Week 27: Is FFP Ruling A CASastrophe In The Making?
I read another scare story yesterday morning.
A winter wave of the coronavirus might happen. It could be even worse than the first wave. 120,000 more people could die. It went on to estimate the death toll of between 24,500 and 251,000. None of it was based on any particular facts as far as I could tell but just a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ that scientists had been asked to come up with.
BBC Health editor, Michelle Roberts, summed it up in her analysis when she said it wasn’t a prediction of what will happen, but rather what might. But then my uncle might have been my aunt.
That such numbers are bandied about at all is questionable, especially given their unpredictability and downright vagueness. Bear in mind that the models and predictions before this, when COVID-19 became a major crisis in March, varied from 7,000 to as high as half a million deaths in the UK.
So why bother? Well, the media loves them of course as scary numbers (and stories) sell more newspapers and are terrific online clickbait. And scientists are getting in on the act too, either because they’ve been asked to, or they want some of the limelight. Remember at the start of this, when Imperial College this, and Royal College that, were falling over themselves to come up with the highest prediction of deaths? It’s grisly, sure, but it also gets attention.
But there is another side; that it does far more longer-term harm.
After all, it’s the most vulnerable in society; the elderly, those who are sick or at high risk who get most scared, although no-one is completely immune. Mental health has been one of the biggest losers in this pandemic (with the final result years away) but how many readers of these stories of impending doom begin to feel sad, desperate or even depressed?
That said, I’m now going to do some doom-mongering, of my own. About football.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a mainly tongue-in-cheek article about football in the year 2030. In it, Manchester City and PSG were so wealthy that they were the only teams who could give each other a decent game, so played out a World League between themselves (32 games; 16 at home, 16 away, then a 33rd game in Abu Dhabi).
The other teams of relative wealth played in World League 2 and only then after regions had joined forces (North Germany, anyone?) to be more competitive.
As for the rest, well…who cares about the rest?
But in this updated version, the tongue is removed. This is my real doomsday scenario, and it’s absolutely serious.
It comes in the light, not surprisingly, of this week’s victory for Manchester City at CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) when their two-year ban from European competition was overturned and a €30m fine was reduced to a third of that.
First of all, I have nothing against Manchester City at all. I love what they’ve done with the team, the stadium, the surrounding area, their women’s set-up and they are great to watch. It’s not about envy either; I support a team that won’t be bothering them ever again (21 years after finishing higher than them in the football league), so this is nothing personal; more a concern for what the decision might mean for the game as a whole.
The ‘victory’ in the Swiss court was met with joy or dismay by a few who had a dog in the fight. Manchester City – who were defending themselves as any club would – felt vindicated, of course, while their neighbours across the city felt aggrieved with the ruling given they are the team in fifth at the moment and, as it stands, the big loser from a Premier League perspective.
Others, such as La Liga President, Javier Tebas, felt it was a bad day for football because of the implications of the decision on Spanish clubs. But it’s worth noting that Real and Barcelona already enjoy the enormous wealth advantages that FFP prevents others benefitting from.
Journalists declined to commit to it being the end of FFP but many, Dan Roan at the BBC for one, said its ‘credibility was in tatters’.
Many other observers saw it as a club getting one over on the governing body and were not too bothered at that. UEFA are hardly faultless when it comes to past scandals and while the ramifications were not lost on people, the outcome seemed to have more immediate consequences for UEFA’s governance and any possibility of making FFP (or any future version) work in the modern game.
Someone described the CAS result it as a ‘solid 1-0 away win’ for City, in contrast to their 4-0 and 5-0 wins in the Premier League but to me, it felt more like they squeaked through on penalties after their opponent had missed most of theirs.
After all, a two-year ban and fine of that magnitude aren’t applied based on water-cooler gossip. There had to be some evidence of wrong-doing, City had broken FFP rules in the past and they refused to co-operate with UEFA’s enquiry this time. Hardly squeaky clean.
UEFA, according to CAS, got it wrong because they failed to produce sufficient evidence and then, what they did have was not all presented in a timely manner. Two wrongs that didn’t make a right.
Of course, a €10m fine isn’t to be sniffed at. But given that the estimates of City’s income during the next two years will be at least £250m higher because of the overturning of the ban, they’ll not lose much sleep over it.
But rather than paint UEFA as the bad guy, given a bloody nose by a club, it’s more a case that they picked the wrong club with which to pick a battle.
They were, remember, trying to uphold a law that is already on shaky ground and that has been challenged before. In a continent where money rules and players and clubs increasingly hold all the power, you wonder if it was ever a fight they could win. That City were able to employ a whole team of expensive lawyers makes you wonder if it was even worth offering them out.
