Football and the free market
Thursday, January 15, 2009 The media is awash with the story that Manchester City hope to buy Kaka, the Brazilian footballer, for £100m from his current club, AC Milan, and allegedly pay him £500,000 a week.
Yesterday I shared the view - expressed by Paul Kelso in today's Daily Telegraph HERE - that in the present climate £100m for a footballer is "obscene" or, at the very least, "pretty smutty".
This morning I read a piece by Martin Samuel, chief sports writer for the Daily Mail, who was himself the subject of a recent big money transfer (from The Times) for what is rumoured to be a £400k salary.
Samuel takes a rather different tack to Kelso - and the majority of commentators - which possibly explains his exalted status among sports writers. And he has completely won me over with his arguments. Here are some edited highlights:
Here is what we need to remember about football: it is meant to be fun. It is meant to entertain. It is meant to brighten your day. Watching it should be a positive experience ... So, Kaka to Manchester City. What's not to like?
But, ye gods, there are some miserable people out there. The death of football, one bloke called it. An impossibly rich man attempts to spend £100million of his personal fortune to bring a truly great footballer into our game in a way that opens up the domestic competition, and this is a bad thing?
We raise ungrounded fears and make specious criticisms. Yes, £100m could build a hospital, but it is not the job of the royal family of Abu Dhabi to build hospitals in Great Britain. If your hospital is rubbish, has run out of beds or is riddled with bugs, your issue is not with Manchester City but central government, via your local health authority. And, believe me, central government wastes money on projects with the potential to bring considerably less pleasure to the wider public than taking Brazil's best player on a nationwide tour, funded by outside money.
'Football,' said Danny Blanchflower, 'is about glory. It is about doing things with style and a flourish, not waiting for the other lot to die of boredom.'
Bidding £100m for Kaka - even if, as is likely, he stays at AC Milan - reminds us that this game is meant to be amusing, exuberant and dizzying. It is meant to distract from drudgery rather than add to it, to pursue excellence and adventure rather than settle for what is anodyne and conservative.
The bottom line, as I see it, is this. Manchester City isn't responsible for the credit crunch or the recession. If the club's owner Sheikh Mansour wishes to spend his own money pursuing a rich man's dream, that's a matter for him. It is, after all, a free market.
Is there a downside, asks Samuel:
Yes, but not one that impacts on the neutral. There is a distinct feeling that Manchester City are attempting to put on the roof before putting up the walls and that is no way to run a successful football club.
Attempting to marry Kaka and Robinho to a defence that cannot cope with Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup is clearly a plan fraught with danger. Central defenders and a holding midfield player are still needed, so City followers have every reason to lurch from delightful anticipation to disquiet.
So a sleepless night for them, and for Mark Hughes, the manager. For the rest of us, what do we care? Knock yourself out, Sheik. Let's see what happens.
Full article HERE.
Reader Comments (3)
I agree Simon, Martin Samuel has killed the debate stone dead.
You don't seem to be attracting a lot of attention with your football articles Simon.
I just read that in 1365, the King orders the sheriffs of London to ban football and other idle sports. Instead the City inhabitants are encouraged to practise their archery skills.
Maybe an article about archery then?
Sorry to be following the party line but as one of the few players who has been thrown out of the changing rooms for smoking after the match in 1981 and 1990 respectively by the manager when I was a professional player, it is a game I keep a keen interest in. I was possibly a man ahead of my time. :)
I might not always be inspired but always worth a read as it is something of interest to me. The last person to ban football so as not to compromise their archery skills was Elizabeth1.