UEFA Elections and stock market. Never mind, I’ll just rant.
By: Sam | January 26th, 2007
To start things off, I’d like to say that I hate what I’m writing about. Fabulous, another fat rich guy in charge of UEFA, liberty will rain onto the deserving heads of small children everywhere. Lyon goes for the stock market, fantastic, their human and moral development goes up real good. Karma for everyone! Come and get it!
Morbid would be the word to describe what I feel about this. Football is becoming more of a business venture as we speak. What happened to the picturesque snapshots of funnily-dressed Englishmen in the ninteenth century, kicking around what looks like a medicine ball? Meet your newest endangered species, cute little south american kids who play football out of pure love for the sport.
Money. Is. Ruining. Football.
This is turning out to be more of a rant than what I thought it would be but bear with me.
Gone are the working-class, just-for-fun and innovative football attitudes. In are the multi-billionaire corporate idiots like Nike and Adidas who pretend to be interested in the progress of the game while they obviously smell money like a kid smells chocolate.
Super League? Reformating the Champions League? G-14 this, G-14 that? Give me a break. Play the game, forget about your riches, respect tradition.
I’m a big fan of trying new things, but this bunch of greedy, loaded, smelly, white dudes do it in the name of the Euro.
Football shouldn’t mean millions of dollars, by way of salary from your club or from endorsing another gang of stinking rich money-cats.
Greed. Is. Ruining. Football.
It seems I can’t stress this enough. Please, do me a favour, do yourself a favour, do the 9-year old Filipino girl a favour, do those adorable little Malawian kids who play with a cabbage for a ball a favour, do football a favour. You can’t bring down the greedy corporate football empire from one day to the next, but you can stop stop swallowing the tripe they feed you about making football accessible and fun for all.
Stupidity. Is. Ruining. Football.
Thank you.
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Tags: Adidas Nike, Corporations, Football, France Ligue 1, Lyon (OL), Stock Market, Team News, UEFA ElectionsSubscribe
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Comments
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This is a complex topic. As an MBA, I don’t have problems with raising funds through a public offering. It’s an efficient way to generate needed cash, and probably better for a football team than taking on debt. Plus it lets the public have ownership — literally — of their favorite team. If you have a financial incentive, however small, the team might hold your attention even in tough times. This is a good thing for the team. I particularly don’t have a problem with it when the funds raised go for something concrete, like building a stadium (as opposed to acquiring expensive players.)
That said, though, it does create an uneven playing field. According to the French laws, you have to be financially stable to go public. In other words, you can’t use a public offering to BECOME financially stable. This helps the sharks devour the minnows and over time makes the Ligues even less competitive.
BUT having more funds does help the bigger teams compete internationally, which French teams have traditionally had a hard time doing. How many times has a French team won Champions League? Once? Twice maybe? A bigger, better stadium leads to more money, more money leads to better players, better players often (but not always — See: Real Madrid) leads to better international competition.
So what’s my point? I dunno. I guess I don’t mind that OL is going public. I just wish that more French teams could follow suit.
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