SkyBlueSwiss
New Member
CCFC's current plight simply highlights the unsustainability of the business model and the fact that there is not a level playing field either nationally or - in particular - internationally.
Example internationally: the top Spanish clubs (Barca and Real in particular) buy many of the worlds top players for enormous sums of money, pay them fairy-tale salaries, incur levels of debt that would bring Man. Utd. and other British clubs to their knees, and what happens? Each year, the hundreds of millions of debt magically disappears and they start again in the closed season buying up the worlds best players and paying them ridiculous salaries. It seems to be a never-ending cycle that the rest of the footballing world cannot compete with, and creates an enormously unfair advantage for the Spanish teams.
In England, the same sort of unfair advantage is created by the top few clubs being owned by people with more money that sense. What happened with Manchester City is a travesty. A yoyo club brought by multi-billionnaire who spends well over a billion pounds on players and succeeded in "buying" the Premiership title. If I were a Man City fan, I would be caught somewhere between cheering and puking.
I recognise that I come from an earlier generation when football was a working man's game, there were no fences or security, most of the players on the team were local lads, the players were working class and lived next door and you would have a pint and a fag down the local with them.
Many football fans (especially of the big clubs) don't seem to mind that they have no local lads in their teams, and some of them don't even have an Englishman in their teams (and yes, I am convinced this is to the detriment of our national team!). How can you support such a team? Talk about the prawn sandwich brigade!
Different sort of game back then, before the Americanisation of our national sport, the corruption that comes from the very top here in Switzerland with that disgusting greaseball Sepp Blatter.
The fact that it was our own Jimmy Hill that broke the maximum wage structure is ironic when you consider that it is footballer's wages that now make football economically impossible for most clubs (and which is why FFP is tring to limit wages to a percentage of turnover).
Football is now unsustainable for the great majority of British clubs. FFP will not cure the problem. It is not the rent charge, the food and beverage income and all the other sideshows that are puting CCFC out of business, it is the player's wages. As with the vast majority of other clubs in the UK, it is the player's wages that make football in this modern era an unsustainable business.
Apart from the top clubs, it would seem that the days of paying expensive and over-the-top transfer fees are almost gone. When I look at the movements during recent transfer windows, the vast majority of moves are free transfers. But they still want to be paid salaries that you and I can only dream of. I mean, what did you earn as a 23 year old?
Imagine being thick as a plank and earning the salary that Wayne Rooney earns. Surely Rooney earns more in a week than Man Utd earn fron the home game they play every two weeks. I mean, this idiot earns more in one week than most of us earn in five years of hard work day in and day out. Jimmy, what have you done to our game??????
So don't be sidetracked by this "it's the rent" stupidity. While significant and obviously unsustainably high, it is not the rent that is killing CCFC and so many other clubs. It is the greed of the players and their agents that is bleeding British football and it is the greed of the footballers and their agents (and managers - see MR as an example) that make CCFC unsustainable as a business model. Even if we paid zero rent and had all of the income streams, CCFC would still be making a loss because of the wages.
Football has to come down to Earth again, it has to get rid of the corruption and the agents, it has to start paying players a reasonable wage and it has to start having local lads in the teams again, which in turn draws the supporters back because it is now "their" team again. And football has to limit non-Brits to a maximum of three or four players per team per game.
And there has to be a level playing field. If the corruption stops, and financial fair play is implemented in all countries in the same way so that the e.g. Spanish teams can no longer spend ridiculously and have their massive debt wiped out each year, then perhaps we fans can own our game again and concetrat on football instead of attacking each other over the financial stupidities that take up the vast majority of this and other football sites.
Just my opinion on the state of football. What do YOU think???????????????
Example internationally: the top Spanish clubs (Barca and Real in particular) buy many of the worlds top players for enormous sums of money, pay them fairy-tale salaries, incur levels of debt that would bring Man. Utd. and other British clubs to their knees, and what happens? Each year, the hundreds of millions of debt magically disappears and they start again in the closed season buying up the worlds best players and paying them ridiculous salaries. It seems to be a never-ending cycle that the rest of the footballing world cannot compete with, and creates an enormously unfair advantage for the Spanish teams.
In England, the same sort of unfair advantage is created by the top few clubs being owned by people with more money that sense. What happened with Manchester City is a travesty. A yoyo club brought by multi-billionnaire who spends well over a billion pounds on players and succeeded in "buying" the Premiership title. If I were a Man City fan, I would be caught somewhere between cheering and puking.
I recognise that I come from an earlier generation when football was a working man's game, there were no fences or security, most of the players on the team were local lads, the players were working class and lived next door and you would have a pint and a fag down the local with them.
Many football fans (especially of the big clubs) don't seem to mind that they have no local lads in their teams, and some of them don't even have an Englishman in their teams (and yes, I am convinced this is to the detriment of our national team!). How can you support such a team? Talk about the prawn sandwich brigade!
Different sort of game back then, before the Americanisation of our national sport, the corruption that comes from the very top here in Switzerland with that disgusting greaseball Sepp Blatter.
The fact that it was our own Jimmy Hill that broke the maximum wage structure is ironic when you consider that it is footballer's wages that now make football economically impossible for most clubs (and which is why FFP is tring to limit wages to a percentage of turnover).
Football is now unsustainable for the great majority of British clubs. FFP will not cure the problem. It is not the rent charge, the food and beverage income and all the other sideshows that are puting CCFC out of business, it is the player's wages. As with the vast majority of other clubs in the UK, it is the player's wages that make football in this modern era an unsustainable business.
Apart from the top clubs, it would seem that the days of paying expensive and over-the-top transfer fees are almost gone. When I look at the movements during recent transfer windows, the vast majority of moves are free transfers. But they still want to be paid salaries that you and I can only dream of. I mean, what did you earn as a 23 year old?
Imagine being thick as a plank and earning the salary that Wayne Rooney earns. Surely Rooney earns more in a week than Man Utd earn fron the home game they play every two weeks. I mean, this idiot earns more in one week than most of us earn in five years of hard work day in and day out. Jimmy, what have you done to our game??????
So don't be sidetracked by this "it's the rent" stupidity. While significant and obviously unsustainably high, it is not the rent that is killing CCFC and so many other clubs. It is the greed of the players and their agents that is bleeding British football and it is the greed of the footballers and their agents (and managers - see MR as an example) that make CCFC unsustainable as a business model. Even if we paid zero rent and had all of the income streams, CCFC would still be making a loss because of the wages.
Football has to come down to Earth again, it has to get rid of the corruption and the agents, it has to start paying players a reasonable wage and it has to start having local lads in the teams again, which in turn draws the supporters back because it is now "their" team again. And football has to limit non-Brits to a maximum of three or four players per team per game.
And there has to be a level playing field. If the corruption stops, and financial fair play is implemented in all countries in the same way so that the e.g. Spanish teams can no longer spend ridiculously and have their massive debt wiped out each year, then perhaps we fans can own our game again and concetrat on football instead of attacking each other over the financial stupidities that take up the vast majority of this and other football sites.
Just my opinion on the state of football. What do YOU think???????????????
As fans (and I have been guilty of this as well where England is concerned) we tend to think that skillful players are 'lazy' because they 'don't work hard enough' off the ball, no matter how great their skill on it. I think if this attitude changed it would go a long way towards improving England's standing in world football.
