HOW CAN OUR BEAUTIFUL GAME REBUILD FOR A BETTER FUTURE?
Stand up to crooked FIFA, share the wealth, stop moaning and blood more British kids...
SPORTSMAIL’S FOOTBALL WRITERS OFFER THEIR SUGGESTIONS... IAN LADYMAN
IF we are serious about recalibrating the way we look at life and football, here is a decent place to start. Let us consider our participation in the next World Cup.
If ever there was a time to make a stand in opposition to the dark practices that have infiltrated the top of our game, it is now.
Qatar — it continues to be alleged — won the rights to host World Cup 2022 illegally. Prosecutors in New York have revealed details this week of bribes they believe were paid to two South American officials to vote for Qatar back in 2010.
Nobody who heard this news was surprised. It is the tip of a very big iceberg.
The FBI said this week: ‘ The profiteering and bribery in international soccer have been deepseated and commonly known practices for decades.’
So here in England, we have a choice. We can shake our heads and look at our shoes and then proceed with the business of qualifying. We might have a very good team by then.
Or we can say we are not going. We can say we have had enough and want no part of a tournament awarded by a process that was not transparent. At the very least, we can say we are not going until we have seen real and concrete evidence of future change.
The stadiums are already being built in the Middle East. So far, 34 migrant workers have died in the six years of construction. The tournament will go ahead.
But we don’t have to be part of it. We have a very loud voice. It would be heard.
It would be hard on our players and manager Gareth Southgate (below). It would be hard on our public, too. But would it be a price worth paying? Maybe it would.
How much do we really need a football festival built on dirty money and death anyway? Maybe not as much as we think we do.
One thing is clear. Somebody — at some stage — simply has to send FIFA an unequivocal message that the crookedness must end.
If not now, when?
MATT BARLOW
IF there is one hope to keep the nation going through the pandemic which has brought life as we know it to a halt, it must be that we come out of the other side in a better place. Perhaps more connected and aware, appreciative of what we have rather than greedy for what we want and altogether a little less selfish, prepared to help others less fortunate.
Isn’t that the reason we stood outside and applauded our frontline workers?
The hope for football must be the same. That a game bloated with cash at the top finds a way to share its wealth and protect the sport. Maybe pay less to players and their agents and to each other in the endless dance of transfers and stop ripping off fans. Slash ticket prices, let key workers in for free. Reconnect with the people and not via short- scripted messages from mansions posted on social media because (believe it or not) they usually have the opposite effect.
Unfortunately, football appears impatient to get back in the same old groove, tripping over its own feet in desperation to make more millions. Those who represent the players send out the wrong signals by bleating about the fear of burning out with the prospect of three games in a week and resisting pay deferrals. All are missing the irony at a time when people really are burning out as they work around the clock to protect lives. Early signs are not too encouraging, but you can only hope.
IAN HERBERT
ARCHAIC though it might seem, a big positive is that football might actually return to aspects of the way it was in the 1980s.
The world will be a smaller place when we are over this hill. Less money washing around the world and our economy and our football system.
The notion of paying a footballer £ 100,000 a week — let alone £300,000 a week — will hopefully be history. So, too, the kind of obscene money paid out to agents.
So a fundamental skill which was everything in the 80s — the ability to spot local talent, nurture it and give it a chance to develop — might actually return to the fore.
We might just rediscover how it feels to have a Premier League which is a British league, giving opportunities to hundreds of British players. Young players who would not even get a look-in if we continue on the path of jetting off with a cheque book to Argentina, Ivory Coast or South Korea.
There is a reason why we neutrals began to love Chelsea when, restricted by a transfer ban, they suddenly gave chances to Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and Billy Gilmour.
God knows, the sport needs this recalibration. The lunatic economics of the Championship mean that Stoke City will burn through their slice of EFL emergency hand- out in only NINE days — on wages alone.
There is a positive from all of this, if it means that the football clubs we love are not dependent on the whim of a millionaire bookmaker or a sheik but are entirely viable businesses.
Financial Fair Play hasn’t worked because too many clubs just find ways of cheating the system. Yes, the technical level might be slightly reduced in a more homegrown Premier League. But the top flight will no longer be out of reach to all but a handful of elite young players. And it will no longer be out of reach to those squeezed out by exorbitant ticket prices. A sport for all — as we once knew it.
CHRIS SUTTON
ONCE this is over, I don’t want to hear a single complaint about there being too much football on our television screens again. Not even when the only live game available is Newcastle v Burnley — a clash between two teams who hate having the ball!
I covered their goalless draw at St James’ Park for BBC 5 Live in February, when Burnley managed zero shots on target. But, my God, what we’d all give to be able to watch 90 minutes of live football again. What this suspension of sport has made us realise is how much we take it for granted.
Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo (right) was among the Premier League managers who had a pop at the fixture list at Christmas. I didn’t agree with him at the time because a packed schedule is nothing new. In 1976- 77, Bob Paisley’s Liverpool won the First Division and European Cup, as well as finishing runners-up in the FA Cup.
They played no fewer than 62 games in 284 days. Now Nuno’s complaints appear even more out of touch. We’d love to have the problem of too much football being played. So let’s cut that out once the 2019-20 season gets going again.
