From the publishers of THE HINDU VOL.31 :: NO.52 :: Dec. 27, 2008 • Contents
	FOOTBALL / LOOKING AHEAD Unhappy 2009? Bankruptcies loom. Yet when the smoke clears, the far from cheerful prospect is that Chelsea and Manchester City, the two clubs owned by billionaires, will still be standing rich and unafflicted, writes Brian Glanville. A gloomy New Year for football? All too probably. Far too many clubs, especially in the English Premiership, have, in the words of the porter in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “hanged themselves on the expectation of plenty”. Bankruptcies loom. Yet when the smoke clears, the far from cheerful prospect is that Chelsea and Manchester City, the two clubs owned by billionaires, will still be standing rich and unafflicted. With an even greater economic superiority over the rest than they have today. This is why I believe that the campaign by Michel Platini, the former French international star who now is the President of UEFA, to force the clubs to cut down their massive debts, is all too likely to go off at half-cock. For while his prescription might well eventually have some effect on the vast majority of such clubs, how can it touch Chelsea, owned by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, and Manchester City, now owned by sheikhs whose wealth makes even that of Abramovich look almost trivial? As things stand, one can indulge in the schadenfreude — the German word which means taking delight in other people’s misfortunes — in the recent shaky form of both clubs. Though at City, Mark Hughes, the manager, seems to be threatening to buy everything that moves, or everything expensive. Though you do wonder whether it is on the cards that they’d pay the insane amount of money demanded by the Italy and Juventus goalkeeper, 30-year-old Gigi Buffon, to leave Juventus for Manchester. At a time when City have a perfectly good and highly promising young goalkeeper of their own, in the agile shape of Joe Hart. Meanwhile, even the presence of the vastly costly Robinho couldn’t save City from yet another embarrassing defeat, at home, by an Everton team so short of strikers that they had to deploy Tim Cahill, a midfielder of renown, there on his own. And bang on time he headed the winning goal! Chelsea? Watching their laborious performance against a previously ailing West Ham, managed by their own former, beloved star Gianfranco Zola, you wondered how long the seeming myth of Big Phil Scolari will endure. The fact is that Chelsea simply having been doing the business at domestic or European level. They made a desperately laborious job of getting the better of modest club in their last European group game. Only when Didier Drogba came on as a substitute and scored an elegant goal did they squeeze through 2-1. But when he came on as a sub, again versus West Ham, he had just one, strong shot, which was saved, and this too disappeared. Will 2009 see their ex-manager Avram Grant return, as he devoutly wishes, to Premiership football? He recently, in his native Israel, gave a self-regarding interview in which he boasted of what a fine run of success Chelsea had under his aegis, and made scathing remarks about Nicolas Anelka. Supremely ill-timed, since that volatile French international striker has been getting goals galore for Chelsea this season. And how conveniently Grant forgets the debacle of Chelsea in the League Cup Final at Wembley when, such hot favourites, they lost pitifully to Spurs. Notionally, Chelsea are deeply in debt, though their chief executive, Peter Kenyon, insists that they are going to get into balance in the foreseeable future. Don’t ask me how; but please note that the whole concept of the club’s debt is wholly artificial, since the vast amount of money is owed to their oligarch owner. True he has recently suffered large losses, but there is a vast amount of money left with which to subsidise the club. Then there is the question of foreign footballers in the Premiership. Sepp Blatter at FIFA and Platini himself deplore the fact and in essence one must agree with them. But what is to be done about it? Their ideal 6 plus 5 solution, six native born players and only five from abroad in each team, may look good on paper, as they say, but how do they suppose they are going to get round the European Union? As we know, the Union’s rules always made it plain that any footballer, qualifying as a European Union worker, could play in any of its countries. Artemio Franchi, the wily former president of UEFA, fought the battle skilfully and bravely for years but really it was always in essence a lost cause. Platini and company hope that pressure can be put upon the Union to make soccer once again a special dispensation but it is hard to see on what their optimism is based. Meanwhile, the South African World Cup looms on a not so far distant horizon, and I still wonder what will happen when it takes place, in a country riven by terrifying violence, where the rape and murder rates in the big cities are zooming up by the week. And though it is now a long while since we have heard the local prophets of doom talk about the huge problems of communications, for this now bloated and overloaded tournament, you wonder whether they have yet been resolved? There will be some sort of a mini dress rehearsal, come the summer when another of those superfluous Blatterised tournaments, the Confederations Cup, is due to take place in South Africa. But it will be only a miniature precursor of the World Cup itself, involving far fewer teams and perhaps still more important, infinitely fewer spectators. They — who won’t be ferried around like officials, players and Press in guarded coaches — will be the ones most at risk of robbery with violence in the dangerous city streets. We have just had another of those deeply superfluous tournaments, Blatterised again, in the shape of the so called Club World Cup — clumsiest of titles — in Japan. The successor to the old Intercontinental Championship, which, for all its horrible episodes of violence, above all in Argentina, at least involved only the winners of the European Cup and the South American Libertadores Cup. Now we even have an Australian team among those competing. And the likes of Manchester United — bullied by the FA and the Government to forsake the FA Cup which they held to compete in the first, farcical edition — obliged to quit England and the Premiership for nine long days. 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