OT… NEWS FROM ANOTHER BLOG

In Friday’s Telegraph, Henry Winter writes: “Now we know why the Premier League is the new Klondike for American franchise-owners; why soccer agnostics like the Glazers are really here: it is to take an English institution and float it on the global market. Our game is now theirs.”

In the Guardian, football business writer David Conn also smells the Yankee Dollar behind this proposal: “It feels like the first dramatic innovation influenced by the US owners and the others who bought Premier League clubs as investments, as ‘global brands’, without truly understanding the football traditions their PRs advise them to acknowledge when they do their first press conferences.”

I’ve also checked out a few fans message boards where people are raging about ‘franchises’ and the ’selling of the soul’ of the English game (see the post by Mitch Phillips below as a response to that).

But, leaving aside the fact that FIFA may stop this happening, does anyone stop to ask themselves why the Americans and others have bought into English football?

Far from wanting to ‘Americanise’ the Premier League, I suspect these businessmen are attracted to English football because it offers a greater freedom to do what you want with your money than the very restricted world of U.S sports.

Think about it – the New York Giants didn’t win the Super Bowl because, like Chelsea or Manchester United, they spent far more on wages and transfer fees than other teams. You can’t do that in the NFL – there are salary caps and there is no transfer market in U.S sports in the sense that you can’ t make a $50 million bid for Tom Brady. The result is that unlike in England there is no such thing as a ‘Big Four’ monopolising success for two decades – power rotates and the game is much more interesting as a result. Money talks much louder in London.

In fact, U.S sports have a system where the weakest team gets the best pick of the next year’s young pros which is positively socialistic compared to the naked, raw, anyone welcome, he-who-spends-wins capitalism of the Premier League.

If there was a signal to the Americans to get involved in the Premier League it was probably the arrival of a certain Russian in London who really showed that (unlike in the NFL with its very strict, ‘members only’, ownership policy) anyone with a few million to spare can join the club.

Remember it was the English who created these conditions, it was the English who have been happy to sell their clubs to the highest bidder.

The Americans (and other foreigners) moved into the Premier League because almost anything goes. The sudden discovery of ‘roots’ and ‘national identity’ by English fans is laughable – particularly coming just 48 hours after they were cheering on ‘Fabio Capello’s England’. Fans have been happy to have three of the big four clubs sold off to foreign owners.

Those now crying about identity should ask themselves what exactly is still English about most of the Premier League clubs. Chelsea are owned by a Russian, coached by an Israeli (who follows a Portuguese, two Italians and a Dutchman) and the players are from all over the world. They wear shirts made by a German company and are sponsored by a South Korean electronics firm.

Compare this state of affairs with the supposedly evil greed of U.S sports where there are no professional teams owned by foreign capitalists, the idea of a team featuring just one or two Americans would be laughed at, players come from University sports programmes (unlike English football where schoolboys are bought and sold) and shirt sponsorship is banned.

English football chose to become the most unregulated, laissez-faire, commercialised sports league in the world and the fans have cheered on every step. Now that the (mostly) Asian fans who have helped pour money into their clubs’ coffers may have a chance to see one game a year, the English suddenly bleat about roots and tradition.

Too late, lads.