Long has it been the widespread belief amongst the English press and media that their own Premiership is head and shoulders above not only the other British domestic leagues but also the rest of Europe and no doubt the world. We hear on a weekly basis how the Premiership is the most exciting league in the world, has the greatest players in the world and is without a shadow of a doubt, the best league in the world.

It?s hard to argue that the Premiership at times doesn?t have some of the most exciting football to be seen with end to end action for ninety minutes although there is no obvious link between the excitement level of end to end football and actual quality of football played. Many times it?s quite the opposite with the reason the ball is pinging about the pitch from penalty box to penalty box being that the players in the middle don?t have even the rudimentary levels of control necessary to put their foot on the ball and build a more measures tempo.

Roy Keane - Truly World Class?

While the quality of some players such as Roy Keane and Arjen Robben is second to none, there are others who have been the Premiership?s standard bearers for most of the last decade but only found their way into the Premiership after failing in the more rarified atmosphere of the other European top leagues, most notably Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Viera and Thierry Henry at Arsenal who all suffered torrid spells in Italy at Inter Milan, A.C. Milan and Juventus respectively.

The finest European players in fact to grace the English stage only came to these shores when their stock on the continent had diminished to such a level that the top European clubs were no longer interested in them. Players such as Gianfranco Zola, Jurgen Klinsmann in two spells and most recently Edgar Davids have illuminated English grounds with their skill and passion but none can say that even big London clubs like Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur would have been their first choice if Milan, Barcelona or Bayern Munich had come calling from the outset.

It?s notable that players such as Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane or Ronaldinho have never even been seriously linked with moves to English clubs while at their peak and for all Manchester United?s or Chelsea?s money, the decision is far from a financial one.

Ronaldo in action for Brazil

The Premiership doesn?t then necessarily have the greatest quality of football. It doesn?t have the very finest world players at the peak of their powers either. One thing we are told it does have is strength in depth and a level of competition in the top division that other major countries? leagues are lacking. Even a cursory glance at the league tables for the thirteen previous seasons under the Premiership/Premier League banner tells a somewhat different tale though. Of the thirteen championships contested, Manchester United have dominated and won eight of them, their nearest rivals over that time have been Arsenal with three title wins and both Chelsea and Blackburn Rovers, with the financial input of their respective sugar daddies, have taken one title a piece.

Blackburn Rovers Celebrate Their Premiership Title in 1994/95

The two outsiders? Premiership titles were separated by a ten year gap though and with the means their league titles were won (or rather bought), they can almost be disregarded when judging the level of competition as far as Premiership contenders goes. Even when considering the top three positions there has been an unhealthy reliance on the same clubs, namely Liverpool and Newcastle United and one appearance each for one season wonders Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Leeds United outside of the aforementioned title winners. This doesn?t indicate a competitive environment, rather a closed club that is continually denying membership to any club who either wasn?t in the right place at the right time at the Premiership?s inception in order to take full advantage of the Sky TV and Champion?s League money or doesn?t have a multibillionaire benefactor to buy them a place at the top table. Long gone are the days when clubs like Derby County, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa were League Champions and I for one firmly believe the Premiership is a much duller competition because of it.

Long gone are the days when asking a lady her age was considered the height of insulting behaviour but increasingly it seems the football world should be using this course of action when considering the legitimacy of many African players and their alleged ages.

Tumo Mokone on news24.com tells the supposedly well known southern African joke of:

“How old are you?” a foreign visitor in an African country asks a keen footballer.
“My birth age or my soccer age?” replies the footballer.

and makes it very clear for readers that while in a comedy context the joke isn?t exactly side splitting, in a footballing context it is even less amusing and has the potential to cast a shadow over the whole of African football.

The oft cited economic reasoning behind age cheating where a player will adopt the identity of a younger brother (or sometimes sister as in the case of Zimbabwe?s Sijabuliso ?Pope? Moyo who adopted his younger sister Pope?s name when questioned about being too old to play in an U17s tournament) is no doubt the main factor behind the often blatant attempts to make a player appear younger than they really are.

The Sting
Using illegal methods such as passport tampering in countries where the quality and validity of public records is often questionable is an easy way to take a twenty five year old player and play him in a Youth Championship where if he is spotted by a European club it is easy to tell them that he is only seventeen years old. The player?s old club and family get the cash windfall while the new club in question gets a player a good five years or more older than they thought they were getting. At it?s base level it is nothing more than fraud and when the African footballing authorities are willing to turn a blind eye and put their trust in dubious documents, never worrying how authentic they are, then one major level of policing this infringement has been removed.

Roger Milla and Other Accused

Roger Milla playing for Cameroon

Players such as Cameroon?s World Cup hero Roger Milla, West Brom?s Nigerian striker Kanu and former Nigerian winger Finidi George have all been dogged throughout their careers with (as yet) unproven rumours as to their actual ages and with Milla, in particular, having played and scored in the World Cup finals in USA ?94 aged 42 years 1 month and 8 days we have to ask the question, just what age was the tournament’s oldest goal-scorer really? 42? 45? 48? Over fifty? The mind boggles.

Worrying Time at Inter Milan

Obafemi Martins

Recent incidents such as the passport dispute involving Internazionale striker Obafemi Martins have again brought the issue to light in one of Europe?s top leagues with Martins’ date of birth on his passport stating 28 October 1984 while the website of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) said he was born on 1 May 1978. Those missing six years would mean quite a difference in transferable value for a valuable asset like Martins for a prestigious club such as Inter Milan, possibly the difference between a valuation of ?15 million and ?5 million which is quite a drop even for Inter Milan. Martins of course furiously denied the date of birth on the NFA site was correct and demanded it be immediately changed to end any further embarrassment to either him or his employers but the seeds of doubt were again planted in the heads of fans, journalists and, no doubt, other clubs as to his honesty.

