For the afternoon Mailbox, send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com…
‘A positive use for blood money’
Apologies in advance for adding to the rising effluent tide of emails regarding the “cesspit” that is Mancunian football currently, but I had a thought which I don’t think I’ve seen articulated yet. It’s widely accepted that the current project underway at the Etihad is an attempt by City’s owners to “launder” their reputation internationally. The hope, presumably, is that funding some truly sexy football and revitalising a large section of their host city in the process will mean everyone forgets just how much of their wealth is off the backs of rapaciously exploiting vulnerable people, often up to and including their untimely deaths.
My question is this: Is that working? Because it doesn’t seem like it’s working. Maybe I’m just fortunate in how I’ve curated my internet football intake, but virtually every time I’ve read or watched something related to City and the ADUG, there has been, at minimum, some small nod to the human rights record of the owners. In some, maybe most, cases it’s made unavoidably explicit. The last couple of days reading the Mailbox has only reinforced this sense. Whilst it’s not necessarily fair to the manager, his staff and his players, their success almost literally can’t be brought up without the caveat of how loathsome and despicable their ownership is, and how dirty the money is that’s helped transform the club.
I almost think I must be missing something. I know it’s a relative drop in the ocean for them, but they must be seeing some tangible results from all this investment or they would have packed up and returned their focus to not allowing Human Rights Watch officials entry to their building sites, surely? As a United fan, I was confronted recently with the possibility of something similar happening to the club I support, and was forced to wonder what my reaction would be. Ultimately I decided I’d be quite happy to relieve any Saudi royal of as much of their money as possible, whilst simultaneously proclaiming loudly and at every opportunity how awful they are, how awful their regime is, how unacceptable their “business practices” are, and how they can get right in the bin.
Let’s face it, rejuvenating a knackered part of Manchester with blood money is actually a positive use of blood money. What would that money be used for otherwise? And in the absence of any concerted effort to hold these people to any international standard of behaviour by our leaders in Government, why is it up to football fans to climb the moral high ground? Let’s have our cake and eat it too. Keep enjoying City’s football (through gritted teeth and watery eyes in my case); keep vocally denouncing the inhuman scum running the club; and keep taking as much of their money as possible out of their blood-soaked hands and spending it on 3G pitches for Mancunian kids. Or Benjamin Mendy.
Adam MUFC (Genuinely keen for other mailbox contributors to point out all the obvious things I’m no doubt missing, so have at it!)
…Not that any more ink needs to be spilled on this subject, but I thought I’d pen a few thoughts about how I handle (or fail to handle) the cognitive dissonance associated with supporting Manchester City (the tl;dr version is that there’s no conclusion; I’m just pretty conflicted). I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised at how this has been addressed in the mailbox by fans of other clubs (with a couple of notable exceptions *cough* Bitter Ted, Manchester *cough*), so I thought I’d try my best to take off my blue-tinted glasses and share my perspective.
There are at least a couple of issues at play – in particular, FFP and the source of City’s money. Firstly, as others have said, as FFP was undoubtedly set up to protect Europe’s elite football club cartel, I have a hard time getting too worked up about that fact that City broke these rules. Andy’s “I’m a great driver, so I’m allowed to have a couple of pints and do 100 on the motorway” analogy doesn’t really work for me. It’s more like “Amazon are stealing from this country by paying so little corporation tax so I’m not arsed if someone steals from them.” Sure, it’s wrong. But I’ll shed no tears for Amazon and similarly I’ll shed no tears for UEFA or the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Man Utd because City cheated FFP. I would also add that Utd fans (and Spurs fans for that matter) from the pre-Premier League era should remember that their club’s share flotations in the 80s and early 90s were themselves essentially against FA rules and arguably paved the path to the abhorrent commercialised version of the game we all have to live with today.
