Is Money Ruining Football Essay

Is money ruining football? One of the most talked about topics in football. Some fans think that it is a wonderful thing, a dream come true however others seem to disagree. Is all of this money in modern day football ruining it? From all this money football seems to become a victim of its own success. One main part of this money being in football is due to a lot of clubs having foreign ownership.
It all came about in 2003 when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea FC and since then he has put in hundreds-upon-hundreds of millions of his own money into the club Chelsea have since won nine major trophies including three Premier League titles and most recently the UEFA Champions League. Proof that wealth can indeed buy honours in the world of football. Since then half of the 20 Premier League clubs are now owned by foreigner investors. Those clubs are: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, QPR, Reading, Southampton and Sunderland.
Perhaps the most spectacular of them all is politician and member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Manchester City. Since he has bought the club in 2008 he has spent over ? 425 of his own money to buy first team players for the club. The highest fee that has ever been paid for a footballer is ? 80 million for Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United to Real Madrid, this is a major difference to what the highest fee in 1928 the highest amount paid for a player was ? 10,000.

The maximum wage has was also only ? 12 a week and players got a ? 650 bonus if they stayed at the club for 5 years whereas nowadays the most paid players is on ? 250,000 pound a week. This colossal money being spent to attract a footballer to a club doesn’t necessarily mean that the player is any better than another; it purely is just saying that the club has more money than the others. This is having a negative effect on football as now players are playing for the money and now not the club that they are playing for.
It is also very unfair on competition in the same league meaning the richer team has an advantage as they can pay crazy amounts to get a player but a lower team can spend very little meaning the competition on less competitive. So if your club has more money it then attracts players who are better known where less known clubs have to settle on lower wages meaning that the players that they buy will be on a much less wage than those of a higher team. One big problem hat money has is the risk of the football club going bust. The most recognisable of those clubs currently in major financial trouble is former Premier League club Portsmouth, now of League One. The club is currently in administration and runs the risk of being non existant. This has come from the club overspending on players and the wages the players been given far too much than what they realistically should be on. Last season Premier League clubs shared a staggering ? 68 million in television revenue, if the Premier League were to introduce a ‘safety pot’ of money (? 9. 68 million) for football league and Conference clubs so that in severe cases clubs can apply for grants to stop them going into administration/save clubs from going bust. Having an owner with millions to spend isn’t always as good as it sounds since it runs the risk of your club vanishing forever. One of the major things though is the rise in ticket prices.
Football used to be called the working class sport but now it is an expensive pastime and something that the average working class man struggles to afford. This is shown at St. James’ Park when in 1992/9 3 you were able to get an adult season ticket for around ? 122 but nowadays the average season ticket is around ? 500 which shows how expensive football is now getting and that in 20 years there has been a 150 percent rise in prices.
It seems that football is now slowly changing from a working class sport to a sport for those who are wealthier. The only solution to stop money from continuing to ruin football is by Uefa the governing body of football to try and do something about it by introducing salary caps or by putting in place transfer caps so only certain amounts of money can be spent in the transfer market and this would have an effect on agent fees, sponsorship and TV deals which would then ticket prices could be lowered and that clubs could still turn a profit.
Another thing is putting a limit on how many foreign players you can have in your team which would mean more home-grown players would be in the team and then less wages would be spent and transfer prices to attract players from overseas and this would mean teams would need to spend more money on youth academies rather than looking all over the world for players to spend ridiculous amounts of money on. Football is no longer turning into a sport, it is a business that is now worth millions and millions of pounds and this is taking the game to its knees. By Reece Paterson.