Football: Money = Success? I debt it?

Listening to a debate this morning about football, what is it that ultimately motivates owners of football clubs to pump money into clubs? The argument has arisen after the recent departure of Martin O’Neill from Aston Villa and the supposed demands he made to owner Randy Lerner. Previously, Villa were an inconsistent mid-ranked team, but under O’Neill’s management with Lerner’s investment, they have become one of a handful of clubs pushing for a place in the Champions League. The issue for Villa and for many teams in this region is that by consistently finish in third or fourth spot, it requires the necessary investment: 50 million to 100 million pounds, something Lerner, we understand, was not willing to do.

What is an owner to do because the financial model would not make sense in any other business sector that they have worked in. Football teams nowadays are judged by silverware and their competitiveness to sign 'top' talent. In business, research and probing investment is fastidiously raked over to ensure a healthy return on investment over a long term plan, in football spending £25 million on a striker may not lead to instant success. Lerner is generous with his wealth and O’Neill spent millions on a large squad with a large wage bill, so why can’t he be happy with what he has? Let’s us not forget the competitors around them, Manchester City have an Arab billionaire, Tottenham will line their pockets in the Champions League this year and then we can’t forget the likes of Liverpool and Everton who always need to be watched. It’s a marketplace like no other.

Then there are the shareholders: the fans. Traditionally, a good cup-run and a higher than expected league finish would suffice.However, now there is an increasing desire to attract the top stars and their wages, this continuous investment can literally produce no palpable returns. The problem with many British clubs is that recruitment is purely done through the manager. The European model of ‘Directors of Football’, who oversee the talent search, are seen as undermining and meddling. It does sound like an alpha-male syndrome; but when the tenure of football manager on average is just over the year, it is daft to spend so much on players and staff when inevitably it tends to go wrong. There are so many precedents from recent years that show that demanding fans or managers does not necessarily lead to long term glory: Leeds and Portsmouth spring to mind.

No one would question the interests of Lerner and to add to that Bill Kenwright, but the increasing percentage of ‘owners’ (We never called them that 10 years ago) and the business of football makes that next step up impossible to call. I personally argue that green and gold protests at Old Trafford are very romantic; but would Man United fans’ accept the prospects of barren years and austerity? Quick answer yes, but when they think about it, probably no. Today, success is built on a mountain of debt or sugar daddy wealth.

The one hope we have is that football is potentially becoming more accountable, particularly to its fans and society. UEFA’s decision to tighten fiscal imprudence is a necessary step to quell the unharnessed spending of current times (as long as it is implemented sensibly). Success is the desire of all football clubs, yet amassing billions of pounds of debt is fruitless and reckless. How all owners would love a manager like Arsene Wenger. Wenger invented the term ‘financial doping’, he knows that short term interests serve no purpose in running a football club and though many draw to Arsenal’s naked trophy cabinet over the past few seasons, Arsenal fans know from other supporters and from their own experience that despite football being a billionaires’ playground, success is something to be built on, spraying cash at it doesn’t mean anything.

Mikel Arteta - no senor.

England has historically been a melting pot for immigrants from around the world and many have contributed positively to the way we live and across all the counties. Indian doctors and African nurses in the NHS, Polish plumbers and Australian bar workers. Often the avenue that has brought cultures together has been through sport and it is obvious to see through diaspora of colours and names in the English national team. It is a tribute to their hard work and love for their new nation.

I remember listening to the English Cricket team reaching an all-time nadir, losing a home test-series against New Zealand in 1999. The answer seemed controversial at the time but the decision was to bring in a foreign coach, Duncan Fletcher from Zimbabwe. Results and consistency finally brought home the pinnacle of test glory, an Ashes victory after an eternity of defeats against the Aussies. England have built on these imports, another Zimbabwean, Andy Flower is the latest head coach along with some naturalised South Africans players and some Australian and Pakistani coaches. This is becoming standard form across the cricketing world, even the world HQ is now based in Dubai. Look at the likes of Rugby League, Super League is dotted with Australian coaches and in Athletics Team GB is headed up by a Dutchman. English sport is truly globalised.