Now the source of City’s money is a different matter. Firstly, I should say that I do find it pretty unsavoury that many (not all) rival fans don’t give a second thought about the conditions in which their clothes or electronics were produced or their coffee beans farmed yet bang on about Abu Dhabi human rights abuses. If human rights are only something you think about when you talk about football you’re pretty shallow and you’re part of the problem, not the solution. However, in no way am I going to try and justify what Amnesty is calling “sportswashing”. It really does tarnish (for me, at least) City’s achievements over the past 10 years and I find the ‘Manchester Thanks You, Sheikh Mansour’ banner distasteful. John Nicholson’s latest column struck a chord with me and I think it’s a sad indictment on the game – governing bodies, journalists, fans – that we seem far more concerned that City broke some arbitrary rules set by UEFA than we do about the source of their money (at least that’s how it seems to me).
So where does that leave me and Manchester City? Pretty conflicted really. The problem is, supporting a football club is not like shopping at Amazon. City is a bone-deep part of who I am. Supporting City in the 90s during my formative years left it’s mark and it’s part of the shared memory of my family. Boycotting City for me would pretty much mean boycotting football. And when I watch this modern incarnation of the team – especially David Silva – in the moment it is a joyful experience. So Lewis, while it doesn’t feel like a hollow, soulless experience – 93:20 on 13 May, 2012 certainly wasn’t – I know what you mean. Guardiola football is mesmerising, but it doesn’t have the soul (dark as it was) of the truly awful football we watched in Moss Side in the 80s and 90s. Maybe that’s just a part of growing up. Maybe football was always morally bankrupt. Still, a big part of me does miss the innocence of that time.
gomez, MCFC
…Although many look back fondly at the days when football clubs were run by the generous local individual who wanted to champion a community team, in reality when has that ever been the case?
Let’s be honest, take off the rose tinted specs and we all know that football has always been a business, a means for the club owner to make more money in different ways.
As far back as the late 1800s, the owners of northern clubs like Blackburn and Burnley ‘abused’ their powers as mill owners to attract players from the south with the offer of paid work. I wonder how many of them were offered sick pay, pensions, paid annual leave etc?
Looking through the 20th century there are numerous examples of club owners not being the ‘pride of the community’, rather an attempt to maximise profits or use the money to fund their other businesses which were failing (Peter Swales at Manchester City being a prime example).
Even after football was reinvented in 1992 with the advent of the Premier League, a closer inspection on how club owners had made their fortune would reveal that a lot was done on the back of poor employee practices at a time when there was no such thing as the minimum wage. Even more recently, zero hours contracts funded Mke Ashley and David Whelen’s empires for just a quick example.
As the Premier League has gone global (which was always its desired intention) and it has attracted foreign investment into a lot of clubs, it has reinforced the idea that money is key. These ‘clubs’ are businesses, not social institutions.
Yes, Abu Dhabi should be questioned about its appalling human rights record, but are we all that naive to think that just because they have invested in Manchester, we should hold them to our own political and ethical standards in their own country? In that case, what about pressurising the American owners of ‘clubs’ to seek an audience with Donald Trump about introducing legislation for a free universal healthcare system, automatic company pension schemes and sick pay? Or how about to outlaw the sale of firearms given the constant mass shootings? At what point is it fine to hold one party to account and not others? Where is the line in the sand morally? At what point is one persons life worth more tha someone else’s?
Equally, when is it ok to hold football owners to account but not other businesses? Why isn’t Tim Cook of Apple or the owner of Samsung expected to be pushing for a 40 hour week for workers with their supply chains, with rights to paid leave and a minimum salary comparable to the UK? Why aren’t we all calling for boycott of mobile phones, TVs, and basically all domestic goods?
With regards to City allegedly breaching FFP, is this really any different to most business practices in terms of trying to reduce what they pay in tax? Most business owners will do anything to reduce their tax bill, a form of ‘cheating’ which may allow the business to invest more into the company to win tenders that may have gone to other businesses, thus generating greater profits.
