As an Arsenal supporter, I didn’t find Saturday’s game boring—quite the opposite.
Joke aside, there are two elements to this. First, emotional connections to the game—whether to a team, player, manager, or even a particular era—are an integral part of sport. Second, the game evolves by building on how it was played before. Raphael or Michelangelo may have been the greatest painter and sculptor of all time, but that does not mean contemporary artists should paint or sculpt exactly as they did. The same applies to football. Like most sports, it has always been, in one form or another, both a political and a commercial enterprise. Yugoslavia vs. USSR in 1952 was about much more than a football match.
Having said that, something is rotten in the state of UEFA and FIFA. It is almost impossible today to imagine Ajax, Red Star Belgrade, or Steaua Bucharest winning the Champions League unless some crown prince decides to create a new PSG in a smaller country.
>There was no Omar Sivori who refused to wear shin-guards, no disheveled, cocaine-driven Maradona, no Garrincha half-asleep at the right-wing, no pot-belly Ferenc Puskas who could not run 100 meters and yet would score hundreds of goals..
Yes because in the modern game, those kinds of players are a huge liability. Teams have figured out how to exploit the weaknesses of a talented no 10 that can't run and aid in defending.
And this has nothing to do with the "commercialization" of the game - gun to the astronaut's head, always has been.
>The teams may move from one city to another, the franchise is there to make money.
On the contrary, most EPL (and I think also European) teams lose money - despite the "commercialization". The biggest expense? Player salaries.
In Europe, there are no salary caps as in the US NBA and NFL. There is also the risk of relegation. If a team relegates to a lower division, they lose huge revenue from broadcasting.
So teams are desperate to avoid relegation, which causes them to desperately shell out for player salaries. But other teams are also in a similar situation, so they also shell out monies. It becomes an arms-race.
It's really a "workers' paradise" despite all the brouhaha about commercialization.
The US system protects franchises from both of these pressures as there are salary caps and no relegation. Additionally, the worst-ranking teams in one season get a help in having the best draft picks the next season, preventing dynasties like in Europe.
Foreign money really comes into buy prestige and sports-washing - not to make money.
Well, well well... In soccer, most "productive workers" are getting their worth (what else would explain the discrepancy or the ineqaulity?) whereas in the NBA, oppressed proletarians like Lebron James are getting underpaid due to salary caps and other "distorting regulations" NBA has.
That's one way to see the situation. The other would be that a tiny minority of oligarch players take most of money in europe leaving the rest of soccer proletariat poor
In NBA thanks to government regulation, oligarch are prevented from abuse so other workers get their fair share.
BTW a great player in NBA is much more important for the ultimate team successes than a great player in soccer -
<<The other would be that a tiny minority of oligarch players take most of money in europe leaving the rest of soccer proletariat poor.>>
The analogy of high-earning athletes as oligarchs makes no sense. Are these athlete oligarchs buying the media, bribing officials for favorable regulation (or just no regulation), tilting elections in their favor? No, the only way they make money is through skill.
There are lots of players who fall from grace early like Michael Owen. And there are those who achieve star power late in their career like Didier Drogba. Why couldn't these other athlete oligarchs prevent the rise of Drogba who came for their wages? Or why couldn't Owen tilt the playing field so that he stayed at the top?
High-earning athletes are in no way like oligarchs.
I’m in Toronto, one of the hosts of the World Cup, and it’s very sad to see how international football is organized nowadays. It’s become a financial steamroller that’s totally hostile to fans. The main purpose is to extract massive government subsidies, charge as much as possible for tickets, maximize other revenues, and make as much profit as possible, exploiting the fact that many fans are willing to tale out loans, seek their cars, whatever, to see their clubs. It’s quite astounding - the tickets are way too expensive for most residents to afford. It’s more expensive to see a match than for me to travel to Europe. Truely disheartening. No idea where all this money is going either
I’m just outside Toronto myself. I went to a World Cup ‘94 game in Detroit (Sweden v Brazil) back when it wasn’t necessary to take out a mortgage for tickets. I won’t go anywhere near a stadium this year — the prices have become beyond outrageous.