The story that deflected a lot of attention was the potential recruitment of Mikel Arteta to the English football team, perhaps a step too far? Arteta, a Spaniard, who has played football in Britain for seven years has recently attained British citizenship and has yet to gain a cap in the Spanish national team. I personally agreed with the recruitment of a foreign coach and think the national side has improved from the coaching methods and knowledge from these foreigners. Is this potential call-up a reflection of Britain as a society or a desperate call after a miserable summer? He wouldn’t be the first player to change nationalities in footballing terms, think Deco, Podolski, Eduardo. Also the fact we have had two foreign coaches appears to make the so-called sacrosanct Three Lions appear futile. I like Arteta and I think he would be a good player but I just don’t think it is right for the England team. The other sports I named earlier are embedded with the moral codes of Empire, the subsequent legacy and competition of these games seems natural as they are only played by a small group of countries, technical coaches are therefore a sparse commodity. But then, you could argue that football is the ultimate global game, where globalisation has changed how we watch and play the sport, is this not the next obvious step? By all means yes, but it seems ignore all the inherent problems within our game at the highest and the lowest level, Arteta would be a short term solution for a long term problem. It wouldn’t surprise me if something like this happened in the future but now is not the time to be doing it.

Pakistan and the untruths.

It’s become almost acceptable to criticise Pakistan in any given context. The cricket team beat England yesterday in the test match, but there is always an underlying thought that some of the players may be taking bribes or taking performing enhancing drugs. How about British Pakistanis? They hate the indigenous British and promote a culture of radical Islam. There is no smoke without fire and some of these stories contain some truth, but issues become regurgitated every time Pakistan appears in the news.

The seasonal monsoons have devastated vast swathes of the Northern Pakistan and have continued to destroy the lives of up to 20 million people, but what line has the media taken in reporting this story? It is standard. In comparison to the devastating 2004 Asian Tsunami or the Haitian earthquake this year, donors are reluctant to part with their cash to help a huge number of helpless people, They are all living in poverty with no food for them or their children. Some fear corruption i.e. the Government’s back pocket (only 2% of the country’s budget is spent on education).

The media have led with stories of militant groups giving aid and the pictures show doctors with long beards helping the sick. The fact aid may not be coming through ordinary avenues does not mean that they will turn to the Taliban. As the excellent journalist Mohammed Hanif points out, the man filmed swimming across the river with a chicken tied to his head was not doing it so he could partake in a bloody fight in a country he knows nothing of, he was swimming across to save his chicken. These families only export food from the land they have farmed for centuries and nothing else. We may correctly assume in most circumstances the worse of the nation’s government and military but these innocent men, women and children only care for their next meal, not the Taliban.

Iraq off our backs.

History came and went yesterday as US combat troops left Iraq seven years after they embarked on removing Saddam Hussein. After losing over 3000 men and women, many questions will be asked whether America, military, economically and psychologically has the appetite for intervening or fighting in foreign fields. The departure is part of a wider planned exit strategy to reduce America's footprint in the world, particularly the Middle East, and though admittedly hurried, Iraq has improved over the past few years from the democratic process seeing a decline in militia violence and economic boosts from the oil industry. Despite America's full withdrawal at the end of 2011, Iraq is still a violent place, where simmering religious and ethnic tensions could potentially destabilise future political progress. It is still too early from an American military perspective to conclude whether combat operations were successful or not but America and Barack Obama will need to continue the fight in Afghanistan.