Ghana To America To Nike

Freddy Adu

The biggest question marks of all currently are being hinted at over the real age of American wonderkid Freddy Adu, the sixteen year old star of DC United and the MLS?s highest paid player. While his physique, even as a fourteen or fifteen year old, made many watchers raise an eyebrow over the authenticity of his age, it should be remembered that both Pele and Ronaldo won the World Cup with Brazil while 17 years of age and just because Adu has the build of a man ten years his senior it shouldn?t automatically mean the former Ghanain native is the subject of a most elaborate age fraud. Whether he ever lives up to the ridiculous hype that has surrounded him for the last few years and earned him a $1million sponsorship deal with Nike is another question but if he does continue his promising growth in the game and get his dream move to Europe you can be sure the question of Freddy?s age will once again rear it?s head.

The ultimate responsibility for cracking down on age cheating at all levels must come initially from FIFA and then be enforced by the national associations but with the very core of the problem running parallel with the scourge of poverty throughout Africa and the resulting corruption of the game throughout that continent it seems that those in the developed world will have to simply put their faith in the documents provided by these players when they sign them and then suffer the consequences if they arise. FIFA?s eyes seem to be elsewhere at the minute and it may take a high profile case with a G14 club before this issue gets properly tackled.

Ever get involved in a what ever happened to?? conversation? Often it springs from a young footballer who shone brightly for a few months before disappearing to the reserves, then to Bury, then to the Beezer Homes League and last heard of playing in the Hyundai A-League for Perth Glory. It may be a player nobody else would have heard of unless they followed a clubs reserves or youth sides or read their match programme or club magazine from cover-to-cover, but they had been hailed as the English Johan Cruyff, or the next ?insert club legend here? by a coach or senior player.

Please welcome the next?
Often people will hark back to the great Manchester United FA Youth Cup winning sides of the early 1990s which featured the likes of Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers, as well as Keith Gillespie, Robbie Savage and Phil Mulryne who went on to make their names elsewhere (how many next George Bests is that?). But what about Ben Thornley, or Chris Casper, or John O?Kane, or Kevin Pilkington? They were all ?bigged? up as future internationals, but at what should now be the peak of their careers, they were last spotted turning out for Halifax (2004), Reading (2002), Hyde United (2003) and Notts County (2005) respectively. Only Pilkington is still featuring in the Football League, all-be-it in the bottom tier, hardly satisfactory for a man who Peter Schmeichel termed ?a future England number one.?

Likewise at my club, Liverpool, who clinched the Youth Cup in 1996, defeating West Ham 4-1 over two legs with teams which read:
First Leg: Naylor; Prior, Brazier, Carragher, Roberts, S. Quinn, Thompson, M. Quinn, Cassidy, Newby (Larmour), Parkinson. Goalscorers: Newby, Larmour.
Second Leg: Naylor; Prior, Brazier, Carragher, Roberts, S. Quinn, Thompson, M. Quinn, Cassidy (Turkington), Owen, Newby (Parkinson). Goalscorers: Owen, S. Quinn.

So, where are they now?
Only David Thompson, Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen made an impact on the Liverpool first-team, with Jon Newby making a handful of substitute appearances before being sold to Bury. Of the rest, only Gareth Roberts and Andy Parkinson are still with Football League clubs, and David Larmour and Jamie Cassidy had brief League careers before moving out of full-time football. The others, on leaving Anfield, found themselves playing in lower-League reserve sides or for local non-League teams. So how did the cream of young English talent find itself so scattered to the four winds?

The ones who made it
Of course we could talk at great lengths about the current England internationals, Carragher and Owen, mentioned above, but it is perhaps David Thompson?s career which proves more interesting.

David Thompson at Liverpool

Marked for greatness from a very young age, Thompson?s first involvement in the first-team came at the tail-end of the 1994/95 season whilst still just 17 years-old, though he didn?t make it on to the pitch. He had to wait another sixteen months for his debut, coming on as a substitute in a 2-0 win over Arsenal in August 1996 and again the following week against Sunderland in a 0-0 draw. Those were his only League appearances that season. By 1997/98 Owen and Carragher had cemented their places in the first-team squad, if not the starting eleven, but Thompson found himself loaned out to Swindon Town, before returning to Liverpool to make another handful of appearances. Further slow progress was made during the 1998/99 season as he started four games and appeared from the bench ten times, but in the 1999/2000 season he made 27 Premiership appearances, scoring three times, and he finally seemed to be making the impact expected of him. However, Thompson himself wasn?t satisfied, he had set a personal target to become an established first-teamer by the age of 22, and he felt he wasn?t quite there. He took the opportunity to leave Liverpool for a team that could give him regular football and signed for Coventry City in August 2000. At Highfield Road Thompson developed further as a player, scoring 15 goals in 66 appearances over two seasons before Graeme Souness snapped him up for Blackburn. Thompson?s early form at Ewood Park earned him an England call-up, but injury forced him to withdraw from the squad. Further injuries have continued to blight his career and he is yet to make an appearance this season. However, when fit again his combatitive style should mean he fits perfectly into Mark Hughes? side.

