The Covid-19 pandemic has forced everyone in the football industry to dig deep into their pockets and think outside the box as the inflation bubble is set to explode in years to come.
It turns out that JP Morgan Chase has a quick fix. The financial institution was so confident of their “solution” that it promised a welcome bonus of 200 to 300 million Euros to each of the founding clubs of the proposed European Super League (ESL).
When the billionaire club owners (Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal), consortiums (AC Milan, Inter Milan) or “charities” (Real Madrid, Barcelona FC) suffered strained capital flows and loss of reserves, JP Morgan Chase’s offer came as a pleasant surprise.
The handout was surely a wicked Hobson’s choice, aimed at sucking and draining the industry’s worth.
But before I had the chance to address the dirt and deception, the ESL promptly collapsed.
Despite what many sports marketers claim that the ESL was “an expected call” due to the growing commercial realities and the little significance traditional football fans have in modern football, the ESL was quickly rejected. It was labelled as a greedy pursuit for the rich clubs to become richer, at the expense of the financial interests of many.
In less than 48 hours, the founding clubs succumbed to the uproar by their global fans and renounced their intentions. They swiftly abandoned their plans of wanting to be a part of the league.
What terrifies me most, though, is that the proposed ESL would further reinforce the frivolous spending of the clubs and endorse their absurd financial carelessness practised all these years.
And this could also be the explanation why clubs from the Bundesliga (eg. Bayern Munich, Dortmund) or Liga NOS (Porto) were not fascinated and had no interest to be part of the breakaway league in the first place.
These clubs have been observing a conducive economic environment for years which has enabled them to endure and cushion the financial fall caused by the pandemic.
It’s a tenuous circumstance no doubt, but these clubs have proven to actually help and produce noticeable gains during such trying times.
This gratuitous overspending started its roll in the late 1990s and has barrelled into some obscene purchases, with the acquisition of Neymar by Qatari-owned Paris Saint Germain in France being the most preposterous acquisition in football history – US$264 million. That, and his five-year contract which is estimated to pay him US$1 million per week.
The pandemic has conditioned people in football to rethink and modify their spending patterns. The ESL, on the other hand, would have had them overlook this.
This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13.
