“I don’t want to be a thief of my own wallet.” Johan Cruyff
It is hard to imagine the nation that produced Johan Cruyff, Marco van Basten and Dennis Bergkamp ever giving its name to something negative in football. But then Dutch Disease is an economic concept.
“I read a stat the other day that Burnley are bigger economically than Ajax.” Richard Scudamore, Premier League chief executive
The announcement that broadcast rights for Premier League football will soon be worth £1.712 billion (€2.317bn, US$2.633bn) every year in the domestic UK market alone must have caused a flood of mixed emotions for club executives across Europe.
“Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly agein’. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand. For the times they are a-changin’.” Bob Dylan
For the past 20 years football has had a very healthy and profitable relationship with pay-tv. This will be underlined once more over the next 24 hours or so when the Premier League makes its announcement over the result of the auction it has being holding for its UK rights.
“Whether it’s a [world] record or not doesn’t really resonate with us. What resonates is an elite player that the manager wants who is going to be a star for Manchester United.” Ed Woodward
Manchester United’s executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, has been pretty forthright about Manchester United’s transfer-market punch. His words have coincided with coquettish comments from the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi about how uncertain are their futures at Real Madrid and Barcelona.
“Every man lives by exchanging.” Adam Smith
Currency is the blood in the veins of economies. It is the fundamental denominator of all trade. But there are so many veins, arteries and capillaries in the world economy that the circulation of currency is seldom constant, and at times it becomes palsied.
“He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them.” Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza, the 17th Century Dutch-Portuguese philosopher, was certainly ahead of his time. His inchoate views that there is no such thing as a providential God, only nature, which one day would form the basis of his far-sighted Theologico-Political Treatise (published anonymously) were so controversial he was formally excommunicated by the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam that had brought him up.
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look farther than you can see.” Winston Churchill
Last week this column took a look back over what it had predicted for 2014 to see how they had fared in reality. Now, for the first column of 2015, and as one of history’s great men once said, it seems wise to look ahead, at least as far as we can see.
“History… is the lesson and the example of the future,” Alphonse de Lamartine, Antar.
This time last year this column carried an annual review of 2013 by pretty much the same title (see related article below). It seems worthwhile 12 months later to recapitulate over what it said and to discover whether any of its lessons were valid.
“There’s not any other profession in the world where investors can buy stakes in a human being.” Theo van Seggelen, FIFPro
Football, said the former England striker Jimmy Greaves, is a funny old game. But so too is the business of it. In no other sector than the sports industry do men willingly agree to become the tradable chattels of others. It is true that the football transfer market has come a long way from the time decades ago when players were instructed to move to a specific club with no input at all into the trade.
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” Vladimir Iliych Lenin
The Russian bear was dancing when it held the winter Olympics and won its bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup. All the while it was growling a demonstration of its aggressive fighting strength in the Caucasus. But, for the moment at least, one of the world’s most historically important nations is cowed.
“There can be only one,” Connor MacLeod, Highlander
Arsène Wenger might have you believe that competing in the Champions League matters; that an attractive style of play is important. But he is wrong. Football today is all about winning, and as a graduate in economics he should know that.
The FIFA ethics-committee investigation into alleged corruption in the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups has created a general-media storm seldom experienced before for any sports-politics story. It has generated headlines on the front pages, back pages and many pages between for newspapers across the readership spectrum and in many nations around the world.
“The negative tenor of the public debate around FIFA at the moment is neither good for football nor for FIFA and its partners.” Adidas statement, June 2014
Adidas has claimed that football is “the DNA of our company”. So when FIFA’s longest-serving commercial partner remarked publicly about the threat to football’s image presented by the many corruption allegations swirling around its governing body, Adidas revealed fears that its own reflection might become haggard.
They say a week is a long time in football and the pace of change at FIFA has indeed been remarkable in the four years since the decision to award Russia and Qatar the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting rights.
Since 2010, 12 of the 24 people who voted on the destinations of those World Cups are no longer involved in the FIFA ex-co. Some, such as Ricardo Teixeira, were proved to have been guilty of taking irregular payments at one time or another.
When FIFA awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar in favour of England and the United States it was a statement that resonated way beyond the confines of the world¹s football grounds and into the geopolitical sphere.