Big Money, Better Football?

The venue is the City of Manchester stadium. A large Eastlands crowd, which seemed fairly subdued till now, suddenly seems to have come alive. It whistles and jeers in unison as a Chelsea player shoves down one of the Manchester City players just outside the box. It waits in anticipation as the Man City players decide who is to take the free-kick. Some of the fans are yelling their choices. And even while they are at it, Robson de Souza, Man City’s newest signing, steps forward and takes it. The ball, struck quite cleanly, takes a deflection and flies into the net. The crowd goes mad with frenzy: they have just witnessed Britain’s costliest player Robinho score his first goal in a Man City shirt. Will he be the change that the fans have waited for so many years? Will he lead them on to the premiership title? The stadium is abuzz with excited, hopeful, and now maybe with the benefit of hindsight, a tad immature predictions of Man City’s future reign at the English Premier League. But even as the magic of the moment is being soaked in, and the $60 million dollar messiah being hailed, Chelsea with one of their characteristic breathtaking counter-attacks, score on the break. And from then on it’s the same old story: mediocre football by the home side, which goes on to lose 1-3.

While their can be no doubts that the coming of Robinho to Citeh has given manager Mark Hughes greater options, it can also not be argued that, so far, the player of the season for them has been Stephen Ireland, a 22 year old Irish international, who joined the club for a pittance at the age of 15 and has played there ever since. Having learnt his trade at the Eastlands, Ireland is a classic case of an academy player proving more effective than a big-budget signing. But such cultivation of players needs time and patience. This is something that the Abu Dhabi royal family, the new “owners” (splashing $360 millions of petro-dollars might let you procure the stadium and the players, but it doesn’t give you possession of the club’s culture: it will forever remain the rightful property of the fans) of Manchester City may not necessarily have. They are bound to look for results .Hence the big-budget signings are sure to continue.

But this takes us back to our original question: does spending big bucks translate into success on the pitch? Take Chelsea, for e.g. . . Mr. Abramovich’s millions of dollars, for all the fabulous players that it has brought to the club, big time success still eludes them. Not just that! Their talismanic player, amongst the glitterati of costly stars, has been an academy player, Frank Lampard. Very similar is the case of the captain courageous of Liverpool, Steven Gerrard. In fact, if you look carefully, the Premier League is littered with such examples of home-grown players outshining the high profile signings. Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, John Terry… to name a few.

But at the same time , some clubs with fabulous youth systems in place , say West Ham United, haven’t done that well and hence find it difficult to retain their talent. They end up being surrogate mothers for the bigger clubs. Are the big bucks to be blamed for it? Would the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, still have played for the Hammers if they would have tasted success there? Or would they still have preferred big money? It’s alright for a 68 year old Pele to say that players these days play only for the money, but what would he have done if he were to ply his trade now?

As the premiership continues to evolve, such questions would be asked more and more often. Also what is quite clear that the huge marketability is bound to have an effect on the football? The free flowing, open attacking games will be substituted by closed, monotonous affairs (last season, the average number of goals per match was 3; this season, up till now, it’s been 2.5) between big spending teams only looking for results.

So like it or not, our beautiful game has been sullied by some cheap petro-dollars, and the stain is here to stay.

Sudipta Mukherjee