From Brendan:
Hi Myles,
This subject is one which I think of constantly, unfortunately.
And I’m convinced that it does not engage you in the same way as it does me.
But let’s try to make some analogies, and to show how this is, in fact, a part of a wider malaise that you, as a self-respecting, card-carrying beatnik should really be making more fuss about.
Our planet is inhabited by six billion people or so, and of these, there is a group of a few hundred million which is completely overbloated, overfed, and in control of a disproportionate amount of the planet’s resources. The way this group is going, the resources in the planet will be used up in the foreseeable future. The trouble is that the other people, who are not yet in this group, or are part of the way in it, are mostly keen to be part of it, because they want comfort, luxuries, easy life, etc.
No-one is stopping the group of the richest doing what they want. It is not possible to make real, meaningful global agreements on reducing emissions, etc, because the biggest and most influential economies and military powers won’t sign up to them.
I want you to now transpose this to football.
Think about it like this – in environmental terms, scientists talk about the ‘tipping point’, after which attempts to reverse global warming are fruitless. Have we reached the tipping point in terms of football finance? I don’t know.
I think Abramovich’s arrival was a major turning point.
You do not like to allow Arsenal any excuses for not winning trophies, but I would urge you to think about this and reconsider. Just as in all other areas of life, those with the bigger bank balance, the superior resources and wealth, are able to sweep aside the others.
Watch how economic inequality has grown in the UK in the past 20 years. That is the same as in football, too. And the damaging, deleterious effect on football which that financial inequality has is the same thing – in a different area of the kaleidoscope – as the thing that is happening everywhere in the world.
It’s utterly obscene, in fact.
I read that Chelsea has already bought Hulk and Hazard and that young Brazilian from Sao Paolo. Why is it important? It’s important on so many levels. You take players away from their countries, you weaken their league, their football, you concentrate the wealth in a few countries, you create a huge imbalance in which teams from other parts of Europe, for example, have no chance to win anything at a European level.
The giant mega clubs take away fans from small local clubs, take away the income of people associated with them, focus it all into these artificially pumped-up empty, hollow enterprises which attempt to pay lip-service to some right-on principles to divert attention away from their complete emptiness.
Does it matter? Hell does it. Economics is destiny. The transformation of football into an industry in which the ill-gotten gains of super-rich energy barons is ‘cleansed’ has ruined the spirit of the game, which is clutching on for dear life.
In this context, however bad Wenger and Arsenal are in your estimation, Myles, your beatnik side is failing to give Wenger and Arsenal their due. Even if their failure to get a super-mega rich energy giant owner means that they don’t win the trophies those teams who get them do.
As a beatnik, you should see them as – dare I say it – an example of “sockin’ it to The Man”.
Of course, Arsenal is its own corporate entity, run by their own super-rich owners. But, by default almost, it has become a symbol of some kind of sanity for many in the insane, bonkers economics of football today.
I don’t know if we’ve reached the tipping point, but I know this – as long as Arsenal do not conform to the super-ultra high finance model of football, they will remain a team with a force and a spirit that no Chelsea or Manchester City could ever dream of matching in their wildest imagination.
All the best. By the by I hope Poland do well in the Euros.
The recent reporting on Poland and Ukraine has been despicable. With less than two weeks to go before the start of the competition, our pathetic, spineless, miserably myopic and Atlanticist press realised that there were countries in the world call Poland and Ukraine.
I wouldn’t dignify them by even trying to reason with them in their de-contextualised, de-historicised depiction of those countries.
The British media, all bar a few notable journalists at one or two papers, make me sick, not the press only.
The BBC is the worst. Because they’re supposed to be the best.
Spain or Germany won’t win it.
Myles says :’
I don’t engage, Brendan, because we live in a corrupt age where the people who own the world decide when wars start and decide which prime ministers & presidents get elected.They say ExxonMobil owns 100 senators. The other senators are owned by other companies and other lobbies.
Wall Street runs Washington, which is why Chomsky recently said that the Occupy Wall Street movement is exciting.
But what took them so long to get that movement started?
Bottom line, the super-rich know how protect their wealth and power and have used the CIA to help them since 1952.
I knew about extraordinary rendition long before I read about it in The Guardian.
The UK is now run by incompetent toffs who don’t work hard but look after their bankster buddies.
The Coalition, a government we didn’t vote for, have done about 39 policy U-turns in two years.
Sorry to disagree, but I think Arsenal under-achieves as a club and as a team.
I think it’s bonkers for London’s biggest club not to compete for trophies.
City and Chelsea have problems too. City and Chelsea are beatable because they have problems, as all clubs have problems, and all teams have problems.
But Wenger’s squad is unbalanced, far too big, packed with players who would not get a game in another Champions League side.
Arsene FC exists for two purposes.
1. As a vehicle for the misguided ideas of a dictator who has been in power for far too long and who will never stop pumping multi-millions of your money into French clubs and into the pockets of average French and French- African players.
He’s not accountable. He does what he likes and his team plays when they feel like it, and when they don’t bother, he forgives them.
2. As a factory production line for players who can be sold on at a profit, which pays off the debt on the stadium.
Clearly, British billionaires are not interested in buying English clubs. Because, as you point out, football has become an obscene circus
Mike Ashley would sell Newcastle in a heartbeat if he could.