Have you ever tried measuring your life in football World Cups?
It’s a bit depressing, but try it. Start with the first one you can remember watching properly and count every four years from there.
My first one was Germany 1974.
Fast forward my life and that’s another nine World Cups (making it 10 in total) and realistically, I’ve only got about another ten to go and I’m going to be dead.
How depressing, and that’s how I go into the new football season. Once I used to look forward to the new season, but now frankly, I couldn’t give a damn.
Is that age, a hangover from the World Cup or is football just rubbish these days?
It was with this all in mind that I chewed the fat on the outlook for European football with Emmanuel Hembert, from leading consultancy AT Kearney, who follows these things for a living.
Now, being a Frenchman he didn’t have much to smile about during the World Cup either, so we shared a common bond.
But he’s quite clear that at the heart of what’s wrong with football in Europe is the business model, and he believes it is not inconceivable one of the top five European leagues could collapse in the next two years.
He told me about one major club who was so skint at one point a couple of seasons ago that they couldn’t pay their players’ wages – you’d be surprised to know who it is if who haven’t already heard the gossip.
He makes the point that football is an unusual industry where it is not in anyone’s interest to ‘kill the competition’ as it is in most other industries (although perhaps not in financial services).
And of course, it is driven by passion – the passion or ego of the owners and the passion of the supporters.
Interestingly, Hembert also points out the calibre of a lot of people involved in football, from the coaching roles through to the administration and management of clubs is on average of a lower quality than other industries of a comparable size.
The basic problem with the game is most clubs pay out more in players’ wages than they get in through various revenue streams.
He points out the US model of ‘franchises’ wouldn’t work in the UK, because in America the franchise is not related to a city or area as it is in Britain, and American states almost compete to have an NFL or NBA franchise in their area because of the economic benefits it brings.
In turn, there is cooperation to maintain the salary caps and transfer systems to ensure there is equal competition, and the only form of relegation is for one franchise to go bust or be taken over.
The solution: cooperation, in the way there has been in Germany and France, which explains why their leagues are more robust and arguably why their national teams have been more successful than England’s in the last 20 years.
The chance of English clubs genuinely cooperating: non-existent. I’m so depressed I’m going on holiday and ignoring the start of the new season.
Lawrence Gosling is the founding editor of Investment Week. His views are his own, any comments to him at lawrencegosling@sky.com