The problem with exit strategies as General David Petraeus recently said is that they should be settled on military grounds, not by political decisions. NATO forces have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, yet strategists believe the country's future can only be resolved with the Taliban around the negotiating table; yet to what extent is this desirable? The historical precedents of Somalia, Sudan and Yemen must not lie comfortably with historians. Surely all that time invested would appear futile if Afghanistan descended into the midst of its recent history. What about all the soldiers who have died for a better place for young Afghanis, it would appear all in vain for a quick fix exit. Last week, nine aid workers (including several women) were murdered by the Taliban, as a new UN report illustrated that violence against woman and children has increased by 30 per cent; three quarters of these acts have been committed by the Taliban.

Political impetus seems to take precedence over these matters. Maintaining a fighting army costs billions of pounds and heavy casualties does not enhance the war's popularity. With an enemy that is increasingly using abhorrent tactics and a political situation that seems neither effective or evolving, a withdrawal seems hopeless when there is no plan in place which surely means Afghanistan will dot our futures' for some time to come.

War in Poland and Czechoslaovakia: the legacy.

Consider a statistic from history. 1938 saw the annex of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, Britain and France left its Czech allies to the perils of Hitler and the SS.

In 1939, German tanks roll into the city of Danzig, Poland: France and Britain declare war on Germany.

World War Two death toll: Czechoslovakians: around 40 000. Polish around 5.7 million deaths.

Seems crazy on the balance of things.

Andy Murray: Aulding it against him.

Andy Murray is Britain's best tennis player by a distance and one of our best prospects to win trophies in the future. The problem for Andy is that many English followers plain and simply don't like him. Despite him never overtly talking about Scotland, he is remembered for making a comment before the 2006 World Cup that he would be supporting "anyone other than England". It was a tongue-in-cheek remark, yet some newspapers labelled him anti-English. Others dislike his attitude and personality, something that also seems to be out of date. When the teenage Murray first played at Wimbledon, he was the opposite of Tim Henman, he appeared insolent and angry, compared to the measured and experienced Henman. Despite his improvement as a tennis player and maturity as a person, he is still pigeon-holed as a dour, awkward Scot; something he hasn't been now for 5 years.

Perhaps there is something else underlying the antipathy. Murray spent part of his childhood in a training camp in Barcelona and recently to train full time in Miami. From the a pithy teenager, he has become one of the fittest and strongest athletes on the tour. Murray doesn't conform to how we want our sportsmen and woman to be: he is reticent, he does not possess the traditional likeable character and nothing in his childhood endears us to his sporting spirit. Even the English have taken to his brother, Jamie, after his romantic coupling with Elena Jankovic (at Wimbledon of course).

If Murray wins a Grand Slam, an honour as elusive in British tennis it will be interesting to see whether he is finally accepted by the British public.

The FA: Coaches in the Crosshairs.

The soap opera within Soho Square continued this week with an hour long episode.  All eyes were on England and Fabio Capello, as they made their first appearance at Wembley since the disastrous World Cup campaign in South Africa. The game was not something to watch again and probably the result ( England 2-1 Hungary) represented a fair outcome, though it could have been different. The questions and headlines the next day were certainly not about the debutants and the questionable goal scored by Hungary, but what have we learnt since the World Cup and whether there is an answer to improve.

Many of England’s failed stars received a raucous of boos at the end of the game, Capello also confirmed that David Beckham will no longer be a part of competitive fixtures. It is probably the right decision that Beckham should not play, perhaps he shouldn’t have received any further caps after the 2006 World Cup, but the fact is that Capello completely misjudged the intense admiration for Beckham by England fans. Capello also seems uncertain on whether it is time to end the careers of other players who are now in their thirties. Experience counts for something, but it has never translated to success.

The game became a public relations exercise to reassure fans that the World Cup is now in the past and England can build for the next tournament with some new talented. Kieran Gibbs, Adam Johnson and Jack Wilshere possess the ability to become regulars in the future, but even Capello and his eventual successor are limited by what they can do in the future. It has been highlighted since the misery in Africa the abundance of youth coaches on the continent and the perpetual technical deficiencies at the lowest level of English football. England has 3000 coaches with an UEFA pro A licence, compared to the 30000 in Italy and 35000 in Germany. The difference between the two teams was highlighted in Bloemfontein.