Its bizarre and ridiculous. FIFA isnt even a for profit. The only reason they even supposedly need revenue is to run the tournament and promote the game. Yet the they dont pay for the tournament- the hosts do - and they have made it impossible for even locals to attend
The complaint has been made before, with good reason. I never watched champions' league matches. I watched my club's matches in Bundesliga and zweite Liga and attended it's second team playing lower leagues. I generally prefer watching zweite Liga to Bundesliga.
I strongly dislike your portrayal of Maradona. It wasn’t his cocaine addiction that made him the greatest player of all time, but rather his genius that set him apart from the rest.
That said, I think there are two ways to understand the loss of emotiveness in today's football, which awakens your nostalgia for the old times:
1) The subordination of individuality to collective play, prioritizing the scheme over creativity, something a socialist could see as positive.
2) The creation of a collective player (team) that is more productive and efficient at the expense of individual skills, comparable to what Marx described for manufacturing or large-scale industry; in other words, the application of capitalist business logic to football, something a socialist would consider negative.
That is to say, as a socialist, I could be either satisfied or outraged when watching a football match.
Of course, when placing it in the context of the increasing commercialization you describe in your post, I think the second interpretation prevails.
The same pattern can be seen almost everywhere today: large actors buy up smaller, local and more distinctive initiatives, then either absorb them, standardize them, or shut them down.
What disappears is not always efficiency. Sometimes efficiency improves. What disappears is character, memory, local identity and the strange human imperfections that made things worth caring about in the first place.
Something about my home country India. In our childhood we enjoyed Cricket. Cricket is one of the legacy of British empire which it left in India. We enjoyed playing it in our backyards and watching international cricket matches on TV (at the time Australia & West Indies were on top of the game).
Then started commercializing of cricket, privatization of cricketing clubs & national cricketing boards itself (called IPL leagues in India) and cricketers became superstars & national icons. At first I lost interest in the game and later I started actually hating it. Today Cricket in our country is just opium for the masses which unemployed & uncultured youth waste their time watching & idealizing. And cricketers are just like another overpaid conspicuous Capitalist earners making millions from their performance. At some point, it all started to appear so vulgar.
There's a broader pattern to things. Capitalism ruined everything in my opinion. The sports, the cinema, the art, the culture etc etc. Things which were once beautiful became vulgar.
1. It will isolate the rest of the clubs from the worst of the commercialization and allow the game to grow organically in the shade.
2. After 5-10 seasons it will become such a borefest that nobody will want to watch it since the clubs in it will start to split according to their finances anyway.
F1 is another terrible example, by the way. Bernie commercialized it, yes, but I think he had an idea of what makes it interesting and organic and he managed to safeguard this essence of the sport. Maybe because he had seen it and participated in it in the old times. The Americans that bought it have no clue.
I agree wholeheartedly with this piece, and it's far from the first time I have heard it. One big change was the European football became the interest of non-Europeans,.and non-European money saw chances of money or projection in it. Anyway, Branko,.it's also a bit your fault, too, just for watching. I gave up watching club footy about 15 years ago, and actively reject paying for TV packages where football is included.
Quite the quandary that millions and billions of dollars are served up around a ball rolling around a field. Insightful take and have signed up to read more!
This is a great piece. But you seemed to really like the last World Cup though? Do you think the rules to compose a "national" team make it more organic and thus better than FIFA Europe? And what are your thought on this upcoming World Cup in the US? Going to any games? People are raging about the prices for seats!
As an Arsenal supporter, I didn’t find Saturday’s game boring—quite the opposite.
Joke aside, there are two elements to this. First, emotional connections to the game—whether to a team, player, manager, or even a particular era—are an integral part of sport. Second, the game evolves by building on how it was played before. Raphael or Michelangelo may have been the greatest painter and sculptor of all time, but that does not mean contemporary artists should paint or sculpt exactly as they did. The same applies to football. Like most sports, it has always been, in one form or another, both a political and a commercial enterprise. Yugoslavia vs. USSR in 1952 was about much more than a football match.
Having said that, something is rotten in the state of UEFA and FIFA. It is almost impossible today to imagine Ajax, Red Star Belgrade, or Steaua Bucharest winning the Champions League unless some crown prince decides to create a new PSG in a smaller country.
How do "winner take all markets" fit into this story?
>There was no Omar Sivori who refused to wear shin-guards, no disheveled, cocaine-driven Maradona, no Garrincha half-asleep at the right-wing, no pot-belly Ferenc Puskas who could not run 100 meters and yet would score hundreds of goals..
Yes because in the modern game, those kinds of players are a huge liability. Teams have figured out how to exploit the weaknesses of a talented no 10 that can't run and aid in defending.
And this has nothing to do with the "commercialization" of the game - gun to the astronaut's head, always has been.
>The teams may move from one city to another, the franchise is there to make money.
On the contrary, most EPL (and I think also European) teams lose money - despite the "commercialization". The biggest expense? Player salaries.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/68713522
Isn't this lack of profitability the need to inject money into players because of all the foreign money is entering the EPL?
Not sure what your question is.
In Europe, there are no salary caps as in the US NBA and NFL. There is also the risk of relegation. If a team relegates to a lower division, they lose huge revenue from broadcasting.
So teams are desperate to avoid relegation, which causes them to desperately shell out for player salaries. But other teams are also in a similar situation, so they also shell out monies. It becomes an arms-race.
It's really a "workers' paradise" despite all the brouhaha about commercialization.
The US system protects franchises from both of these pressures as there are salary caps and no relegation. Additionally, the worst-ranking teams in one season get a help in having the best draft picks the next season, preventing dynasties like in Europe.
Foreign money really comes into buy prestige and sports-washing - not to make money.
It may be a "workers' paradise" but only for a small % of top players
despite or because of salary caps average NBA player makes $4.5m while an average French League 1 player makes $750k
Even in the top leagues like Premier league median player makes $3.5m less than median player in NBA or La Liga "only" $1.8m
So American system seems to be more communist
Well, well well... In soccer, most "productive workers" are getting their worth (what else would explain the discrepancy or the ineqaulity?) whereas in the NBA, oppressed proletarians like Lebron James are getting underpaid due to salary caps and other "distorting regulations" NBA has.
See the link:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/11/628137929/episode-427-lebron-james-is-still-underpaid
That's one way to see the situation. The other would be that a tiny minority of oligarch players take most of money in europe leaving the rest of soccer proletariat poor
In NBA thanks to government regulation, oligarch are prevented from abuse so other workers get their fair share.
BTW a great player in NBA is much more important for the ultimate team successes than a great player in soccer -
Arsenal is a great example of that
<<The other would be that a tiny minority of oligarch players take most of money in europe leaving the rest of soccer proletariat poor.>>
The analogy of high-earning athletes as oligarchs makes no sense. Are these athlete oligarchs buying the media, bribing officials for favorable regulation (or just no regulation), tilting elections in their favor? No, the only way they make money is through skill.
There are lots of players who fall from grace early like Michael Owen. And there are those who achieve star power late in their career like Didier Drogba. Why couldn't these other athlete oligarchs prevent the rise of Drogba who came for their wages? Or why couldn't Owen tilt the playing field so that he stayed at the top?
High-earning athletes are in no way like oligarchs.
Ironically the one arena in which the US enthusiastically embraces “socialism” is in professional sports 🤨
This is a point made frequently about US pro sports. And to all the "muh free mahketz" guys' chagrin, it's working really well.
As the Premier League did to UK football, so the rest of the sport followed.
I see the tennis and i raise auto sports
I’m in Toronto, one of the hosts of the World Cup, and it’s very sad to see how international football is organized nowadays. It’s become a financial steamroller that’s totally hostile to fans. The main purpose is to extract massive government subsidies, charge as much as possible for tickets, maximize other revenues, and make as much profit as possible, exploiting the fact that many fans are willing to tale out loans, seek their cars, whatever, to see their clubs. It’s quite astounding - the tickets are way too expensive for most residents to afford. It’s more expensive to see a match than for me to travel to Europe. Truely disheartening. No idea where all this money is going either
I’m just outside Toronto myself. I went to a World Cup ‘94 game in Detroit (Sweden v Brazil) back when it wasn’t necessary to take out a mortgage for tickets. I won’t go anywhere near a stadium this year — the prices have become beyond outrageous.
Its bizarre and ridiculous. FIFA isnt even a for profit. The only reason they even supposedly need revenue is to run the tournament and promote the game. Yet the they dont pay for the tournament- the hosts do - and they have made it impossible for even locals to attend
The semi-final between PSG and Bayern was fun, though. Even though those two teams represent the worst of financialization in football.
The complaint has been made before, with good reason. I never watched champions' league matches. I watched my club's matches in Bundesliga and zweite Liga and attended it's second team playing lower leagues. I generally prefer watching zweite Liga to Bundesliga.
I strongly dislike your portrayal of Maradona. It wasn’t his cocaine addiction that made him the greatest player of all time, but rather his genius that set him apart from the rest.
That said, I think there are two ways to understand the loss of emotiveness in today's football, which awakens your nostalgia for the old times:
1) The subordination of individuality to collective play, prioritizing the scheme over creativity, something a socialist could see as positive.
2) The creation of a collective player (team) that is more productive and efficient at the expense of individual skills, comparable to what Marx described for manufacturing or large-scale industry; in other words, the application of capitalist business logic to football, something a socialist would consider negative.
That is to say, as a socialist, I could be either satisfied or outraged when watching a football match.
Of course, when placing it in the context of the increasing commercialization you describe in your post, I think the second interpretation prevails.
Well let's not be so silent, for so long again. Brilliant, and from a well that is clearly For the Love of the Match.
This is not only about football.
The same pattern can be seen almost everywhere today: large actors buy up smaller, local and more distinctive initiatives, then either absorb them, standardize them, or shut them down.
What disappears is not always efficiency. Sometimes efficiency improves. What disappears is character, memory, local identity and the strange human imperfections that made things worth caring about in the first place.
Football is just one of the clearest examples.
Prof Branko,
Something about my home country India. In our childhood we enjoyed Cricket. Cricket is one of the legacy of British empire which it left in India. We enjoyed playing it in our backyards and watching international cricket matches on TV (at the time Australia & West Indies were on top of the game).
Then started commercializing of cricket, privatization of cricketing clubs & national cricketing boards itself (called IPL leagues in India) and cricketers became superstars & national icons. At first I lost interest in the game and later I started actually hating it. Today Cricket in our country is just opium for the masses which unemployed & uncultured youth waste their time watching & idealizing. And cricketers are just like another overpaid conspicuous Capitalist earners making millions from their performance. At some point, it all started to appear so vulgar.
There's a broader pattern to things. Capitalism ruined everything in my opinion. The sports, the cinema, the art, the culture etc etc. Things which were once beautiful became vulgar.
This is why I support the Super League project:
1. It will isolate the rest of the clubs from the worst of the commercialization and allow the game to grow organically in the shade.
2. After 5-10 seasons it will become such a borefest that nobody will want to watch it since the clubs in it will start to split according to their finances anyway.
F1 is another terrible example, by the way. Bernie commercialized it, yes, but I think he had an idea of what makes it interesting and organic and he managed to safeguard this essence of the sport. Maybe because he had seen it and participated in it in the old times. The Americans that bought it have no clue.
I agree wholeheartedly with this piece, and it's far from the first time I have heard it. One big change was the European football became the interest of non-Europeans,.and non-European money saw chances of money or projection in it. Anyway, Branko,.it's also a bit your fault, too, just for watching. I gave up watching club footy about 15 years ago, and actively reject paying for TV packages where football is included.
Quite the quandary that millions and billions of dollars are served up around a ball rolling around a field. Insightful take and have signed up to read more!
This is a great piece. But you seemed to really like the last World Cup though? Do you think the rules to compose a "national" team make it more organic and thus better than FIFA Europe? And what are your thought on this upcoming World Cup in the US? Going to any games? People are raging about the prices for seats!