The game’s wealthier end is doing what it can in the coronavirus crisis but the precarious financial reality for too many lower-league clubs also plain to see“What is football without a crowd?” Pep Guardiola asked a couple of weeks ago, just before it became plain that crowds of any kind now had to be avoided.The short answer is not very much. Football has probably only just realised how much of its appeal lay in its ability to attract and entertain large numbers of people packed close together. Football stadiums are designed to accommodate crowds, to facilitate companionship; up and down the country those large edifices now standing empty and silent are powerful reminders that the human urge to congregate and...
Uefa’s desire to encourage long‑term investment instead of relying on increasing debt is workingIn the days after Manchester City were found to have seriously breached Uefa’s financial fair play rules by overstating their sponsorships from Abu Dhabi companies, some of the ensuing discussion rapidly diverted from that guilty finding to questioning the merits of FFP itself. Approved by Uefa in the 2009 season after years of wondering how to drag European football from overspending on players’ wages, FFP has since transformed top division clubs’ finances overall, and was introduced by the Premier League in 2013.City’s impatient ambitions after the great fortune of the 2008 takeover by Sheikh Mansour of the Abu Dhabi ruling family were based on him bankrolling mega-spending,...
The Six Nations and the private equity firm CVC’s impending deal is threatening to take some games off free-to-air TV, and that could be a dangerous moveIn August 1990 a retired French nuclear physicist called André Gardes armed himself with a semi‑automatic and launched a one-man invasion of Sark. When he arrived on the island he put up a pair of posters warning the residents that he was going to take over at noon the next day. And he would have, if a local constable hadn’t disarmed him by asking if he could hold his gun for a minute. Gardes removed the magazine, handed it over, and the policeman punched him on the nose. The invasion was over. Gardes actually...
Despite the efforts of Dinamo Zagreb, Club Brugge, Slavia Prague and Olympiakos, group stages are still all too predictableWhat have we done to deserve this? The last round of Champions League group fixtures is on us and only half the qualifiers are already known. There will actually be something to play for, intrigue on both nights, which is rare enough by this stage. Football is spoiling us.Liverpool, the holders, could conceivably go out. There’s a head-to-head showdown between Shakhtar Donetsk and Atalanta. There are complicated permutations to determine which two of Chelsea, Ajax and Valencia go through. It has been a better group stage than most. And yet it remains easier for a camel to pass through the eye of...
The group stages have become predictable and merely reinforce financial inequalities between the biggest clubs and also-ransI n the distance the anthem swells. Inappropriate advertising hoardings are covered up. A continent prepares to give thanks to Gazprom for providing them with football. The Champions League returns on Tuesday, unleashing an excited flurry of anticipatory questions: Can Liverpool defend their crown? Will Pep Guardiola stop overcomplicating things and, after a nine-year break, finally lift his third European title as a manager? Will Juventus’s gamble on Cristiano Ronaldo pay off? Are Barcelona and Real Madrid as shambolic as they appear? Who will Paris Saint‑Germain lose to hilariously this time? But mostly, when does the real stuff start?Does any other competition that so...