Finding their level
To a certain extent this is what Thompson did, and what Ritchie Partridge, for instance failed to do. Thompson took the brave and heart-breaking decision to walk away from the club he supported as a boy for the sake of his career, Ritchie Partridge ?a talented young winger who is destined for greatness? believed his own hype and stuck around at Anfield until he was just shy of twenty-fifth birthday, making just three League Cup appearances. Partridge is now attempting to build a career with Sheffield Wednesday having been released by Liverpool during the summer.

Ritchie Partridge playing for Liverpool

Of course players do not always have the choice as to when they leave a club. Andy Parkinson was not offered a professional contract after the Youth Cup win, and moved across Merseyside to Tranmere Rovers, playing in their 2000 League Cup Final defeat by Leicester, and he is now making waves playing on the left-wing for Grimsby Town. Another to follow a similar route was Gareth Roberts; released in the summer of 1999 he joined Ronnie Whelan?s Panionios before joining Tranmere after three months in Greece. He too appeared in that League Cup Final, and earned a place in the Wales team. Roberts remains Tranmere?s regular left-back and a member of Welsh squad.

Jon Newby broke into Liverpool?s first-team squad during the 1999/2000 season (remember this was a time when Fowler and Owen were carrying injuries galore and the striking back-up consisted of Titi Camara, ?Mad? Erik Meijer and an aging Karl-Heinz Riedle). Newby proved to be a hard-worker, but in his four appearances he seemed to lack the goalscoring touch required, and so when Bury offered ?100,000 for his services in March 2001 all parties involved were satisfied the move would be for the best. Yet to find the goalscoring touch in League Football, Newby returned to Bury in the summer of 2004 after an unhappy season with Huddersfield.

Going a little lower
Most of the 1996 team have since found their way into English non-League football, with varying levels of (relative) success. One exception to this is striker David Larmour, who was released in the summer of ?96 and signed for Doncaster Rovers. In twenty appearances in the Third Division he failed to find the back of the net and with the club in a perilous financial situation he was again released. He returned to his native Northern Ireland to sign for Linfield in September 1997 and he made an immediate impact, scoring over twenty goals in each of his first four seasons and picking up a number of honours, and a call-up to the Northern Ireland squad in August 2000. Injuries have meant that Larmour?s goalscoring totals have slowed in recent seasons, but his strike-rate remains impressive. It may be part-time football, but the Irish League gives him a chance to play regularly in Europe, and in recent years there has been something of a Liverpool reunion at the club with former Anfield reserves Phil Charnock and Paul Dalglish playing at Windsor Park.

David Larmour at Linfield

Injury nightmares
One of the most tragic things in football is when a promising young player is struck down by injury. Jamie Cassidy had recovered from a broken leg to star in Liverpool?s run to Youth Cup winning campaign, and was also beginning to feature regularly for the reserves. Indeed his form so impressed that he was awarded a squad number during the 1996/97 season. Alas, injury struck again and Cassidy?s development, both physically and skill-wise, was severely stunted. He moved to Cambridge United in 1999, but lasted just one season in Division Two before moving to non-League Northwich Victoria, where once again his impact was minimal. If Cassidy hadn?t lost almost two years of his career at such a crucial time, who knows what might have been?

Reckless youth
Aside from the well publicised 1998 Liverpool Christmas Party shenanigans (involving Jamie Carragher and some whipped cream if your memory fails), Liverpool?s recent youth products have been spared the worst of controversies, such as alleged rapes and drug use, which have blighted other clubs young players. That is not to say it hasn?t happened, and the law of averages states that at least one player listed above has dabbled, to whichever extent, in drugs (be they the illegal type or the legal type, i.e. alcohol). Certainly from George Best and Jimmy Greaves through to Diego Maradona and Chris Armstrong, young players? heads have been turned, and careers tainted, if not ruined, by the cultural accoutrements which are foisted on every young person, in every walk of life. However, the use of drink and drugs would hardly have the same obvious negative effect on a factory worker as they would on a footballer, and your average factory worker isn?t taking home ?500 a week in his late teens!

Not good enough?
The import of foreign players may have had an affect (but that’s another article or ten), but the simple fact is that some of these young players just weren?t good enough; they peaked at eighteen, and failed to develop any further. Why? Well they could have had their heads turned by success at a very young age, they could have been struck down by injuries, or it could just have been that they developed quicker than those around them in their teens, but were eventually surpassed by others. Of the fourteen who played in the two legs of that Final, six have went on to have decent Football League careers. Considering that the Youth team would?ve been made up of a two year ?snap-shot?, and the first-team perhaps fifteen years, six out of fourteen isn?t a bad ?success? rate. The fourteen may have been the cream, but to reach the very top you have to be the cr?me de la cr?me.

Footnote:
As a by the way, West Ham were also served quite well by their 1996 Youth side, with Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard emerging as two of the most talented players of their generation.

“The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of it’s forms - greed for life, for money, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed - you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you.”

- Gordon Gecko - Wall Street.

You may well ask what a 1980’s Oliver Stone movie about the dark side of American corporate greed has to do with the English Premiership during the 1990’s but I don’t think there can be too many football fans who lived during that decade who couldn’t imagine their very own chairman, be it Sir Alan Sugar at Tottenham Hotspur, Martin Edwards at Manchester United or even cuddly Ken Bates at Chelsea trotting out that same speech at any number of AGMs and inserting their club name for the bit about Teldar Paper. The financial problems faced by clubs as the 1980’s drew to a close and the increased burden of funding ground redevelopments following the Taylor Report meant the top clubs were terrified of falling further behind their main European rivals, a situation exacerbated by the ban on English clubs from European competition after the Heysel disaster in 1985. As such the tops clubs proposed and formed a breakaway top division, the F.A. Premier League, in 1992 and wrestled control of their commercial independence from the F.A. and Football League.

Sky TV

Rupert Murdoch

With the ability to negotiate their own broadcast and sponsorship agreements the newly created Premier League found a new willing and able bed partner in Rupert Murdoch’s burgeoning satellite TV company, British Sky Broadcasting, the recently formed amalgam of Murdoch’s Sky company and it’s erstwhile competitor British Satellite Broadcasting. With a virtual monopoly over satellite broadcasting in the UK, Murdoch and Sky bought the TV rights to Premiership games for an initial ?191 million over five years, a figure which had risen to ?670 million by the time it was renewed for an additional four seasons beginning in 1997/98 and again for a massive ?1.024 billion which runs over the course of three seasons from August 2004. With such a massive influx of cash the clubs were able to modernise their stadia and begin to attract some of the top players in Europe to come and play for them including Dennis Bergkamp, Jurgen Klinsmann and Gianfranco Zola.

Jurgen Klinsmann

While the TV money in the top flight helped to give the big clubs a much needed infusion of ready money, the lower leagues suffered. Trying to piggy back on the back of the good times of their richer cousins, many clubs overspent as player wage inflation spiralled as did transfer fees and many clubs believing the gold rush would never end spent accordingly. The collapse of ITV Digital who had bid a bumper ?315 million for TV rights to the Football League, and on who’s income the lower league clubs had budgeted for their survival, left a massive hole in many clubs finances and the very real possibility of league clubs going to the wall. The number of clubs, many former Premiership (as it was re-branded), who found themselves with no option but to bring in the administrators was a telling sign that while greed may be good for the top clubs, there will always be casualties further down the food chain.

Richest Clubs In The World

With the Sky TV money rolling in and the same company’s relentless advertising campaign pushing the game and it’s top clubs and players to previously unheard of heights there began to appear a gap between the haves, the really haves and the have nots. While Manchester United under Alex Ferguson built an empire of Premiership, FA Cup and, eventually in 1999, Champion’s League winners and brought in enough income to make them the world’s richest club (earning ?251m in 2003/04), other clubs spent big in an effort to emulate their success only to see that success at Old Trafford bred more success and more money to help fund rebuilding efforts culminating with the ?30 million capture of Rio Ferdinand from Leeds United and more recently the ?30 million investment in Everton’s boy wonder, Wayne Rooney. Putting so much stress on qualifying for the Champion’s League as a way to pay for the spiralling spending on players was a disaster waiting to happen and it almost destroyed perhaps the most high profile financial casualty, Leeds United. Manager David O’Leary, ably funded by chairman Peter Ridsdale, got the Yorkshire club in over their heads to the tune of almost ?100 million in the red and only a very public fire sale of their top players leading to an eventual relegation helped them keep their financial heads above water.

A gap had developed then between the regular Champion’s League clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal, who divided the Premiership between themselves bar for Blackburn’s one glorious season bought for them by local fan and sugar daddy Jack Walker, and the rest of the Premiership creating virtual leagues within the league as clubs like Spurs, Aston Villa and Everton floated between almost qualifying for the UEFA Cup and near relegation in successive seasons for almost a decade. Even former greats like Liverpool found that spending money hand over fist was no guarantee of being able to challenge for the league title, a fact they are still finding out today.

What Did Roman Ever Do For Us?

Roman Abramovich

Just when the bubble seemed to be bursting with Leeds demise and other clubs like Leicester going into administration a lone Russian came strolling over the West London plains and set the whole money merry go round off again. Roman Abramovich, the young Russian oil billionaire, rescued Chelsea from their own mountainous debts as the vultures circled in the summer of 2003 and began the biggest episode of transfer sepnding in the history of English football. To date he has alledgedly funded both Claudio Ranieri and his latest managerial incumbent, the self styled Chosen One, Jose Mourinho, to the tune of greater than ?300 million in a little over two years and by all accounts his chequebook isn’t about to stop any time soon.

Evidently it has all paid off for him as Chelsea lifted their first English League title in fifty years in the 2004/2005 season but the damage to the entertainment value of the game is plain for all to see. How can any club compete with another who have no impetus to tie their turnover to their outgoings whatsoever despite what their directors tell the press. We now have a monopoly that could stretch for year in the Premiership or at least as long as Mr. Abramovich keeps his interest in football and doesn’t turn it to Formula One or donkey racing or whatever he desires. When there is no competition there can be no entertainment value as other clubs playing Chelsea will view the best result they can get to be a draw and with Mourinho’s dour safety first tactics as well it doesn’t add up well for fans in the stand who are being charged top dollar for the privelige or for the armchair supporters forking out always increasing subscription fees to Mr. Murdoch who if we remember helped kick the whole money influx off in the first place.

The Future

Short of a wage cap, a limit on the number of non-homegrown players or some way of tying turnover to wages I really can’t see any way out of Chelsea’s domination of the domestic game. Pundits can say other clubs have to raise the bar as well to match Chelsea but it’s an impossible task as when they do Mr. Mourinho can go out in the next transfer window with a blank cheque and after his friend Peter kenyon has had a word in any player’s ear the job is almost as good as done. Even Manchester United and Arsenal can’t compete with these tactics so what chance a Premiership winner coming from nowhere like Derby County and Nottingham Forest during the 1970’s or Aston Villa in the early 1980’s. Sadly those days seem like a distant memory.

“Greed is good” he said, I know there are many football fans who would disagree somewhat with that sentiment.

