midfielder
Well-Known Member
Very good article in smh today not sure what area to post under so put in overseas football, think its the best fit.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/football/...e#contentSwap1
Beautiful game has its ugly side
June 7, 2008
When success becomes everything, the losers multiply, too, argues Michael Visontay.
When the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, visited England this year, he was armed with two diplomatic assets. The minor one was his wife; the major was Arsene Wenger, the charismatic French manager of the Arsenal football team.
Locals joked that Sarkozy held his summit with the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal's home ground, because Arsenal was more like France than England. The jest referred to Wenger and the heavy concentration of French players in the squad. Arsenal is renowned for its silky skills but virtual absence of English players. There is rarely even just one in the regular first team.
Some see Arsenal as the prototype of modern football. Lots of trophies, world-class players, beautiful style, a cultural bridge to Europe, Africa and beyond. Fans seem to have accepted and embraced the trend. Its 60,000-capacity stadium is sold out every game, with another 30,000 on the membership waiting list.
Arsenal is one of an elite of European clubs who have taken football to a new level of internationalism. On the surface, support has never been higher. Tickets to the European Championships, Euro 2008, beginning this weekend in Austria and Switzerland, were oversubscribed by a factor of 10. Those who miss out huddle together over the television in lounge rooms, or watch on the streets, where parents and children wear team shirts like uniforms, in proud allegiance to their tribe.
Yet increasingly, lovers of the game are wondering what it means to have successful clubs that are local in name only. Critics are openly lamenting the level of foreign players in England - only 38 per cent of those in the Premier League are English, leaving insufficient opportunities for locals to develop.
The anger bubbled over this year after England failed to qualify for Euro 2008.
The pattern is echoed across the channel. In Spain, the two biggest clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona, both heavily stacked with foreign players, regularly win international silverware while the national team has been a spectacular underachiever for years. Italy has three major clubs laden with foreign talent, enjoying similar success. Across Europe, the major club tournament, the Champions League, is dominated by the same few clubs from the same few countries.
Sport is now big business, and business is tough. "If you win, you don't care where the players come from. If you lose, you wonder why," is how a European sports official summed it up recently.
But now the people running the game have decided the problem is more than jealousy, and it needs fixing. Over the past year, Sepp Blatter, president of football's governing body, FIFA, has floated a proposal to restrict to five the number of foreign-born players in club teams, ensuring six spots for locals.
The Blatter plan has provoked intense debate in Europe, but muted coverage in Australia, where clubs run a distant second in the national psyche to the Socceroos brand. The fledgling domestic competition, the A-League, is filled with locals who dream of following Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwartzer and others to Europe.
Blatter's plan was endorsed by last month's FIFA Congress in Sydney, but a quota would breach European law guaranteeing freedom of employment. Blatter says he will try to negotiate with the European Union, which has flatly rejected the proposal.
Michel Platini, head of Europe's football body, UEFA, has weighed in with his own proposal, that clubs playing in European competition must include in their 25-man squads at least four players from their own academies, and a further four from an academy within the same national association.
Implicit is the acknowledgement that the business of football has moved ahead of the game, bringing benefits and problems many did not foresee. Mega-clubs are superseding their host countries as the centre of power; footballers have become an army of highly-paid, globalised labour; national boundaries have blurred, and traditional ideas of "foreigner" are becoming outmoded.
At one level, the unfettered movement of players across continents, and the growth of international club competitions, demonstrates the success of the new Europe - integrated, tolerant and speaking one common language. Increasingly, the elite clubs have more in common with each other than they do with smaller rivals in their domestic competitions.
So do their supporters, who, on July 6, will hold the first European football fans' congress in London, where they will discuss everything from governance to ticket prices and racism.
International club matches have helped them learn more about their commonality than their differences, according to Steven Powell, from the English Football Supporters' Federation.
Some say this is the start of a post-national identity. Jonathan Hill, UEFA's man in Brussels, wrote earlier this year: "We might be witnessing the gradual emergence of a European 'public space' - the idea that citizens who share concerns can communicate directly across national boundaries."
