Football: it’s all about the money

Italy’s former Prime Minister and AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi. The politician has been convicted for tax-fraud. (Getty Images)

“When the League began in 1992-93, 72 percent of the players in the League were English. Over the years this figure has now dropped to 39 percent. When foreign investment came in, there was a huge pressure on the clubs to succeed, so the clubs often decided to go with foreign players, because they play at a better standard. We have tried to increase the amount of English players playing in the Premier League by introducing the ‘home-grown’ players rule, which states that you have to include at least 8 home grown players in your squad of 25. But since this rule has been put in place there has only been a 3 percent increase of English footballers in the league, so we really need to do better, maybe make the rule stricter in order to improve the national team. Another reason as to why the national team hasn’t succeeding is because other nations, such as Spain and Germany, have a larger talent pool available to them as lots of their players go abroad, and hardly any English players go abroad.”

The above is a statement on footykicks.com

Due to this, England has failed to succeed as much as aforementioned countries. It’s that simple. A majority of players in the Serie A are Italian, a majority of the players in La Liga are Spanish and a majority of players in Bundesliga are German while a majority of players in the Premier League are not English.

Football has been turned into an industry – one that has billions pumped into it every year. I’ll use Silvio Berlusconi (AC Milan owner/president) as my prime example. Berlusconi bought the club in 1986 and eight years later, the club won the Scudetto.

From there on out, it all kicked off and began. Berlusconi began to manipulate and control public discourse to ensure profits and power that could never be challenged. This, in turn, gave the media a lot more power. Now, these oligarchs/moguls don’t have to compete with state-owned television networks, fight for market shares against state companies (who have been enfeebled by privatization and deregulation.

Now people like Berlusconi can operate on a global stage, they’ve developed football into an industry/economy. That was then and that is still a case, but the picture has changed a bit. Now, the new oligarchs can trade the shares of their companies on stock markets and cut deals with multinational corporations. The current generation of oligarchs are “new money”, they flaunt their riches like their inclined to. This shows their conflicts of interests as the difficulty of obscuring wealth and influence increases.

As a result, corruption has increased, look no further than Berlusconi and Agnelli (Juventus). Milan’s president’s bribes, manipulation of government to promote his own interests and other criminals are clear signs of the increase of corruption.

Juventus were caught allegedly cheating and setting up matches in the Calciopoli scandal, when they lifted the 2005 and 2006 Scudetto (which was later taken away) and The Old Lady was relegated to Serie B as a punishment. Their current manager, Antonio Conte, isn’t much better himself as he has his own match-fixing allegations and convictions to handle (when he was at Torino).

Here are some interesting statistics for you to read over (found in a study that covered the 2010-11 Premier League):

• Top-flight clubs spent £2.51 billion in cash, which was £285.8 million more than they earned.
• The Premier League generated £2.23 billion of income, which equates to 0.148 per cent of the entire output of the UK economy.
• Clubs spent almost £400 million on signings after player sales.
• Wages for players and staff cost clubs £1.52 billion.
• Premier League clubs’ net debt was £1.39 billion, costing them £97.2 million in debt-interest payments.

This all being said and taken in account, we can come to the conclusion that football has clearly made a transition from sport that revolved around love and passion to an industry that revolves around money, no matter the cost.

While love and passion for the game still exists, it is gradually deteriorating. Football has changed a lot since 1986, 1992 and 2003. The huge spending and magnanimous influence of money in football isn’t just among Europe’s top five leagues, it’s everywhere.

The “land of soccer” (United States), Denmark, Saudi Arabia, China, Singapore (where a lot of match-fixing occurs) has also seen a steady influx of the same. It has turned into a global epidemic and whoever you blame – Berlusconi, Roman or someone else, it’s evident that what once made football “the beautiful game” has turned into “much more than a game”.