The Demise of Football is ten years away
Sir Alan Sugar claimed that football was heading for a disaster. The now former Tottenham chairman claimed that too much money was being poured into the game, with little return. It doesn’t take much to suggest that this can’t continue forever. Mr.Sugar was at the centre of the Spurs fan’s discontented cries when the team were playing badly. Don’t blame the players blame the chairman. What was the reason behind their protests? They wanted more money available to bring in new players. The fans were not granted their wish at the time because they were told that there were not the necessary funds available. Sugar was not prepared to work in an environment where he was berated by supporters and ridiculed by members of the media. He resigned from his post during the 2000/2001 season after just spending 11million pounds on a new player for the club. The fact was that Tottenham, were not very good and the scapegoat was found in the chairman. He left leaving the warning that football was destined for the cleaners.
To many people it has only just become apparent as to how true that sentiment was. With the collapse of ITV digital, a corporation that had promised 72 nationwide league clubs millions of pounds in revenue, the problem became front-page news. Football is now not just on the back page, an example of how a game is now almost certainly a business. Since then football clubs that based financial security on the money received from ITV have had the administrators looming ominously over head. Most recently Leicester City FC called in the administrators boasting debts of in excess of £50 million. Now what business would allow themselves to get into that amount of debt? Leicester were not even a victim of the fall of ITV digital, last season they were in the top division and playing in the UEFA cup. Probably among all the clubs who are supported by rickety props rather than solid foundations, Leicester have provided the most salutary demonstration of the financial malaise afflicting football. In the last decade nearly 40 clubs have gone into administration and so far all have come out the other side. What people have to understand is that money is made to pay the players, who make the club what they are. Yet at a football club, it is not just the players that are employed. The off-field staff that rarely get a mention are also paid (not as much) and are the first to leave when the club go into financial discomfort, yet they are only on a fraction of the wage that the players are on. The job of the administrators is to do everything in their power to keep the business up and running before shutting it down. In football terms, people lose their jobs, creditors lose their money but the players get paid.