But fair fight or not, the implications of this dust-up could be severe; not straight-away but over the next ten years or so.
The ruling has not only sunk a knee into the groin of FFP, but left it vulnerable for further attack. How now can UEFA, or other domestic leagues that follow a similar model, hope to make the rules stick? It’s not the fact that FFP appears weak that is the problem here, but that any model which aims to curtail spending is doomed to eventual failure simply because the top-top clubs don’t want it to happen.
Forget the talk of a financial reset and better proportioning of broadcast deals in future, and all the other mid-COVID possibilities being held up. Football will learn many lessons from this pandemic but it will mostly be at the lower reaches of the game. The rich clubs will be alright, albeit after a brief wobble, but for the elite of the elite, it won’t make a scrap of difference.
Clubs like City, PSG and others with owners who wear bottomless pockets, the ruling will only mean they won’t be held back as much as they once were. But should we care? Supporters of clubs outside the elite will hardly feel the impact of a decision that feels more at home in Monopoly than football. And they probably won’t…for now.
But the gap will continue to grow. How quickly and how wide is hard to happen upon – a bit like predicting deaths due to coronavirus – without speculating wildly and being vague, but it will grow and at some point, it will eventually reach breaking point.
That Manchester City are not even the best team in England right now is a light blue herring. A season that has seen them distracted by the court case, the virus and found a Liverpool team on fire has put a welcome new name on the Premier League trophy but the consequences of that will be seen soon enough.
The last time a new team won the league, City refocussed with a vengeance and a year later had built a side that went on to amass 198 points and 201 goals in the league alone, winning it twice. Early reports after the ban was overturned estimated that Pep will have £150m to spend at the [eventual] end of this season.
On Saturday they beat Brighton 5-0 (with 26 shots in all). Before that they defeated Newcastle by the same score (23 shots) and in their previous homes game won 4-0 against Liverpool, 5-0 against Burnley and 3-0 versus Arsenal.
They did lose 1-0 earlier this month at Southampton (despite 26 shots and 74% possession stats) but anyone watching the highlights would have seen that it was an anomaly (in one 20-second passage alone they had about nine shots – more than some teams have in an entire game). The home keeper had one of those games but it’s a result that might also see the manager invest c.£75m to increase his striking options.
They will continue to get better while others might not, or cannot.
Liverpool (never the biggest net spenders) are already making noises about reduced budgets because of the virus. Manager, Jurgen Klopp diplomatically said he was glad City were in the Champions League next season but that it was also ‘a bad day for football.’
Spurs and Arsenal aren’t able to compete with City when it comes to spending power and that gap will only get wider. Jose Mourinho, btw, called the CAS decision ‘disgraceful’ and Mikel Arteta said the overturning of the ban was completely deserved. Go figure.
The likes of Leicester and Wolves won’t trouble City at the very top and only Chelsea and Manchester United can even hope to stay somewhere close to their spending ability and even then, it’s doubtful they will.
Last season, City won a domestic semi-final by nine goals to nil. How many years before 9-0 wins are commonplace when they play Premier League opponents?
I’m not talking next season, the one after or maybe even in the next five years but, unless an effective FFP model is introduced, there will be a time when they win the EPL for at least five consecutive seasons before too long. It has already happened in Italy, Germany and France and it will happen here too.
And it won’t stop there. The gap will widen further down because those in the Premier League will keep trying to keep up and Championship club owners will continue to throw the dice. You wonder, in a season where Wycombe Wanderers have just reached the second tier for the first time, how much longer the smaller clubs will be able to compete in the top two divisions in England. That will also be a sign – when they no longer can – that it’s already gone past breaking point and any new FFP rules after that will be like face masks in shops; introduced far too late to make a real difference.
I know there is the other argument. That a rising tide raises all boats, that there will be even more money in the game (but you surely mean players’ and agents’ pockets?) and that it’s a capitalist market and that’s all very well and good. I hear you. I just also think it’s a short-sighted view.
People will also say it’s cyclical and no-one dominates forever in the PL. And what’s to stop a small club, like Wycombe or my own club, getting massive investment and going all the way to the top themselves? Except the next incarnation of FFP, of course.
But even greater financial inequality between the rich and the poor is the last thing the game needs right now. Whereas football was trying, or at least hoping, to straighten the financial gaps out to make the game better, the CAS decision could – like media scare-stories – do much longer-term harm than we realise.
I just really hope that come 2030, I am the one guilty of scaremongering and not the one saying I told you so.
But I sense we just took another huge step in the wrong direction.
words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist