritocracy. But it was a meritocracy that operated within sustainable limits. The distance between the bottom and top was difficult, but not impossible, to traverse. That’s what accounted for the giant‑killing romance of the FA Cup, and that’s what enabled Brian Clough’s modest Nottingham Forest, as late as the 1970s, to go from the Second Division to the pinnacle of Europe inside four years. Such a climb is not only inconceivable in this age of sporting oligarchy, it runs counter to everything that the sport is now predicated upon. The first rule of British football in this age is that success should guarantee further success. It’s not just British football that operates on that doctrine. The rest of Europe does the same and it is encouraged to do so, ironically, by Uefa’s financial fair play rules, which penalise overspending but positively encourage over-earning. That means that the big, established clubs, who already make a lot of money, are entitled to spend it – as long as they don’t go too far beyond their profits. But those clubs wishing to join them, who don’t earn anywhere near as much, are restricted to their far smaller incomes. It’s a charter for fat cats, a cartel in all but name. What makes Britain a particularly egregious example of this money-first approach is that, unlike in several other countries, our clubs are not run, even notionally, as members’ institutions. There are no Barcelonas or Borussia Dortmunds. For all the sentimental value we attach to our clubs’ physical locations, they have become transferable franchises that are bought and sold as billionaire status symbols. In this respect British football has come to resemble the NFL – with one major difference. The system is much fairer in America. Yes, the home of turbo‑capitalism and land of free markets long ago devised a means of levelling the playing field that is almost communist in its ambition. Each year the team that wins the Super Bowl receives last pick in the annual draft of college players, while the first picks go to those teams that did least well. It’s a kind of redistribution of fortune rather than money, which aims for an equality of opportunity if not outcome. However, you don’t have to be a cynic to realise that this arrangement serves only to maintain healthy competition among a self-contained elite that offers no access to outsiders. Whatever its flaws, compare the American system of player recruitment to the European and British version. Here, the destination of talent is determined overwhelmingly by money. Given that money equals success equals money, that means the most talented end up sooner or later playing for the most successful. The winners effectively always get first draft. Hence Real Madrid. Hence Manchester United. And hence QPR. A friend of mine, an intelligent, successful man who happens to be a Manchester City fan, recently tried to explain to me why City’s rise up the Premier League was utterly deserved rather than, say, the product of the Abu Dhabi royal family’s billions. It is as if we’ve lost sight of what competition actually means. As things are, all the average fan, who isn’t too blinded by partisanship, can hope for are exceptions to the rule, cracks in the impenetrable edifice of the self‑perpetuating ruling class. We must take heart from Atlético Madrid – hardly paupers – breaking the duopoly in Spain, and take pleasure, however briefly, in Manchester United’s exclusion from the Champions League. They are not harbingers of a revolution but they are small signs that change – even if only temporary – is still possible. Because without that football stops being an epic drama and becomes instead a predictable play with a script that is destined to stay the same. |