Football's global popularity has made the talent pool so large that it has become impossible to shrink it and create talent academies similar to cycling and swimming. Despite the international talent dominating the Premier League, English players are still technically falling short against their continental rivals. Yet, the world loves the hard-tackling and fast-paced Premier League. English players have benefited by playing in the Champions League, but there are still far too few of them making an impact in Europe and for England.

Maybe David Beckham's biggest legacy could be his academies. At least he is doing something, I’m not quite sure what the FA are.

The Norwegian resistance of World War Two

It is interesting to read and hear how different nationalities coped during times of occupation and essentially how they dealt with it at the end. The Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the subsequent squabbling over South Ossetia has blazed a fever of patriotism in the small Caucus state. Compare that to the recent publications in France naming those who collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War, some families are still burdened with belated guilt of what their families did in historical conflicts.

We need to identify that war is not black and white; there are a few heroes and villains. War forces ordinary people into impossible positions not of their making, forcing upon them choices or compromises they could never have anticipated. Generations in the future now venerate the work of resistance fighters in France and Holland but we cannot ultimately conceive an idea that if you weren’t part of the network you were on the other side. The German policy of ‘Schrecklichkeit’ which literally translates to ‘terror’ was a policy adopted in both WW1 and WW2 that was designed to inflict horrific repression on the civilian population so it would never resist. This is why we can never simply judge ‘sympathisers’ or people who told of where Jews lived because life in war goes day by day.

The silent resistance of the Norwegians is particularly notable in its stiff heroism and determination. Germany invaded Norway in 1940, despite its declaration of neutrality. There were acts of armed resistance, many people will have heard of the ‘Heroes of Telemark’ where trained Norwegian commandoes destroyed Hitler’s attempted to create an atomic bomb. Most Norwegians, aware of potential reprisals, resisted in an unorthodox, psychological way. They attached paperclips to their collars as an act of defiance; they crossed the road when a German approached, they only spoke Norwegian in public and would leave a bus if a German sat next to them. This approach eventually led German administrators forcing natives to stay in their seats.

War is callous and bloody, but it reflects well that countries with proud heritages like Norway acted with civilitly but with ultimate defiance.

By the time I get to Arizona... : USA and immigration

Dealing with illegal immigration has become a rallying-cry for right-wing political parties and the associated press. The plethora of headlines that appear in our newspapers and dominate during elections is all too frequent. In Britain, illegal immigrants conform not as asylum seekers fleeing war; but as lazy, defrauding, dirty and ungrateful scumbags who come to supple of the state and remain for an eternity. It is believed that there could be up to one million illegal immigrants in the UK.

In America, attempts to monitor and police immigration has become controversial over the past decade, particularly the border with Mexico. In recent weeks the state of Arizona has had a controversial new law struck down as 'unconstitutional' by law-makers. The proposal was that law-enforcing agencies would hereby be able to stop certain citizens if they suspected they were working illegally and ask them to provide legitimate paperwork or ID. The obvious analysis of the law would infer that any 'latino' could be stopped and asked to provide documents, purely because they aren't white.

One could compare this treatment to that of black people in America and even extend it to gypsies and Jews in Nazi Germany. From my perspective it does reflect an 'identity schizophrenia' and what America wants to be. The New World when it was discovered was an amalgamation of cultures, nationalities and religions, it defined itself through this new civilisation, and through history it has developed into the country that most of the world loves. (Think - "We hold these truths self-evident...") Spanish and Latino influence is not new to America, but it is the fast paced change and confliction to the established ideals and history that worries many. The people coming from Mexico and beyond aren't the criminals and gangsters as portrayed by the Tea Party, they are the same people who have come to work and adopt American values for generations. Immigration is a tough policy to formulate and eventually ratify, but Arizona's attempt appears to be a desperate roll to cling on to the status quo.

