On the eve of Liverpool’s momentous Carling cup semi-final
defeat of Manchester City at Anfield the other night, captain Steven Gerrard
spoke with passion of his desire to overcome the league leaders and go onto
Wembley and win the cup. Amongst the Roy of the Rovers rhetoric that is so
often synonymous with the man came a telling admission. An admission, that in
today’s money driven age of football, is such a rarity and delight to hear
amongst the usual drivel of wage demands and all the other things that seem to
preoccupy the modern day footballer’s mindset. His words came on the subject
of, believe it or not, actually preferring to win the all so often derided
Carling cup over the the holy grail, the meat and two veg of football today,
finishing fourth and qualifying for the Champions League. Gerrard proclaimed, “I understand there is a balance for
the club financially, I understand that being in the top four is massive. At
the beginning of the season, it’s probably the main aim, but I don’t want to
say I finished in the top four, five times. I want to look back and say I won
the Carling Cup three, four or five times.” The man has got a point.
Sadly not everyone in the world of football shares Gerrard’s
philosophy. Even sadder, most simply cannot afford to. If a team wants to make
it today as one of the best in Europe or even be relatively close to being
considered in the same breath, qualifying for the Champions League, or
finishing at least fourth to give it its less glamorous name, is both the be
all and end all, and paradoxically for some clubs, the bare minimum required.
The financial incentives as we all know are huge. As well as
performance-related fees, clubs also receive a percentage from the vast
television market pool. Manchester United, in their run to the final last
season for instance, earned a cool total of €53.197million. It’s easy then to see the
potential earnings a club could miss out on if they weren’t able to make it to
football’s promised land. The club owners require their managers to deliver
them this as if they miss out, and their rivals don’t, then they will be the
ones falling behind. Clubs like United are so used to qualifying that the money
earned from the competition is almost taken for granted. Only if they fail to
qualify then do they realise how much they relied on this not so ‘guaranteed’
source of income.
If the owners get want they want, then in turn they will
have sufficient funds to feed to their managers. A manager with a lot of funds
to spend on players usually means, in today’s world, a successful club. A
manager without funds - a not so successful club. In turn, the clubs ‘without’
will simply be replaced by the clubs ‘with’. It is not just the money gained
from the Champions League that can help attract the higher calibre of players,
but also the status acquired from participating in Europe’s elite competition.
The best players want to play at the best level and won’t accept second best –
especially when it goes by the name of the Europa League. Manchester City were
the perfect example of needing to qualify so as to be able to attract the top
players. As the new threat to the Premier League, after their Arab billionaire
arrived a few years ago, the one thing holding them back was not being in the
Champions League. Whilst having the money to afford anyone in the world, the
fact that they weren’t playing Champions League football meant that for every
Robinho that joined for simply for the wads of cash on offer, there was a Kaka
who resisted the allure of Arab oil money as he preferred to ply his trade at a
world class club, at a world class level. It was the one thing in the way of
global domination. Fast-forward a few seasons, and with a third place finish
under their belts anyone is game. That they did then drop out of the Champions
League at the first hurdle is inconsequential. They’re on the ladder and they
will probably be on there for the foreseeable future. You wouldn’t bet against
them challenging for the trophy next season either.
Managers share this ambition with their owners. Most
managers of any club, with a realistic aim of playing in the Champions League,
would, at the start of the season, have their ambitions in this order: 1) win
the league 2) win the Champions League (1 & 2 are interchangeable) 3)
qualify for the Champions League 4) win a domestic cup. Even if aims one and
two never happen, three will always remain ahead of four. Arsene Wenger and
Arsenal are the perfect example in this case. Wenger has not won a trophy since
the FA Cup way back in 2005, which most Arsenal fans believe is far too long
for a club of their stature. Yet to his credit, since 1998 Wenger has qualified
for the Champions League in every full season he has been at the club. No doubt
the men above him are delighted with the financial stability this consistency
has provided the club and the fans have loved the Europeans nights at both
Highbury and the Emirates, as well as their run all the way to the final in
2006. Yet after nearly seven years without a trophy there is unrest among fans for
some cup glory. Fair enough they came close last season with the Carling cup
final defeat to Birmingham, but their trophy cabinet still remains bare. This
drying up of trophies has led to key players Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri both
leaving last summer claiming a desire to win some medals. Despite the unrest,
given the opportunity Wenger would still pick finishing fourth over winning the
FA Cup. And you can’t blame him as it would be a disaster if they didn’t finish
fourth this season. If they can then their chances of keeping hold of Robin van
Persie increases. On the other hand, another year will pass again without a
trophy.
The importance of the rat race to finish in the top four has
been highlighted by both Manchester United and City being eliminated from this
season’s Champions League at such a premature stage. While obviously they now
cannot win Europe’s biggest prize, they will also miss out on the funding they
presumed they would be receiving. Even if they were to go all the way and win
the Europa League, which they now find themselves in, they would only make
around €4.6million
from performance related fees. In stark contrast, just for reaching the first
knockout round of the Champions League they would have received €3million, another
€3.3million for reaching the quarter-final, an additional €4.2miilion for the
semi-final and either €5.6million for finishing as runners-up or a whopping
€9million for winning the competition. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is
better, i.e. more financially rewarding, to be knocked out at the quarter-final
stage of the Champions League, rather than actually winning the Europa League.
It’s easy then to see why there is such a fine line between finishing fourth
and fifth. Then for those who do finish fifth, playing in the Europa League
only ceases to get in the way of trying to finish fourth the following year, as
witnessed with Tottenham this season, who chose instead to field weakened
teams.
Anyway, I seem to have digressed with all this talk of
finishing fourth. Back to Mr. Gerrard’s comments. How great it is to hear a
player, a captain as well, say something that nobody is really allowed to say
or believe in this politically correct day and age. Next to all the facts and
figures, the financial statistics of the Champions League, the life or death
necessities of finishing fourth, how our whole football world is driven soley
by money, and just the pure cut-throat ‘if you can’t deal with this tough as
there is someone else behind you perfectly happy to abide by the rules, so
please step aside’ nature of today’s game, it is simply refreshing to hear such
words. Words that transport us to a parallel world where money doesn’t matter,
where the main aim of playing football is, believe it or not, to actually win
things, and be able to look back at your career and show your grandkids your
stash of medals medals. But no, unfortunately we live in a world where most
players, with their grandkids on their knees, will only have but a figurative
fourth place recollection, now derived of any meaning, along with the last of
their deteriorating wage packets to show for themselves.
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