Football Finance

Football needs to reform to become a real business

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The Harry Rednapp case, whatever the final verdict, has illustrated what we all knew: for all the talk of football being a business, it is still essentially a cottage industry. It has not moved on from the early twentieth century world when it first came into prominence.

That football is big business can hardly be doubted. Look at the financial figures that UEFA has released about the profits and losses made by the clubs and the huge debts they have. In 2010, total revenues for top-flight clubs reached a record €12.8bn, but the increase in revenues was accompanied by record aggregate net losses of €1,641,000,000.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

The amount of muck poured on this competition reminds me of the words Kelvin MacKenzie said to John Major after he had taken Britain out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). As MacKenzie recounted to the Leveson inquiry on the press, as the hapless Prime Minister rang to ask the then Sun editor how he would treat the news, he replied, “Prime Minister, I have a bucket of shit by my desk and I am about to pour it on you.”

Some English managers, like Harry Redknapp, seem to have a similar view about the UEFA Europa League (UEL).

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BBC London Radio

With Jason Solomons, Michael Smiley, Mihir Bose, ‘Cover To Cover’ and Seal.

The Robert Elms show is a celebration of every aspect of London.

Three hours a day, revel in the stories and characters, memories and aspirations which make London such a great place to live and work.

Art, architecture, history, movies, shopping, drinking and dining all carried out to a soundtrack of music for grown ups.

The Robert Elms Show is tailor-made for you, dear Londoner.

Click here to listen to the programme (Note: Section with Mihir starts at 1:36:40.  This programme will only be available until the 26th January)

Click here to read more about The Spirit of the Game

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Reputation potentially in ruins if Ewood Park mess is not cleared up

Things are moving at Blackburn although not in the way that will please their less than happy supporters.

It seems Jerome Andersen, the football agent, who was constantly at the side of Venkys when they bought the club a year ago is no longer the supreme adviser the Indian owners always consult. Indeed they have extended their net of advisers to also talk quite often to Pini Zahavi, the Israeli who is always described as the world’s most important football agent.

A simple reading of this would suggest that this must mean a change of manager. Surely with Zahavi, imparting his particular football wisdom, and all the many friends he can offer as managers, this must mean change is inevitable. Steve Kean’s days are surely numbered.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

In the last few weeks, readers of the sports pages of British newspapers may have been forgiven for thinking we are facing another American revolution. Having given the distinct impression that they had joined a new order of sporting Trappist monks on crossing the pond, American owners of English clubs have suddenly become as voluble as teenagers let out of school. Or at least two very prominent owners have.

Yet what they have said shows that there is still a vast gulf between the old world and the new when it comes to sport. These American owners may own English clubs but they do not understand the particular culture of English football.

The American lack of openness in Britain has always been in stark contrast to their behaviour in their own country. There access to the media is on a scale unimaginable here or even in Europe. Reporters, even female ones, are allowed into the dressing rooms after a match. On the days leading up to the Super Bowl, players, officials and even the team owners readily make themselves available to the media. But in this country, American owners have been even more invisible than the British ones.

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