BUT others question whether football has become too successful and popular for its own good. The game was changed profoundly by two events in the 1990s: the 1995 Bosman ruling in the European Court of Justice, which unlocked players' market value by freeing them to move between clubs, and the rise of pay TV, with huge money for broadcasting rights entrenching the financial advantage of the big boys.
Its global profile now lures billionaires to indulge in childhood dreams and buy clubs like trophies, making a mockery of professional administrators, team loyalty and home-grown character.
The sheer ruthlessness of their power has also caused many to question the values governing the clubs they buy. In Italy, the Inter Milan manager, Roberto Mancini, has just been sacked after leading his team to its third straight domestic title. The Russian oil magnate Roman Abramovich dumped the manager of Chelsea after the London club finished second in both the EPL and Champions League.
(In Australia, by contrast, big money has a positive image. Westfield's Frank Lowy has been instrumental in resuscitating the game and taking its administration to a new level of professionalism, respect and transparency).
England's open economy has made it the hothouse of football capitalism "Fewer and fewer people will care. Football needs its roots, otherwise it is purposeless exhibitionism," wrote the English economist Will Hutton in The Observer last year. "Money, football and dodgy values have long been intertwined - but what is happening is at a new level some limits have to be negotiated."
Essentially, Hutton and others are responding to the traditional lag between economic change and social adjustment.
Football Association officials admit English players are not good enough, and the British sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, says the England team lacks technical expertise for international success, yet the English Premier League is the best in the world.
In Germany, France and Holland - where national teams are paramount - there is not the same resistance to a quota. For others, a cap on foreign players may be more positive. This would include Brazil, which exports so many players to Europe, and Australia, where the A-League is increasingly a cheap nursery for rich clubs in Asia and Europe.
Socceroo Nicky Carle is a classic example. Less than a year ago, he was playing for Newcastle, NSW. He since signed with the leading Turkish club, Genclerbirligi, and moved on to Bristol City, a successful English second-division club.
The exodus in recent months of several Sydney FC players to Japan, lured by former coach Pierre Litbarski, highlights the situation closer to home. Japan is the powerhouse of Asian football and draws players from all over the world, including several Brazilians.
By plugging the well from above, a quota could help limit the talent drain from Australia, as rich clubs overseas ration their purchases. There would be less room all the way down the global ladder of clubs.
Again, the impact would be double-edged. The A-League would be stabilised, but top players would have less opportunity to play club football at higher levels, thereby restraining the potential of the Socceroos.
ANY economist will tell you that quotas are bandaids that only conceal inefficiency. Some say football's underlying problem is lack of investment in grassroots coaching - of players, and of coaches. Money has papered over the deficiency in England, and parochialism has distorted it in Australia.
Whereas continental Europe has a long tradition of football academies for up-and-coming players, and for teaching ex-players how to coach, as distinct from manage, the Anglo world has neglected these educational foundations. France's league has become a nursery to Europe partly because children learn technical skills from age five, and don't concentrate on physical training until 13. The Football Association has produced a blueprint for more investment in training, from five-year-olds to professionals. "We want to see kids' high school coaches held in the same esteem as they are in the USA," says Sutcliffe.
Simon Greenberg, communications director at Chelsea, sums up: "The coach is more revered in Europe than he is in England. That needs to change."
The European reputation for coaching success is in huge demand elsewhere, including Australia. It is an expertise that may have more to with culture than football. Simon Kuper, the English author of Football Against the Enemy, believes there is a relationship between football success and founding membership of the European Union.
Citing the achievements at club and national level of Germany, France Italy and the Benelux countries, he argues their decision to enter the then EEC reflected the fact that they already shared close connections. The next 50 years enhanced the exchange of ideas and innovation in all spheres, including sport.
By contrast, football underachievers such as Russia, England, Turkey and Spain are later members of the EU, or not members at all. Kuper's thesis is hardly watertight, but his interest in the free flow of ideas rings true.
The debate should be understood in terms of society, as well as money. In an open society, education becomes a cornerstone of adaptability and innovation. New languages are easier to embrace; with them come new values and ways of thinking.
Football benefits from all of this, and it proves, again, that Margaret Thatcher was wrong. Society is alive and well, and it matters just as much as economy.
Michael Visontay was the recipient of the 2007 EU-Qantas Journalism Award. He recently returned from a trip to Europe, where he spoke to football officials.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/football/...e#contentSwap1
Beautiful game has its ugly side
June 7, 2008
When success becomes everything, the losers multiply, too, argues Michael Visontay.
When the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, visited England this year, he was armed with two diplomatic assets. The minor one was his wife; the major was Arsene Wenger, the charismatic French manager of the Arsenal football team.
Locals joked that Sarkozy held his summit with the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal's home ground, because Arsenal was more like France than England. The jest referred to Wenger and the heavy concentration of French players in the squad. Arsenal is renowned for its silky skills but virtual absence of English players. There is rarely even just one in the regular first team.
Some see Arsenal as the prototype of modern football. Lots of trophies, world-class players, beautiful style, a cultural bridge to Europe, Africa and beyond. Fans seem to have accepted and embraced the trend. Its 60,000-capacity stadium is sold out every game, with another 30,000 on the membership waiting list.
Arsenal is one of an elite of European clubs who have taken football to a new level of internationalism. On the surface, support has never been higher. Tickets to the European Championships, Euro 2008, beginning this weekend in Austria and Switzerland, were oversubscribed by a factor of 10. Those who miss out huddle together over the television in lounge rooms, or watch on the streets, where parents and children wear team shirts like uniforms, in proud allegiance to their tribe.
Yet increasingly, lovers of the game are wondering what it means to have successful clubs that are local in name only. Critics are openly lamenting the level of foreign players in England - only 38 per cent of those in the Premier League are English, leaving insufficient opportunities for locals to develop.
The anger bubbled over this year after England failed to qualify for Euro 2008.
The pattern is echoed across the channel. In Spain, the two biggest clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona, both heavily stacked with foreign players, regularly win international silverware while the national team has been a spectacular underachiever for years. Italy has three major clubs laden with foreign talent, enjoying similar success. Across Europe, the major club tournament, the Champions League, is dominated by the same few clubs from the same few countries.
Sport is now big business, and business is tough. "If you win, you don't care where the players come from. If you lose, you wonder why," is how a European sports official summed it up recently.
But now the people running the game have decided the problem is more than jealousy, and it needs fixing. Over the past year, Sepp Blatter, president of football's governing body, FIFA, has floated a proposal to restrict to five the number of foreign-born players in club teams, ensuring six spots for locals.
The Blatter plan has provoked intense debate in Europe, but muted coverage in Australia, where clubs run a distant second in the national psyche to the Socceroos brand. The fledgling domestic competition, the A-League, is filled with locals who dream of following Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwartzer and others to Europe.
Blatter's plan was endorsed by last month's FIFA Congress in Sydney, but a quota would breach European law guaranteeing freedom of employment. Blatter says he will try to negotiate with the European Union, which has flatly rejected the proposal.
Michel Platini, head of Europe's football body, UEFA, has weighed in with his own proposal, that clubs playing in European competition must include in their 25-man squads at least four players from their own academies, and a further four from an academy within the same national association.
Implicit is the acknowledgement that the business of football has moved ahead of the game, bringing benefits and problems many did not foresee. Mega-clubs are superseding their host countries as the centre of power; footballers have become an army of highly-paid, globalised labour; national boundaries have blurred, and traditional ideas of "foreigner" are becoming outmoded.
At one level, the unfettered movement of players across continents, and the growth of international club competitions, demonstrates the success of the new Europe - integrated, tolerant and speaking one common language. Increasingly, the elite clubs have more in common with each other than they do with smaller rivals in their domestic competitions.
So do their supporters, who, on July 6, will hold the first European football fans' congress in London, where they will discuss everything from governance to ticket prices and racism.
International club matches have helped them learn more about their commonality than their differences, according to Steven Powell, from the English Football Supporters' Federation.
Some say this is the start of a post-national identity. Jonathan Hill, UEFA's man in Brussels, wrote earlier this year: "We might be witnessing the gradual emergence of a European 'public space' - the idea that citizens who share concerns can communicate directly across national boundaries."
BUT others question whether football has become too successful and popular for its own good. The game was changed profoundly by two events in the 1990s: the 1995 Bosman ruling in the European Court of Justice, which unlocked players' market value by freeing them to move between clubs, and the rise of pay TV, with huge money for broadcasting rights entrenching the financial advantage of the big boys.
