Soccer, as Wall Street sees it

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal included not one, but two pieces of football-related reporting. And you won’t find either one on the sports page, either. (Yes, there is a sports page in every Friday’s Weekend Journal ).

I’ll give you three guesses at what I find objectionable in Culture Clash: Soccer Fans, Art Elite Butt Heads. This fascinating story describes how Basel, Switzerland is coping with the nearly simultaneous influx of football supporters for Euro 2008 and visitors for “the world’s most prestigious contemporary art fair.” The latter include the sort of people who are prepared to pay $600,000 for a sculpture that’s comprised of numerous small rooms, each decorated with political images.

Dear readers, you’re no doubt seething with indignation, as was I. Something is wrong with the world when honest, hard-working supporters of the Swiss and Czech national teams must share Basel with denizens of art snobbatoria from around the globe. But would you believe that the WSJ has a different take on this? They’ve quoted a New York art advisor who claims that “soccer hooligans drove our room rates through the roof.” Curiously, she believes that “This has ‘Christopher Guest movie’ written all over it.”

Does she mean a film like Best in Show? And the art people are like the high-strung, status-conscious couple whose weimeraner attacked one of the judges? (You really must see this film, if you haven’t already).

We see a photo of a wild-eyed, flag-waving man and boy juxtaposed next to an elegant couple standing in front of a no doubt significant piece of modern art. Most of the article is spent describing the art crowd’s dismay, but the author did apparently speak to one footy supporter. He is a social worker who counsels “troublesome soccer fans.” Really, I’m not making this up.

In Soccer Players Drain Coffers,
Steve McGrath takes a look at a recent Deloitte report on wages, revenues, and profitability in European football. (The full article is not available online without a subscription. If you have access to the print version, please see page C2 of the WSJ, May 30, 2008).

There’s nothing offensive about this story, unless you’re a Chelsea fan. During the 2006-7 season, Chelsea paid 132.8 million pounds in player salaries to Arsenal’s 89.7 million and Manchester United’s 92.3 million. I suppose Chelsea did win two trophies in 2007 (the Carling Cup counts, right?) and United only won the Premiership. The Journal said nothing about this, noting only that neither London club has won the Champions League.

Other interesting facts: John Terry was the highest-paid player in the Premiership in 2006-7, Premier League salaries as whole are 75% higher than those in La Liga, and Bundesliga operating profits of 250 million euros exceeded those of the Premiership (141 million euros), for the first time ever. As a percentage of revenue, player salaries at top clubs are at record levels (63%). High salaries lead the clubs to take on debt and raise ticket prices…etc., etc. You won’t catch me wringing my hands over any of this, though. When fans stop buying tickets and watching televised matches, the salary spiral will stop.

There’s supposed to be no such thing as bad publicity, but I think that the tiresome, offensive tone of the Culture Clash article far outweighs the Journal’s neutral coverage of European club football finances. The former, after all, occupied a prominent front-page position in Friday’s popular Weekend Journal and “Soccer Players Drain Coffers” was placed on page two of the Money & Investing section.

That probably wasn’t obscure enough for John Terry, though. The Journal still had room to run the now-famous photo of him seated on the rain-soaked pitch after that critical missed penalty in last week’s Champions League final.

Even Better Than the Real Thing…

I watched the Champions League final at Fado, a pub in downtown Chicago. I hadn’t been there before and didn’t know anything about the number of screens, nor how easy it would be to get a table near one of them. So I recorded the game and, happily, remembered to set up the DVR to record two shows afterward…just in case.

I don’t usually watch games in public. Let’s see, there was last year’s Gold Cup final at Quigley’s and a Chicago Fire playoff game in 2006 at the Globe and…that’s about it. I am not very social about these things. I like to concentrate on the game while freely expressing my wild, half-baked opinions to Steve. But I was persuaded that the first-ever all-English Champions League final should be seen in a pub, despite the inevitable presence of Chelsea supporters.

We arrived about ninety minutes before the start, but only one table was open. We snagged it. Things got a bit tight as the crowd grew, but everyone around us was generous about sharing space. I didn’t have a perfect view, but I did see every bit of the action. Some people in the group–Steve’s friend Jonathan and friends–elected to stand for a more direct view of the game. They don’t seem to mind, do they?

The atmosphere at Fado was all that I had hoped for. The place was jammed with serious supporters of both teams, although red shirts outnumbered blue. Each side was enthusiastic but mostly respectful. Best of all, everyone was really, really into the game. The underground community of soccer fans was out in force–and many (most?) were American, too.

After van der Sar blocked Nicolas Anelka’s penalty the party really got under way for the celebrating United supporters.

