Modern football

Despite posting an article on a related topic earlier, I was inspired by a Twitter thread to type some more about modern football fandom. The question is what is the point of it all?

Back in the day, before the Bosman ruling and "modern football" becoming what it is today, there was still the concept of "big clubs" running rule over "small clubs", but the European Cup wasn't a closed competition like it is now. Two leagues that exemplify this sad reality are the Eredivisie and Liga NOS. When you see stats, they often refer to the "top five leagues", aka England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. These two are isolated, with Russia and everyone else, despite still having good teams. In fact, between the two countries, they've won 10 combined. However, the most recent was 2004 (Jose Mourinho with Porto), and that was an anomaly.

The tweets I referred to in the first part were about Ajax, in particular, but they raise a massive point. To quickly summarize, like I was saying in the last paragraph, the clubs in domestic leagues outside of England, at this point, are 99% stepping stone. That's not a revelation, but the extent to which it's true is becoming more and more distorted. In the

90's Serie A was the go-to league, as the owners of those clubs were rich and threw money around. That was unsustainable, however, as they pretty much all went into debt. Now, with Premier League money, newly promoted teams are spending 100 million pounds before they play a game. I already talked about the cycle of this, however, and that the money only inflates prices within England, as well as in other markets.

Getting back to Ajax, they are probably the best example recently of a club having a "golden generation" type of team that is subsequently dismantled, which should be incredibly disturbing to any football fan. Monaco is another example, but they have a rich Russian owner and play in a top league, so that's much less of a feat. The thing with Ajax as well is that the academy is one of the best. With the recent crop, two stars they developed that are now gone/about to leave are de Ligt and van de Beek. Not to mention Nouri, who tragically is living with severe brain damage after his cardiac episode a few years back. He was touted as the best of the bunch. I also just need to add here that the domestic league is part of the problem. If people think PSG run the "farmer's league" known as Uber Eats Ligue 1, the level is far worse in the Netherlands. There are decent teams with history, not that it really matters, such as Feyenoord and PSV, but it's a struggle for them to even have two teams qualify for the Champions League in a given season. My opinion on this is it's utterly ridiculous to pander to the biggest leagues by giving them 4 (potentially 5) automatic slots each season. It's called the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, ffs, not the "we came in 4th, 30 points off the Champions, League." It becomes a cycle; the rich leagues get CL money each season, plus TV revenue, and collect the best players as they can offer top level football and more money.

If the Champions League is going to be the 19 from the top 5 leagues, plus 13 others, competition, there's little point to it. Might as well just start a super league with the most popular teams so that armchair "supporters" can enjoy that spectacle each week. If Ajax cannot sustain, what's the point? It's not just them, like I said. Lyon in 2019/20 had an unexpected run, despite a relatively poor (shortened) league season and various departures of top players in recent years. I'm mainly referring to Lacazette to Arsenal, Fekir to Betis (though he should've been at Liverpool), and Mendy to Real Madrid. Like clockwork, having failed to quality for Europe entirely, there's a queue for their star players, such as Aouar, Dembele and Memphis. The situation there is slightly different than Ajax was, tbf, as no European football + last season being cut off with 10 games to go + less match-day revenue for 20/21 is grounds for selling players. Still, even when those guys go, the likes of Bard, Cherki, Caqueret, Guimaraes, Jeff R-A, will be next on the list of richer clubs.

The last club I'll talk about to address my point is Dortmund. Mind you, the Portuguese clubs I mentioned, plus pretty much every German club (looking at you, Leipzig), as well as Ajax are all fan-owned. Personally, I cannot get behind an organization led by a billionaire. Unlike some, I don't care where the money comes from. At the end of the day, and I said this in the previous article, the players and higher ups make a killing, while the fans pay their hard earned money and get screwed. It's still not perfect for fan-owned clubs, but most of them obviously have the best interest of the fans at heart. That said, the point of the game is to win, not balance the books. It's football, not accounting. The whole "sustainability" thing is cool, as long as it wins you trophies. They won a league cup in 2016/17, but the last league title was 2011/12. This is the second biggest German club, mind you. Even Klopp couldn't sustain a winning reign there, as his players (Gotze and Lewandowski, in particular) were poached. The thing is, however, that's the norm. It's not just Bayern doing the poaching, despite the lazy narratives. After Klopp, looking at 2016/17 through 2018/19, all of Mkhitaryan, Hummels, Gundogan, Dembele, Aubameyang, and Pulisic were sold for big profits. Now, in reality, Dembele has been a bust (due to injury) since he left, and it's not like Pulisic was tearing it up before leaving. Still, the other four were integral parts of their respective Dortmund sides, and it's not simple to find a replacement. Part of the reason Dortmund lost out to Bayern the past two seasons, when they were vulnerable at the top, was not having a proper Auba replacement. Alcacer was OK, but he's a limited poacher, as evidenced by his time at Barcelona. So, to summarize, losing your best players every 1-2 years tends to not win you trophies when a super team is in your league. The other point here is it's not like clubs that operate this way don't spend money or have completely failed signings. Going back through, I'll just list some players that didn't "succeed" at Dortmund, but have found joy at a high level after leaving. The prime one is Ciro Immobile; he scored 35 goals last season at Lazio, which is self-explanatory. There's also Kevin Kampl, whose Leipzig side reached the CL semi's. Matthias Ginter was let go, only to play for the national team and help Gladbach reach the main European competition. They brought back Gotze, as well as signing Schuerrle and Rode, all of whom were horrid in their brief spells at the club. The next summer Dahoud, Philipp, Toprak and Yarmolenko arrived; none of them have done anything of note, and the latter two were sold at a loss (Philipp was somehow sold to Russia for the same price he came in). Of course, these failures are offset by guys like Pulisic and Sancho (who will eventually go, probably back to England) joining for basically nothing and bringing in massive profit once they go.

The reason I went somewhat in depth about these teams is these are all regarded as well run clubs, which should be a bright spot in a sport dictated by money. However, I just wonder what the point is. As a fan, how do you justify the monetary and emotional investment of supporting a team that has all these good players over the years, but they just get sold off before having a proper chance to win anything? When de Ligt leaves his boyhood club at age 19, potentially having 10 more years at a "prime" level, that's insane to me. I know he's an exception in terms of fee, but Cristiano was 18 when he left Sporting. Bellingham left to join Dortmund at 17. Camavinga will probably leave by, let's say 19, to a club like Madrid. Mbappe left Monaco by 18. Players go to Europe from South America, Africa, and now even North America by 18. What's the point of having a local team if you don't get to see your prospects develop, or win trophies? Plus, with the current conditions, who knows when you'll get in to a ground. Like I said in the other article, if you're disillusioned, consider watching a lower level, or even play the game yourself. A more extreme option is to stop your addiction to the sport, altogether.