Despite both candidates keeping a low profile, the forthcoming election for the new Uefa President is going to have a major influence on the future of European club football. For years, Lennart Johansson has managed to maintain a cautious approach in the European governing body’s relationship with the bigger clubs. While he had to bow to a number of demands from Europe’s elite clubs ? the creation of the Champions League being the most obvious example ? he never made a secret of his ambitions to challenge Joao Havelange (and later Joseph Blatter) for the role of FIFA President. Therefore, and despite increasing pressure from the G14, Johansson had to make sure part of the money generated by the European game was redistributed to the economically weaker countries. Considering the weight of the Asian and African federations, he wouldn’t have stood a chance to beat Havelange or Blatter without such gestures of solidarity.

Two Horse Race

FIFA is giving a lot of money away to third-world countries through a number of programmes and most confederations would have been extremely reluctant to vote for a man perceived as the running for the bigger clubs. For better or worse, Johansson has now announced that he will retire at the end of his current mandate which means that the race for his succession, and with it the end of a reign of uncertainty, is now open. Unless a major upset occurs, it will be a two-horse race between Frenchman Michel Platini and Bayern Munich’s Franz Beckenbauer. Both men have very different philosophies when it comes to the future of the European game and nothing illustrate this rift better than the recent debate about Uefa coefficients.

The row was started by Mircea Lucescu, the current Shakhtar Donetsk manager, after he found out that only two clubs from Eastern Europe had made it to the first round of the Champions League. Even worse, one of them, Sparta Prague was automatically qualified thanks to its good coefficient ? but we’ll get back to that later. The only club to go through the long and difficult process of preliminary rounds was Artmedia. The Slovaks beat Serbia’s Partizan Belgrad in the final round, which means that the first round will boast the minimum of two clubs from the former communist world.

The Inequities of UEFA Coefficients

Lucescu argument is pretty simple: only teams with a high Uefa coefficient are given a bye to the first round of the Champions League. At the same time, you have to play in the Champions League in order to have a high coefficient. Hence, teams from decent countries (Poland, Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia) have to beat a team from one of the best Western leagues to advance to the first round. So far, it has proved to be almost impossible for Eastern outfits to rival some of Europe’s finest. This season only, Shakhtar fell to Inter Milan, Hungary’s Debrecen bit the dust against Manchester United, Wisla Krakow couldn’t find a way past Panathinaikos, CSKA Sofia lost to holders Liverpool.

Let’s face it, the former Romania and Galatasaray manager’s righteous indignation is not simply motivated by his desire to see some equity restored at the higher level. What makes the current situation really challenging for everyone is that a lot of money has been invested in these clubs and those who are spending are expecting to see some sort of success. Regardless of the fact that most of the money invested in Eastern European football often comes from questionable activities, Zdzislaw Kapka (Wisla), Rinat L. Akhmetov (Shakhtar), Mirko Barisic (Dinamo Zagreb), Sergey Kuschenko (CSKA Moscow) are spending big at the moment and, to put it bluntly, if they begin to feel that they are refused access to the Champions League, they might start spending elsewhere.

Position In Danger

The stakes are pretty high because football is in danger of losing its position as number one sport in a geographical sphere of roughly 100 million people and that’s a risk neither Uefa nor FIFA are willing to take. If these countries revert back to amateurism, as it’s already been suggested in Romania and Hungary where clubs are facing a major financial crisis, football could hand over its leadership to other sports such as basketball, athletics, handball or ice hockey. A situation that would be unacceptable as nobody would want to take the responsibility for making half of Europe a no-man’s-land football-wise. However, without the money cascading from the pockets of dodgy businessmen a lot of clubs’ very existence is in danger.

Franz Beckenbauer

While Franz Beckenbauer is said to be to busy with the preparations for the forthcoming World Cup to make a statement, his position as the G14’s candidate makes his plans pretty clear. The most powerful European clubs would like to see the UEFA Cup, in which they are no longer interested, transformed into a competition for Eastern European clubs. The best from each country would battle it out in a format close to the current Champions League competition with one or two invitations for next season’s edition at stake.

According to Beckenbauer’s friends, this solution would ensure a healthy and interesting competition in the Eastern part of the continent while allowing some of the most successful clubs to rub shoulders with their Western cousins the following season. The concept in itself might sound attractive to some chairmen but it raises more questions than it answers: what kind of TV deals can Eastern clubs hope for when the richest networks are all based in Western Europe? Who is going to watch a second-rate version of the Champions League? What’s the point of playing more games when most clubs are having a hard time filling their stadiums?

Such a solution would also confirm the Champions League as a restricted club for richer European clubs. What of the universality of sport, then? Without the possibility to face superior opposition on a regular basis, it’s highly unlikely that clubs from the East would ever catch up on their Western counterparts. The best they could hope for is a lucrative cameo appearance at their rich neighbours’ feast. That’s hardly going to raise the level of the game in Eastern Europe or motivate anyone to invest in football but it would protect the Real Madrids of this world from those nasty surprises that keep happening every now and then.

Michel Platini’s Motives

Platini’s motives are just as suspect as Beckenbauer’s but his answer to the current crisis is slightly more commendable. The former France playmaker’s suggestion is give a bye to the first round to the champions of the first 25 countries, using national coefficients. The second, third and fourth-placed teams would then enter the preliminary rounds and play each other for the remaining seven spots. That system would guarantee a better representation at European level and with six games, would allow inexperienced teams the time to find their feet at the highest level.