This evening I treated myself to a second viewing of the game. It was a delight to watch it without yo-yo-ing between numbness and high anxiety. Who can savor the drama of a penalty shoot-out right in the middle of it? Not I. My keenly-felt disappointment when Petr Cech easily saved Ronaldo’s poorly-taken shot seems excessive now, knowing as I do that Manchester United would still lift the trophy.

And John Terry’s misery? Just as awful to watch the second time as the first.

Layer Cake

“The top four next year will be the same top four as this year.”

That was Kevin Keegan’s prediction after Newcastle United’s loss to Chelsea in the penultimate game of the season. He grumbled that the league’s evolution into an elite, uncrackable quartet plus sixteen also-rans meant that “boring” football was the inevitable result.

Keegan’s words unleashed a torrent of commentary. Just google “Keegan Football Boring” and take your pick of the opinions that were spouted by everyone from Reading’s Steve Coppell to every sports journalist in Britain to bloggers around the globe–except Soccer Orb. That is because I’m not inclined to conduct an examination of the state of English football that is sufficiently thorough and comparative to analyze Keegan’s assertions. It is true that since I’ve followed the English game (1998 or so), the title has been held by just three teams–Manchester United, Arsenal, and Chelsea. And the top four are nearly always those three, plus Liverpool. However, Everton finished fourth as recently as 2005 and both Newcastle United and Leeds United–currently residing in the “where-are-they-now” file–made several appearances during the past decade.

I am straying off-point already. I understand that the rich tend to get richer in the world of sport, especially in European soccer. Teams that regularly appear in the Champions League have access to cash flows that open doors that will forever remain closed to lesser teams. Everybody knows that. But does that make the EPL boring? Speaking from an American viewpoint–not at all.

Forget for the moment this year’s nail-biting race for the title and the relegation drama at the other end of the table. Just look at the non-league competitions that spice up European football. I was reminded of this by today’s UEFA Cup Final match between Glasgow Rangers and Zenit St. Petersburg. Though it isn’t nearly as prestigious or lucrative as the Champions League, the UEFA Cup tournament is a portal to extra-league competition for eighty clubs across the continent. Over the years, the most successful of these have been Juventus, Inter Milan, and Liverpool. Tens of thousands of supporters from Glasgow and St. Petersburg descended upon Manchester for the deciding match. Even though the UEFA Cup may be a poor relation compared to the Champions League, everybody seemed pretty happy to be there, especially the Zenit side at the final whistle.

Speaking of the Champions League…most American sports fans could never imagine anything like this. A tournament that runs simultaneously with the domestic league schedule? Just for fun, try suggesting this to an NFL or Major League Baseball fan. The level of competition is daunting, given that it’s reserved for truly the best of the best. And it’s not as if Champions League glory always goes to a domestic league winner. Liverpool finished in 5th place in 2005, yet won a great victory over AC Milan in the Champions League final. There’s nothing boring or predictable in either the UEFA Cup or Champions League tournaments.

Then there’s the FA Cup. True, it lacks the prestige of Europe and the top English teams often field youthful, inexperienced players in the early rounds. But Manchester United and Chelsea fought tooth and nail in the Cup final last May, if you’ll remember. Winning a Double is so difficult that it’s been done only ten times since 1889 and just one club has ever won the Premiership, FA Cup, and Champions League ttitles all in the same year.

All this implies that there’s no shortage of meaningful competition in English club soccer. The relegation/promotion system that governs the many layers of the English game guarantees that things get shaken up often enough in the lower half of the table to keep it interesting. It’s clear that the top of the Premiership strongly resembles a very stable oligarchy, yet this doesn’t trouble me. Why? Because real achievement is measured by multiple trophies these days. The top clubs are held to higher standards that are more difficult to meet. Doubles and trebles are rare and likely to remain so. Moreover, competition among those top clubs is keen. Were any supporters of Manchester United, Chelsea, or Arsenal bored this season? I doubt it.

I understand that the examples I’m providing here don’t really speak to Keegan’s point, which is the unlikelihood of second or third-tier clubs breaking the top four’s stranglehold on Premiership glory. This is probably true. And it won’t change unless the FA bans its clubs from participating in lucrative European competitions. The probability of that event is exactly zero, of course. So I would like to invite those Brits who find the Premiership boring to take a trip across the pond in late July or August. They can take in a baseball game…perhaps between teams like the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals. Both were hopelessly out of contention–for anything at all–weeks before the 2007 season was over. With no threat of relegation, why did the fans bother to show up? For the beer, hot dogs and peanuts?