The Death of English football?

The recent storm over Kaka proves that the Premier League is an over-indulgent beast, and needs to be starved if its beauty is to be preserved…

With mega-money moves, the whimsical sacking of managers and wages spiralling out of control, Gentry explores whether or not this really is the death of English footall…

It has been pretty difficult, over the past few years and months, to have failed to notice a lurching shift in the power dynamic between players and management in the top tier of English football. Beneath a litany of acrimonious managerial departures has lain a concealed but no less obvious truth – namely, the deteriorating stock of the Premiership manager. The reasons that lie behind the constantly spinning wheel of appointments and departures are multitudinous, and the subsequent repercussions wide-ranging, from spiralling ticket prices to the gradual deterioration of a the “footballing day out” and perhaps the slightly less palpable, but no less worrying truth of a stifled new breed of reluctant managerial hopefuls. Has management, particularly at the top level of English football ever appeared less attractive?

It’s probably an important starting point to state that much of this concern stems from the ‘corporatisation’ of the Premier League, transforming it from a league that was essentially self-financing, existing as it did as a constituent of the Football League establishment. In February 1992, British media conglomerates must have been ogling the typical League One stadium with glee, faces gorged with the rapacious intent of individuals excited at the popularity of a sport with inherent potential as a lucrative revenue source. While poor attendances, hooliganism, decrepit stadiums and the resultant inability of clubs to provide adequate facilities marred English football in the 1980s, the 1990s saw a distinct reversal of the previous decade’s pervasive disaffection with the footballing spectacle. This in itself was triggered, in no small part, by England’s relative World Cup success, as well as UEFA’s lifting of an existing ban on English clubs from participating in European competitions.

The Hillsborough disaster further highlighted the fundamental structural and operational fissures at the core of English football. If a football match meant death, then nothing less than radical action was clearly required. Whilst this served to revive an ailing sport, the understandable conservatism that followed opened the sport to democratisation – with the financial strains that came with a forced policy of comprehensive renovation, football clubs perhaps realised that a new breed of spectator would have to be enticed into the stands. And so the Premier League was born, a machine whose operational capacity relied on the participation of football ‘consumers’, in addition to media revenues that are expected to propel total revenue to somewhere in the region of £1.8bn during the course of this season.

Premiership Managers: Courage Under Fire

So what does this mean for the manager? Firstly, the transient nature of the job itself has suppressed a manager’s natural proclivity for developing his own footballing philosophy. The financial implication of defeat, along with the potential to lose significant ground in the chase to stay in the upper reaches of the division, has robbed football of its usual patchwork of identities. Results need to be delivered, by any means necessary; style is a footnote that has become less compelling than the instant gratification of victory and success achieved in the most short-term of conditions.

As Roy Keane has discovered to his misfortune, a manager that forges a personality built on the unwavering courage of his own convictions, in a manner that is obdurate, unforgiving and occasionally, not without a smattering of outright vehement contempt, can unsettle team spirit to the point of no return. When players speak, managers listen – mutiny in a climate where players exhibit ever-shifting allegiances and have the power to demand exorbitant wages, makes this a maxim that needs, at all costs, to be heeded. But management is a tricky skill to master, for it is dependent not only on natural ability, but appointment under the right conditions, with a manager operating under a vision reciprocated by all those who share roles as potential instigators of development and progression at a football club. Managerial reputations can often be misguided indicators of a manager’s natural fit, particularly when resources and a football club’s structural strength are commensurate with the level of on-the-field success.

The Death of English Football?

How therefore, is it possible to safeguard a passage of emerging managerial talent, in a job that Tony Adams recently described as ‘brutal’? The answers to that question are difficult to decipher; the Premier League remains chained at the whim and fancy of profiteering media conglomerates, who have long regarded sport as a business initiative that has yet to reach its natural conclusion. However, recent rumours of Gianluigi Buffon being offered £220,000 a week in wages to move to Eastlands – not to mention the royal £500,000 they've waved infront of Ricky Kaka's eyes – must surely underline the patent legitimacy of implementing a salary cap structure at Premier League level.

The NFL has operated under such a structure since 1994, and its introduction in the Premier League would preserve the integrity of a sport under which ticket costs, diminishing player loyalty, an adverse economic environment and a discernable eagerness to eradicate football’s primal spirit, may be sources of increasing abhorrence in the eyes of grassroots supporters. Michel Platini is one of the few that embodies the desire to help release football from the vice-like clutches of business, embodying a spirit that seeks to re-establish football as an arena within which to admire the indescribable beauty of human sporting endeavour and achievement. We call football the beautiful game, but if we don’t act soon, it could turn ugly.

Matt Kendall

Related Features:

Category: Sport