Again, not to labour a point, but why aren’t all those annoyed at City and FFP not boycotting the products of Amazon, Apple, Starbucks et al for their shady tax practices?
Let’s be honest, if any of us were given the opportunity to keep more of our wage at the end of each week/month, rather than handing it to the government, how many would turn that opportunity down?
A lot of the ‘annoyance’ and ‘outrage’ concerning City at the moment is rooted in tribalism. This is not to say that valid points are not being raised, as they are, but to stop us all being a massive bunch of hypocrites, can we at least either accept that football has always been a business with the end game to maximise profits, or agree that the whole ownership structure, and the rules by which these businesses operate, needs to be discussed rather than targeting the same club/business constantly.
Mikey D, Godley
Just the worst
All this talk of the financial shenanigans at City is irrelevant to me. I knew they were a rotten club when they forgot Yaya Toure’s birthday, the bastards.
Denis Cohen, (birthday 24th Jan)
The trouble with FFP
I genuinely think that the FFP rules were introduced to help prevent clubs living beyond their means, but I’m cynical enough to also think that keeping the also-ran’s away from the rich was also partly the reason. But, I just don’t get why owners shouldn’t be able to invest to increase the business value in whatever way they see fit.
To me there are a few things that make a football business. Fixed assets such as a stadium, commercial appeal & revenue and then the staff. Each is just as important as each other for the valuation of the club. Why is it ok for an owner to invest in a new stadium or training facilities as one-off projects but not on improving the players? On the surface it would seem safer to see the return on the fixed stadium, but if you look at Chelsea and Man City they already had the fixed assets in place or at least these weren’t this biggest gap.
They invested in the team, this then improved the commercial appeal which was then reinvested in the staff which delivered success and furthered their commercial returns.
The upshot is that the initial purchase price + losses is still less than the business is currently worth. Both clubs are now more stable than ever before but have had nothing but criticism. The debt they have accrued is to their owner who is the last person who would try and extract his return and bankrupt the clubs.
Spurs and Arsenal on the other hand have borrowed money to fund a new stadium which offers a far less chance of improving the team, which is the best way of improving the commercial return. These clubs are praised but are now in debt to investment vehicles who wouldn’t think twice on forcing a sale to protect their returns. In both clubs cases it can be argued it has regressed them footballing wise.
Any business should be allowed to invest where their business needs it the most. In aids competition and can protect their clubs.
I’m not advocating that this is the only way or that they are right (if they did) to break the rules but more that the rules are just geared to stop proven investment models.
Of course it’s all about the owners, Pompey wouldn’t be where they are if they didn’t had an owner who removed the cash after sanctioning the spend so maybe it’s more in the middle?
That’s it.
Steve THFC.
Brief respite
To Vinny, I enjoyed the brief trip around Europe’s big leagues chiefly because it was about actual football and not about the Manchester clubs fans arguing over which club is more disingenuous.
Keep up the good ff365ight.
Andy.
Whipround for Scudamore
Shouldn’t the £5m chunk of Neymar Jr approximated by Mr Russell in his Scudamore piece have been in cubic centimeters? Or have we witnessed a slip, an unwitting revelation that Brazil’s talisman is in fact a purely one-dimensional entity, explaining – in part – his considerable physical suffering and distress when encountering the neolithic three-dimensions of opposition defenders?
In any case I for one will not consider Scudamore sufficiently honored for his service until, 2 years from now, he’s given the opportunity to trot into a routine negotiation 10 minutes from time, a jowled, chinless crescent of network executives vacating their seats to applaud as Susanna Dinnage on bended knee returns the ceremonial Chief Exec’s armband, a rancid gusset knitted in 1992 from the scalps of Proper Fans. Though absolutely none of the proceeds of the Richard Scudamore Foundation Negotiation will go to grassroots football, buckets will be placed around Premier League HQ that will be full of actual grass, so that park and Sunday League players can come and see what it looks like in real life.
Errol Thomas, LFC