Then again, Platini knows where his own interests are. Since his main competitor for the election already has been backed by Europe’s biggest clubs, he’s obviously looking for votes with such a proposition. The fact that it would allow champions from Georgia, Israel or Latvia to walk into the first round isn’t going to stop him. He also knows that his current attitude is going to win him a lot of friends outside Europe and since he’s already seen as Blatter’s understudy, his speeches on solidarity and universality are probably not as innocent as they sound.

What Platini conveniently forgot to tell is that allowing more Eastern European clubs in the current format of the Champions League would have a disastrous effect on local competitions. The aforementioned clubs are already way ahead of their rivals in terms of financial power so imagine if they could get their hands on a share of the Champions League’s astronomic TV rights. After a couple of successful European campaigns, Rosenborg have won 15 consecutive titles. In Czech Republic, Sparta Prague have managed to keep their stranglehold on the title because they can afford to outbid any other club when it comes to signing promising young players. In France, Lyon are bound to record their fifth league title in a row.

Domestic League Damage

If allowing more Eastern European clubs in the Champions League might look like a good short-term solution, the damage to the local leagues would be nothing short of a disaster. Most clubs are already unable to resist the financial power of Western and Russian clubs. As English fans are beginning to realise, a billionaire is often all it takes to turn an anonymous club into a title-winning machine. Making each of the original participants a giant in its own country is hardly going to make football more attractive to youngsters and neutrals in Eastern Europe. Worse still, it will probably give more weight to the G14’s calls for a European Super League as these nouveaux-riches clubs will be keen to make sure their place in the sun isn’t threatened by an ambitious neighbour.

Last but not least, what Lucescu conveniently forgets to tell is that two clubs, namely Steaua Bucharest and Lokomotiv Moscow, were paired with relatively modest opponents in the last round. Rosenborg are having a nightmare season in Norway and yet they overcame the Romanian champions. As for the state of Austrian football, it’s nothing short of a disaster as Graz’s pathetic exit against Strasbourg showed last week. That didn’t prevent Rapid Vienna from getting the better of Lokomotiv.

Giant Killings

So despite all the complaints, some clubs have also fallen victims of their own shortcomings. Assuming that Shakhtar or Partizan have a divine right to be in the Champions League is just as absurd as the system they denounce. You don’t have to look much further than FC Thoune to see that giant-killing feats are still possible. The Swiss outfit qualified for the group stage after beating Dynamo Kiev and Malm? despite their annual turnover of only 3 million euros (approx. 2 million pounds).

More than anything else, it’s the format of the Champions League that is flawed. The fact that so much money is shared between only a handful of clubs is bound to cause problems at a national level sooner or later. Regardless of the proportion of Eastern European clubs in the competition, there will always be complaints from those who have to watch the party from the sidelines. Unfortunately, unless UEFA decide to bring back the old Champions’ Cup, we are going to have to live with it for some time.

To a lot of people, France is a large country where lazy people with loose ideas on hygiene spend their time drinking fine wines and whining about one thing or another. Oh and beheading kings and queens alike, when they are in the mood. That’s for the clich?s, anyway. On the other hand, if you believe that France is a country of paradoxes, then you probably won’t be surprised to learn that although the French Ligue 1 became last season one of Europe’s most expensive leagues thanks to Canal+ massive investment. 600 millions euros a year (approx. 400 millions pounds) in TV rights for a league that hardly produces 1.97 goal a game might seem like a lot of money, particularly when you consider that the G14 are getting closer and closer to form a breakaway super European league. But how did France came from boasting one of Europe’s most spectacular outfit in the early 90s Olympique de Marseille to a league where most clubs would put Herrera’s Inter to shame?

World Cup 1998 and The Beginning Of The End

Oddly enough, the catalyst for France’s downfall might have been their 1998 World Cup win. Despite Marseille’s historic win against AC Milan in the first ever Champions League final, French clubs had never enjoyed much success on the continental scene. Their inability to compete with bigger and richer competitors soon led most chairmen in France believing that playing a decent and entertaining game, in the great tradition of the national team led by such artists as Platini, Giresse, Tigana and Rocheteau, was the best they could have hoped for.

And there came a man, Aim? Jacquet, who not only builds a new team on the ashes of the one that lost at home to Bulgaria and failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. We’re talking about a man who was considered a pariah in France for his negative tactics, a man who was appointed because he was the only applicant for the job after Houllier’s failure. Unsurprisingly, Jacquet’s first decision was to get rid of Cantona and Ginola, two of France’s most outstanding talents at the time.

Aime Jacquet’s Defensive Tactics

Aime Jacquet

His second decision was to use an extremely dull 4-3-2-1 formation, a formation that will win him the World Cup. Of course, his team struggled to beat the likes of Paraguay but, in the end, there wasn’t a team that found an effective answer to Jacquet’s tactics. The main innovation was the idea to play three (very) defensive midfielders behind a playmaker, a winger and a lone striker. Suddenly, a lot of people in French football discovered that you could be boring and successful (which, by the way, shows that they were a bit slow because Italian clubs had been dominating Europe for years with their negative approach to the game).

All of a sudden, a whole new generation of French managers came to the front. And while “old school” managers like Ars?ne Wenger had to move abroad to find a job, people like Alain Perrin (Troyes, Marseille, Portsmouth), Elie Baup (Bordeaux, St Etienne), Vahid Halilhodzic (Lille, Rennes, PSG), Jacques Santini (Lyon) or Joel Muller (Metz, Lens), to name but a few, strove. They have managed to set a trend and, despite their indifferent results in Europe, the fact that Lyon manager, Paul Le Guen, has won three league titles in a row is hardly going to change that.

