Money Makes Soccer Teams Play Differently

In the last few years, we have been facing a threat in the world of soccer – the threat of money. Football has always been the most popular sport on the planet. In fact, it has been more than just any sport. For me, it’s like a religion.

A religion involving fans and club and their faith in each other. Club requires faithful fans, and fans require their club to value and promote loyalty.

Since Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003, a trend has been established in the world of football. A trend made for the millionaires and dreamt by most of us – owning an elite club.

Owning and investing in a club has a lot of advantages- security for your money and security from the government or other agencies coming after your financial statements.

Along with these, it’s an increasing commercial market that can generate a lot of money, which is possible, if you know what you are doing.

This has led to a serious problem in the modern game. The owners of every club want to have the very best on their team, because let’s face it- we want our club to succeed and our investment to payback.

As a result, they spend a lot of money and buy the top players in the market from another big club or several small ones.

The problem is not with them getting the best out of their money; the problem is the consequences of them getting the best out of their money.

We all know football is not a sole-team game; we need a lot of teams to compete with each other, for maybe leagues or cups or any other competition. Along with that, we need entertainment with uncertainty in game, or else we would be watching the pre-scripted WWE every Monday night.

For that uncertainty, we require teams to have some pre-built strategy so that they can come to the field and use that strategy to beat the opponents. And that’s exactly what was happening before the trend of investing in club began.

Now, since most of the elite players are in the few big teams and even if somehow, a small club develops some academy born talent, due to financial imbalance, the rich owners buy those players.

As a result, the competition in the matches are less fierce. For a match with the elite teams, small clubs prepare to concede fewer goals instead of trying to beat them.

The dream of cups are long forgotten by the non-leading clubs. The only priority is to remain in the league so that they can compete again next season.

And this is what concerns me. If clubs only prioritize league, even if it means finishing 10th and not bother cup competitions, where’s the dream, faith and the religion?

I am not saying that every competition has lost the competitiveness.

We all watch the English Premier League where still huge uncertainties and entertainment fills every single match. But since we are yet to take action on the trend of spending huge on clubs, our faith in sports is still in danger of being lost.