CLUBS ALWAYS PUT MONEY AHEAD OF PLAYERS’ WELFARE
ASKED for his views on the decision to move the Africa Cup of Nations back to a January slot next season, Jurgen Klopp came off his long run. Seven minutes and 1,043 words later, he had finished and buried within all of it was one very simple but important modern truth.
Referring, in one of many tangential diversions, to FIFA’s abysmal decision to play a 24-team Club World Cup over a month in China in the summer of next year, the Liverpool manager said: ‘It must be a lot of money for all the clubs involved. It means the clubs will say: “Maybe we can play in it”.
‘They ask their managers and they would say: “No”. But the clubs could be paid a lot of money.’
So we can put a tick next to one participant in FIFA’s Chinese jamboree. Liverpool will be there, whether Klopp likes it or not. They will be there, even if their manager thinks it’s not healthy for his players after another long season.
Yes, Liverpool will be there, and so will all the rest. Money comes first and everything else follows. That’s the truth of it.
Down the road at Manchester United, there have been some murmurings that a stand of principle could be taken. Old Trafford executive vice- chairman Ed Woodward sits on the board of the European Club Association (ECA) and signed a letter opposing the expansion of the Club World Cup only last March.
However, just eight months later in November 2019, the prospect of the lucrative new tournament was being flagged up as a ‘ highlight’ ahead of Woodward’s conference call with United investors to mark the publication of the club’s quarterly accounts. So it seems United are smelling the money, too, and none of us should be really surprised.
Who really cares about the players when early estimates are that participating clubs could earn as much as £100million each once TV rights and the rest have been taken into account?
And it’s not just the health and fitness of players that is the issue here. This is about the quality of what we watch, too.
FIFA live by a misguided belief that more is always better. More football, more money, more nice hotels. They believe that indicators of quality are attendances, TV viewing figures and the value of the broadcasting rights.
If lots of people are watching and paying then everything must be good. But that simply isn’t true. The value of a tournament or a league is only ever really reflected by what happens on the field and this is where people like Klopp come in.
Klopp does not want to take his players to China any more than United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer does. They both know that the travel and the climate and the football — the sheer absence of real time off — will directly affect their team’s form and prospects once the Premier League season starts in August 2021. They also both know that their views will be listened to and then largely overruled. At Arsenal, former manager Arsene Wenger was the last of the modern breed to stand firm against the curse of the long haul pre- season tour. For years, while United, Liverpool and Chelsea were hawking their players round Asia and America in July, Wenger and his team were training gently and privately in Austria.
‘It’s better for the players,’ Wenger once said. He was right, but it wasn’t to last. By the time Wenger left in 2018, he had been over- ruled and Arsenal had joined the gravy train.
Modern football. It gets even the best of them in the end.
Ian.Ladyman@dailymail.co.uk