The Role Of The French Chairman

Another explanation lies with their chairmen themselves. Despite France being one of the first countries in the world to recognise a managers’ union, club owners have grown more trigger-happy than ever before. The 20 clubs from France’s elite used 30 different managers between them last season and with even more money at stake this year with Canal+’s investment, there’s little chance to see that number drop significantly.

Under such circumstances, most Ligue 1 bosses prefer to play it safe. Even then, they’re having a hard time surviving the ups and downs of their career as their life-spans have recently dropped below the 38-game mark, less than a full season. Basically, that means that even when a new man comes in, he isn’t given enough time to build his own team and bring his own players in. It also means that chairmen tend to go for the same type of managers as someone with a totally different approach might have a hard time making the most of a squad comprised mostly of defenders and defensive midfielders.

With less and less time to prove themselves, most managers’ first priority is to make sure they won’t lose the next game. A losing streak is often more than they can afford and a sound 0-0 will often buy them more time than an entertaining 4-3 defeat. At the moment, it’s highly unlikely that any French club would appoint the next Johan Cruyff as their new manager.

Youth Academies and The Future of French Football

The third factor responsible for this situation is actually what French football authorities are the most proud of: their youth academies. For dozens of years, there was only one model in France when it came to teaching youngsters, the Nantes football academy. Despite their limited success, Nantes has always been the only French club to stick to an attractive attacking style of play. This “Nantes way” is based on fast-paced, one-touch attacking football and is very demanding in terms of both individual technique and understanding between players.

Guy Roux

However, this model has been challenged since the emergence of Guy Roux’s Auxerre. Roux likes his players to be strong and full of pace. With Auxerre’s rise to the top of the French game, more and more clubs have raised their demands in terms of physical prowess, often at the detriment of technical skill. Granted, this is a trend at European level and French coaches are not the sole culprits in this situation but the fact remains that Ligue 1 club are aces when it comes to producing players you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark alley.

Flair has been replaced with pace and strength and, in that respect, Eric Cantona’s succession is quite telling. If you forget the 4-year episode between 94 and 98, France’s most prolific strikers have been Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka. Regardless of his questionable personality, the former Real Madrid striker has gradually become a benchmark when it comes to French forwards. Lately, he’s been replaced with Djibril Ciss?, a slightly better version (the Liverpool man is more aware of the offside rule and has a more powerful shot) with the same characteristics: pace, pace and even more pace.

With the lack of creative players, most managers now rely on hoofing the ball forward, hoping for a mistake from an opposition defender. In this context, players like Ciss? and Anelka flourish. The same goes for defenders: you won’t see another Laurent Blanc for years as his kind have been replaced with night-club bouncers such as Jean-Alain Boumsong. More and more players are rejected from youth academies because they are “too small to make it”, “too lightweight” or “not tall enough”. And since most of France’s backroom staff has been selected by Jacquet himself, things are, again, unlikely to change in the near future.

The Road Ahead

Michel Hidalgo

Absurd as it may sound, the French federation has commissioned former manager Michel Hidalgo to find an answer to their current predicament. Famous for managing France in the 80s and reaching two World Cup semi-finals, he faces a daunting prospect. The reasons behind the lack of goal are clearly endemic. On the other hand, Jean-Pierre Escalettes’ (chairman of the FFF) motivations are purely incidental: to put it bluntly, he’s worried that Canal+ might become reluctant in the not too distant future to pay a fortune for second-rate games.

So far, all Hidalgo has managed to come up with is a bonus point for the first team to score. Needless to say that, just like the golden goal, it won’t have much effect on the game. Clueless as he is at the moment, it won’t be long before he proposes to give a point for a defeat and none for a draw. Or anything else that sounds absurd enough.

Unfortunately, this time around, it will take a lot more than cosmetic measures to turn things around. Come to think of it, there are only two ways to sort out this mess: either a football genius will take over at a lower club and break Lyon’s stranglehold on the title or the federation needs a complete revamp of its backroom staff.

And something tells me the former has more chance of happening than the latter?

All who witnessed last week?s Champions (sic) League clash between two ?English? clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea can only but fear for the game. One team set out with a ?must-not-lose? mentality and the other with a ?couldn?t-score-against-a-Kevin-Keegan-led-team? ability! I?m not that concerned with the malaise that Chelsea?s dominance of domestic football will bring to the Premiership, I will continue to belittle their achievements, as I did Manchester United?s, as nothing when compared to the glorious past of the mighty Liverpool.

So, aside from the obvious optical deficiencies suffered by the referee on Wednesday night that prevented him awarding even one of the three penalties that Liverpool could/should have had, what is it that is leading to our inability to put the ball in the back of the net?

Formation

The formation? It?s the future they say, the Europeans have been doing it for years, 4-5-1 is the way to conquer the world! Put it this way, I was at Windsor Park three weeks ago when the English media seemingly coaxed Sven into letting England try this out, Owen up front on his own, Rooney on the left wing, and Gerrard or Lampard (still don?t know which) coming from midfield to support the attack. Did the English look like scoring? No. Likewise Liverpool on Wednesday night (again with a centre-forward, Cisse, running the wing) seemed to be relying on a striker largely untried at the highest level to hold the ball up (which Crouch did admirably) for the midfield to run on to (which they largely didn?t). But then it?s hard to know whether the problem is with the formation or the people playing in it.