To me, the only issue in football that compares to the coronavirus is the fight against dementia. That costs lives, too, and still needs addressing properly. Apart from that, everything else feels petty.
SAMI MOKBEL
FOOTBALL will never be the same after this. Well, let’s hope that’s the case.
Governed by greed, shamelessly self-centred — the Premier League should be taking a leaf out of the British public’s book.
While society displays the purest sense of camaraderie we’ve felt for a long time, those at the top of English football appear to be working to a very different agenda. A financial agenda. OK, losing £750million in TV revenue is a big
deal. But how do you put a price on a crisis like this? the safety of the football community — players, coaches, fans — should be the only consideration right now.
Any plans to restart the season should be forgotten. If the season can’t be completed safely, so be it. even if it costs £750m.
So, when this is all done, perhaps top-flight clubs can come together — much like the public — to formulate a plan to support teams who are less fortunate.
Wasn’t that always the plan anyway? It’s obviously not working. Clubs wouldn’t be going to the wall otherwise.
So, Premier League clubs should make a financial commitment to support clubs in the eFL and non-League.
Set aside a sum of money at the start of every season, not just a token gesture, to ensure the financial stability of those in the lower reaches of english football.
Look after those clubs in close proximity to you. there’s enough of the cake to go around.
Would it really hurt a Premier League team to allow one of their academy or fringe players to leave on loan for nothing?
Would it really hurt for them to continue paying all his wages while he’s on loan? Surely that’s a win-win for all.
CRAIG HOPE
oFten, the obvious answer is the best one, and chief among the positives that can emerge is the caution that will now be applied to expenditure.
We have seen during the course of the past fortnight how fragile football clubs are beneath the Premier League — and perhaps even some within it.
that is not a criticism, there is no blame here. they are simply working to a budget they assumed would be available.
But scarred by wounds that are sure to deepen in the coming months — you cannot see football returning until late summer at the earliest — there will be a newfound conservatism, given the fear of another absence 12 or 18 months down the line.
Coronavirus isn’t going away for ever, remember.
As a consequence, some of the obscene figures that have become the norm in football — agents’ fees are high on that list — will be greatly reduced, for there simply won’t be the demand and competition for such services.
rather, you would hope to see clubs turn to their academies to fill holes in the squad.
Will that make football ‘better’? Let’s see, but we have called for a heavier accent on youth for a long time now — especially with regard to english talent — so here’s an opportunity for such players to emerge. Chelsea supporters have, for the large part, certainly enjoyed the elevation of their young stars this season.
So expenditure will be driven down, either through caution and fear or because the funds simply aren’t there any more. We will all be a little more frugal once the worst of this is over, you suspect.
In football, you feel such a check is long overdue.
CHRIS WHEELER
MAYBe, just maybe, all this will help us redress the relationship between footballers and the rest of society.
At a time when our nhS doctors and nurses are emerging as true heroes in the front line against coronavirus, maybe we will begin to look a little differently at those people who are paid significantly more to kick a ball.
that’s not to undermine the game. It’s our national sport, hugely popular and offers an escapism that will never be more important than in the months of recovery ahead.
Players deserve their status and, yes, even the wealth that goes with it. But there is something deeply distasteful about the superstar culture. Us and them. Young men detached from reality, as Jack Grealish demonstrated so ably last month.
Many players get it. those who have performed acts of great kindness in recent weeks, or others with a social conscience like Juan Mata who set up his Common Goal initiative long before anyone had heard of Covid-19.
But there are others who don’t. Young men born into an obscene, distorted world that we have helped to create.
I’m reminded of an incident last month when a footballer (not Paul Pogba, by the way) flew back into the UK, hardly inconspicuous in a luminous green tracksuit and matching baseball cap.
When airport security officers went to frisk his personal bodyguard, the player intervened and said: ‘Don’t worry, he’s with me.’
I’m not pining for the days when a player would join fans on the tram to the game with a Woodbine wedged between his lips, but a little perspective would be nice.
It would be heartening to think that an experience as humbling and horrible as the coronavirus pandemic might also bring about a bit more humility as well.
DOMINIC KING
the one thing I hope will happen with football when it returns is the lowering of ticket prices across the board.
Some clubs are very good in terms of looking after their supporters but others have performed acts of grand larceny on fans. the prices of cup final tickets, for instance, are a disgrace.
We have to be realistic. the impact of Covid- 19 on the economy will be enormous and people are going to be in a position where they do not have the same levels of surplus cash that they had before.
If clubs keep ticket prices at old levels, many are going to find demand for seats dwindling.
Gate receipts do not impact on a top-flight football club’s finances in the way they used to 25 years ago. the huge revenue that comes in through sponsorship deals and, of course, television means season-ticket sales do not pay for players’ wages in the way they once did.
Clubs, surely, could have some margin to lower the price of a seat to give more fans more of an opportunity to see matches. You would hope, too, that the days when it cost more than £100 to go to a cup final — as was the case when Manchester City played Aston Villa last month — are gone.
these are strange times and normality could be some way away.
Certainly people will think twice about travelling to see their teams abroad in the future.
It would be heartening, then, to think that when normality does return, the chance to see football here will be priced competitively.
If the Premier League resumes behind closed doors, we will really appreciate the full meaning of why football without supporters is nothing.
In the post Covid- 19 world, I hope those fans are treated fairly.