Gatlin

I have written about drugs in sport in previous blogs and wanted to reiterate something that has come to my attention this morning. Some of you will be aware of the return of Justin Gatlin to the 100 metres circuit this week, Gatlin who won the 2004 Olympic 100m gold and picked up bronze in the 200m. In 2006, Gatlin was banned from the sport for recording a high level of testosterone in his blood sample.

Gatlin was not stripped of any his medals from his previous achievements, but listening to an interview with him this morning he seemed completely unfazed and unaccountable to how he could have been banned from the sport and at what point he could have taken any drugs. (It is believed it was massaged into his thigh by a physio) Despite my dislike for cheats and the blame on others, it is meritable to point out that the likes of Dwain Chambers and Tim Montgomery have admitted their collusion and importantly their wrongs. Montgomery is currently serving time in prison under a four-year sentence and Chambers of course is racing again after several years out but will never compete in the Olympics. It will a disgrace to see someone like Gatlin racing in London at the 2012 games.

Rwanda and Kenya: all Eyes On East.

The British press tends to have a pejorative, backward view of Africa and have artificially portrayed it as a wasteland since the winds of change brought decolonisation over 50 years ago. The view of South Africa before the World Cup was that it was a country overrun by AIDS orphans, poverty and inequality. Now there are facts and stories to prove these correct but it is examined through a form of myopia that seems unlikely to change for the foreseeable.

As the tourists and the media have left South Africa back to their own territory, it has been shaping up in East Africa, Africa’s potential Euro-zone style economic area. It does not warrant a ‘make or break’ style headline, but concurrent events across the region will have significance on the short and long term goals of the region.

This month will see elections in Rwanda as Paul Kagame continues to keep a tight grip on power. Rwanda will always be associated with the Genocide of 1994, where 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus were slaughtered in one hundred days. Yet, since the genocide, Rwanda has become an economic tiger since its rebirth; Kagame created a hub for economic investment, free from corruption with broadband speeds quicker than rural England. Diplomatically, Kagame has become a darling of the West, transforming the former Belgian colony into a member of the Commonwealth and attracting millions of dollars in aid money each year - including £50 million from the British Government. In fact, tensions led him to cut all diplomatic ties with the French Government and saw Rwanda, a  country with no British heritage, adopt English as its national language.

His strong-willed approach has brought him criticism from many internally and internationally. Former political allies have been shot, a national newspaper editor was murdered, opposition politicians have been gagged or placed in jail and Rwanda’s internet has been heavily censored, all have murders are suspected to be linked to his regime. Many have drawn similarities to his autocratic style to that of Mugabe and Israel’s Ben Gurion and that despite his prominence as a progressive leader, he is still a soldier at heart. Many argue that because of his armed interventions and Nyere-style reforms that he is a real African hero and deserves a final seven-year tenure will serve the Rwandan people well.

Across the border in Kenya, a proposed referendum will decide an overhaul of the country’s archaic and top-down political system. The shocking and violent election of 2007 nearly brought the West’s economic hub to the verge of civil war. Michela Wrong’s controversial book ‘It’s Our Turn to Eat’ uncovered the endemic corruption and revealed how tribal politics ravaged the country’s treasury and ultimately forced the UN and the West to prevent further bloodshed. The referendum hopes to address the constitutional powers of the executive, judiciary and enhance the role of the county system; not to mention the blurry seams of accountability. Not only does Kenya serve as a stable economic and political hub for the region but it is important for the rest of the world as many of Somalia’s pirates are being tried in Kenya’s courts.

Both of these events will help give purpose to further political enrichment and quell or enhance any fears in the West. Regional stability is essential in breaking down trade barriers between neighbouring Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. It is next year before we will have to wait to for another contentious poll, not in Somalia but a potential South Sudan. We will have to wait to see what happens.