Personnel

Personnel, eh? Liverpool, as last season, seem to be lacking a goalscorer. In clinching the European Cup only three players scored more than a single goal in all matches, Baros got two, Gerrard four and Garcia five (incidentally, these three players finished equal top scorer in all competitions with 13 goals each). I have always held the opinion that, if you wish for success, you?ve got to have one player netting 20 goals plus a season, provided his teammates also weigh in with a few. Running through the past three decades Liverpool?s leading goalscorers in all competitions have been:

Ian Rush

So why did I produce this table (aside from wallowing in the past a bit too much)? Well, I guess I was trying to prove my point, and I suppose have, to an extent. Liverpool have almost always had a player who could find the net with unerring regularity, the names of Owen, Fowler, Rush, Aldridge, Dalglish, Keegan and Toshack will forever stand up as some of the most feared strikers of their generations. Even in seasons when the strikers weren?t necessarily firing on all cylinders, the midfield could be relied on to make up the difference. But certainly in the nineties goalscoring did not always guarantee Liverpool success (see also Linekar and Klinsmann at Spurs, Wright at Arsenal and Shearer at Newcastle), but then football is about more than beating the opposition?s ?keeper, it?s about stopping the opposition beating yours.

Defence

Sami Hyypia

For that you?ll need a high quality defence, right? Or at the very least a team well enough organised not to expose Hyypia?s lack of pace or Traore?s lack of ability. This also brings us back nicely to the ?must-not-lose? mentality. In the past it brought much criticism to George Graham?s Arsenal and the Italian game, and even Bob Paisley?s Liverpool were accused of being functionally superb without being exciting (although they could score goals), but I also remember that mid-nineties Liverpool side that excited greatly with McManaman, Fowler and Collymore in full flight, only to concede exceedingly soft goals due to roamings of our wing-backs or Babb trying (not half hard enough) to play football out of defence. So, I?m sticking to my guns on this, I?d rather be successful and boring, than exciting and a loser (a la Spurs, or a Keegan side).

?If you don?t concede, you can?t lose!? I say. ?But you can?t win anything if you don?t score,? I hear you cry. Well, I?ve already ruled out the Premiership (let Chelsea have it, then they?ll only be fifteen behind the mighty Reds), so that leaves the Champions League, FA Cup or the thingy sponsored League Cup, and after last May, I?m confident we can beat anybody on penalties!

As for the game, it?ll sort itself out when England next have a decent World Cup or European Championships (don?t worry, it?ll be in the Sun).

With crowd attendances falling, Paddy Power paying out on Chelsea winning the Premiership title in September and a noticeable lack of goals from all sides in the first seven games of the season, the question of ?Has The Premiership become boring?? is the main topic of conversation in workplaces, pubs and radio phone-ins up and down Britain.

While the tabloid media are quick to jump on any ?controversial? bandwagon to help sell more newspapers, it?s often the views of the fans on the terraces that tells the true tale although these days the red tops would have you believe that you?d have a hard time finding any. Over the next few articles, Alan Hylands is going to investigate the real reasons behind the Premiership?s perceived fall from grace starting with the problem of falling attendances.

Football attendances on the whole have been rising steadily over the past decade as the Premiership went through it?s golden period spurred on by the vast sums of Sky TV money invested into turning the national game into the one of the most lucrative entertainment markets on the planet. The money was in turn spent hand over fist by the clubs on bringing in top name players from abroad including Dennis Bergkamp, Gianfranco Zola and David Ginola and generally increasing the marketability of the game by offering big name players at the big clubs who were hyped up by the Sky marketing machine to help them sell more subscriptions.

Even though many predicted an immediate decline in attendances due to three or four top division games being screened every week of the season, it never materialized and the blanket media coverage helped entice many fans back who had previously stopped going as well as attracting the new breed of Johnny Come Lately, prawn sandwich munching affluent supporter who, as football?s stock began to rise in the media, decided that being a football fan was the new fashionable place to be seen and demand for tickets at games increased.

This new breed of fan brought more money to the clubs through corporate hospitality, increased merchandise sales and, as demand grew, higher and higher ticket prices. We heard constantly from the press how the Premiership was the greatest league in the world and the clubs continued to milk the cash cow. This season the trend has reached it?s peak with clubs like Middlesbrough only playing to 14000 fans at the Riverside in their UEFA Cup match against FC Xanthi. Rising ticket prices and the non-stop TV coverage of games at all levels have seemingly finaly taken their toll on the average supporter.

With some tickets at London clubs like Chelsea going for upwards of ?80 a piece it isn?t hard to see how many families have been completely priced out the market and that?s even before you take into account travel costs to and from the ground, food and drink prices outside and inside the stadium and the obligatory trip to the club Megastore for a replica jersey or two. Football as a business cannot be viewed in isolation from the economy as a whole and after several years of astronomical house price rises and a general boom in consumer spending the predicted slump on the High Street and in the housing market will have far reaching implications. Expecting a father with two children to spend around ?200 a match on taking them to the football is increasingly unrealistic. Previously diehard supporters are finding that they simply can?t afford to go to every game and have to pick and choose their matches and, with a fall in football?s fashionable popularity, there just isn?t the same demand from the new breed of fan who would previously have filled that void.

Since leaving the old Divisions 1 to 4 structure the English game at the highest level has continually prostituted itself off to the highest bidder and now it seems their hunger for money above all else has led them to forget that, at the end of the day, it?s a club?s loyal supporters who are the lifeblood of the game and not TV viewing figures and advertising pounds.. Maybe now the powers that be need to sit down and decide how they are going to get back those that have continued to pump their hard earned money into the clubs and have found themselves finally priced out and left on the Premiership shelf.