Its global profile now lures billionaires to indulge in childhood dreams and buy clubs like trophies, making a mockery of professional administrators, team loyalty and home-grown character.
The sheer ruthlessness of their power has also caused many to question the values governing the clubs they buy. In Italy, the Inter Milan manager, Roberto Mancini, has just been sacked after leading his team to its third straight domestic title. The Russian oil magnate Roman Abramovich dumped the manager of Chelsea after the London club finished second in both the EPL and Champions League.
(In Australia, by contrast, big money has a positive image. Westfield's Frank Lowy has been instrumental in resuscitating the game and taking its administration to a new level of professionalism, respect and transparency).
England's open economy has made it the hothouse of football capitalism "Fewer and fewer people will care. Football needs its roots, otherwise it is purposeless exhibitionism," wrote the English economist Will Hutton in The Observer last year. "Money, football and dodgy values have long been intertwined - but what is happening is at a new level some limits have to be negotiated."
Essentially, Hutton and others are responding to the traditional lag between economic change and social adjustment.
Football Association officials admit English players are not good enough, and the British sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, says the England team lacks technical expertise for international success, yet the English Premier League is the best in the world.
In Germany, France and Holland - where national teams are paramount - there is not the same resistance to a quota. For others, a cap on foreign players may be more positive. This would include Brazil, which exports so many players to Europe, and Australia, where the A-League is increasingly a cheap nursery for rich clubs in Asia and Europe.
Socceroo Nicky Carle is a classic example. Less than a year ago, he was playing for Newcastle, NSW. He since signed with the leading Turkish club, Genclerbirligi, and moved on to Bristol City, a successful English second-division club.
The exodus in recent months of several Sydney FC players to Japan, lured by former coach Pierre Litbarski, highlights the situation closer to home. Japan is the powerhouse of Asian football and draws players from all over the world, including several Brazilians.
By plugging the well from above, a quota could help limit the talent drain from Australia, as rich clubs overseas ration their purchases. There would be less room all the way down the global ladder of clubs.
Again, the impact would be double-edged. The A-League would be stabilised, but top players would have less opportunity to play club football at higher levels, thereby restraining the potential of the Socceroos.
ANY economist will tell you that quotas are bandaids that only conceal inefficiency. Some say football's underlying problem is lack of investment in grassroots coaching - of players, and of coaches. Money has papered over the deficiency in England, and parochialism has distorted it in Australia.
Whereas continental Europe has a long tradition of football academies for up-and-coming players, and for teaching ex-players how to coach, as distinct from manage, the Anglo world has neglected these educational foundations. France's league has become a nursery to Europe partly because children learn technical skills from age five, and don't concentrate on physical training until 13. The Football Association has produced a blueprint for more investment in training, from five-year-olds to professionals. "We want to see kids' high school coaches held in the same esteem as they are in the USA," says Sutcliffe.
Simon Greenberg, communications director at Chelsea, sums up: "The coach is more revered in Europe than he is in England. That needs to change."
The European reputation for coaching success is in huge demand elsewhere, including Australia. It is an expertise that may have more to with culture than football. Simon Kuper, the English author of Football Against the Enemy, believes there is a relationship between football success and founding membership of the European Union.
Citing the achievements at club and national level of Germany, France Italy and the Benelux countries, he argues their decision to enter the then EEC reflected the fact that they already shared close connections. The next 50 years enhanced the exchange of ideas and innovation in all spheres, including sport.
By contrast, football underachievers such as Russia, England, Turkey and Spain are later members of the EU, or not members at all. Kuper's thesis is hardly watertight, but his interest in the free flow of ideas rings true.
The debate should be understood in terms of society, as well as money. In an open society, education becomes a cornerstone of adaptability and innovation. New languages are easier to embrace; with them come new values and ways of thinking.
Football benefits from all of this, and it proves, again, that Margaret Thatcher was wrong. Society is alive and well, and it matters just as much as economy.
Michael Visontay was the recipient of the 2007 EU-Qantas Journalism Award. He recently returned from a trip to Europe, where he spoke to football officials.
