Owners should stick to buying oil rather than corrupting our
heritage-filled football clubs
Sheikh Mansour. A man worth
around £17billion. The name may not be familiar to many, but very familiar to
all Manchester City fans, having provided around £300million for club transfers
in the period 2008-2012, with the record signing standing at £47million. However
Bristol Rovers’ record transfer fee paid in their 129 history is just £375,000 and
transfer totals in the period 2008-2012 equating to just £250,000. Bristol
Rovers are lingering in basement of league football whilst Manchester City is
top of the premier league.
The difference between these two sides? Money… Money creates
an uneven playing field in football that wasn’t there just 20 years ago.
How can lower league teams compete with top clubs?
Especially when top-flight clubs have 100x the spending power. Quite simply –
they can’t. With money you can attract the world’s best players and pay top
wages. Obviously money can’t guarantee success
instantly… but over time it does. Before the huge investment Manchester City
hadn’t won a trophy since 1976 but now have recently won the FA Cup and are
currently challenging for the premier league title.
Before 2005 Chelsea had just one trophy since the 1970’s but
since the takeover of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich they have won 10
trophies in the last decade. Money is now fuelling the success of these modern
clubs. What’s happened to the days when almost anyone could win a league each
season? Are these examples enough to show you how money has ruined the game?
Why do we accept some foreign money-loaded oil tycoon taking
charge of our beloved football clubs? Most owners don’t even care about the
club, many won’t even attend games and I’m sure if you asked 80% of foreign
owners they wouldn’t be able to tell you their past few results. Owners buy our
clubs just as money ventures, to waste of bit of their mind-blowing levels of riches
on, take up an afternoon one day a week, running it as a business or an
investment rather than a football club. These owners are stripping the club’s heart
out and charging fans extortionate prices. To avid supporters our clubs are
engraved in our blood, we live day in day out just for the weekend to see the
players run out on a Saturday afternoon. For money-eyed owners it’s become a
gamble with their cash, to see how much they can make and I for one have had
enough of them toying with our football club’s heritage and future.
Fulham’s season tickets rose a massive 32.98% in comparison to last
season, they haven’t been promoted and they haven’t won any trophies. Why
should loyal fans accept such a drastic rise in prices? How can the club
justify the rise? Devoted supporters are being ripped off out of their hard
earned cash just so that the club can drain more riches for their ‘more money
than sense’ owners.
Since 1985, average top division wages have risen from
£25,000 to £1,100,000, a growth of 440%; with players potentially earning as much
as £200,000 a week. This wage is by no means equal to the level of work that
they do. Footballers may run out in front of 40,000 fans every week and are
often very talented at what they do but when you compare footballer’s earnings
to firemen, you can see how absurd their salary is. Footballers don’t deserve
their earnings. Footballers are grown men and all they do is kick an air-filled
ball around a grass field. How do they deserve double the yearly earnings of a
fireman in a week? Top-flight footballers don’t put their body on the lines,
they aren’t risking their life, they aren’t even providing a vital service. I
know for a fact that everyone footballer couldn’t come off the pitch saying
they’d given it their all in every game that they’ve played, that’s if they
even make it onto the pitch. Carlos Tevez rejected the chance to play for
Manchester City in the champions league; instead he sat on the bench claiming
he wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Right frame of mind? Unbelievable! Tevez
is playing on the world stage, getting paid mind-blowing amounts of money and
he doesn’t think he can kick the ball around for 40minutes. I certainly know I
could. Imagine if a fireman walked up to a blazing house and decided that he
couldn’t be bothered to put the fire out. Footballers should see what soldiers
and emergency services are put through to earn a fraction of what their wages.
Then footballers would know what earning money really means.
Cheating, deception and diving. Three words not always
associated with football but words that are now on the tip of many fans mouths
after watching games. With the influx of foreign players in the last decade,
the game has changed forever; mainly for the worse. With the introduction of new
players, they brought with them some extremely irritating habits which
undoubtedly have ruined our beautiful game: diving and simulation. Why are
players attempting to con the referee in order to gain an advantage? They throw
their bodies onto the floor in a theatrical manner. It seems as if modern
footballers have lost their pride; shouting and throwing their arms into the
air in pain, who could blame them? After all they had just been brushed on the
shoulder.
Nowadays players fall down when they get touched; some of
them should swap sports and do it off a springboard. It’s embarrassing to
watch. Viewers could be forgiven for believing that a player had just been shot
by a sniper, high in the stands. Footballers need a reality check. As honest
players watch others dive and gain an advantage, trustworthy players are left
wondering why they wouldn’t do similar things. And many have started too, more
and more players have resorted to falling over to try and cheat their way to
victory.
Foreign players have massively reduced the growth of young English
talent. Instead of a young local footballer getting his first start, the English
youth been left waiting and waiting as clubs have bought more experienced
players, thus pushing local footballers further and further down the leagues.
In the premier league 64% of all players are foreign, in contrast to the
English League Two where just 23.5% of players are foreign, showing how drastic
the effect of foreigners has been on stunting English football players’ ability
growth. Our nation’s youths have been forced further down the leagues to get
match experience in lower leagues rather than making the breakthrough in top
divisions.
Arsenal symbolise the mass arrival of foreign players. In
the 1989-90 seasons Arsenal had just two players born abroad, whereas in
2009-10 season they had 23 born abroad. We should be aiding our nation’s young
English talent, not leaving them to ‘rot’ on the bench, especially as the
players taking their places can barely speak even the basics of our language.
There is enough talent in our own country if top-flight managers would just
open their eyes, wake-up and give youths a chance. Why should our nation allow
foreign players the potential to improve over our own? The basics have to
change or England will be left behind in the international game.
Money has the crippled the game. It has turned it from an
honest leisure activity to high stakes, high earning prima donna’s conning the
referee into making bad decisions.
Clubs should be restored to their former glory days when 80%
of a team line-up would be home-grown, a day when clubs made their success –
not bought it. The days when players would be tackled 4 or 5 times in a row yet
still carry on defiantly and when money wasn’t the motivation for players but
instead the love of the game.
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