I love watching professional football/soccer. Personally, the beautiful game evokes tremendous levels of emotional passion, desire, excitement, anger, and despair. It is truly one of the greatest forms of entertainment that the world has to offer. When life is hard, people often turn to activities that comfort them. For many around the globe, that activity is enjoying soccer matches. However, even that bit of comfort—of distraction—is under attack from those who have already exercised specific morals and values that demonstrate the worst characteristics of humanity.
Just recently, some unsavory allegations and rumours have sprung in the football world. First, Manchester City has been accused by the Premier League of cooking their financial books to purchase expensive players. City was lying about where sponsorship money was sourced in order to inflate the fair market value of the team. If the fair market value is higher, financial fair play rules will permit a team to spend more from the money received from their sponsorship deals. City was receiving sponsorship money from themselves, namely, their Emirati owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment. Second, the Qataris would like to break European football by owning Manchester United along with Paris Saint Germain. On the back of the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United last summer and the hosting of the 2022 World Cup in December, Qatar has seen and experienced the success of sports washing. Not wanting to cede prestige to the Saudis, the Qataris would like to own the biggest club in England and the biggest club in France. Finally, the European Super League proposals have been revived after over a year of dormant rumblings. In this version, 60-80 clubs will be admitted based upon sporting merit in their domestic leagues. The reaction to these salient issues has been controversial and negative.
Maybe us fans just need to realize that the powerful do not hold their battles on the pitch. Instead, they seek their victories in the background. The Abu Dhabi Group did not buy City and spend billions for the purpose of athletic competition. Their competition is solely political: To show the West that they have developed and their rivals that they are superior. With all due respect, what serious economic advisor would recommend diversification of state assets into sports ownership? Thus, the same political agendas hold true for the Saudis and the Qataris. They will never explicitly say it, but anyone with critical thinking skills can see it. The European Super League is about politics and money. Owners of large clubs have silently lamented UEFA and their domestic football association’s control of the game. The European Super League is an attempt to shift the power balance and the monetary base in the name of “growing the game.”
Fans should have one message for these actors: Leave us alone. These people already ruin our lives in many other aspects. They create wars, recessions, inflations, and crises. The fact they cannot even let sport and athletics exist without their illuminating influence is truly symbolic of their unrelenting need for power and control. It is truly psychotic. So for the fans lamenting that an oil-state owns their club, the fans lamenting owners who wring their clubs for every penny, and the fans whose clubs are wrought with internal and external corruption I say on behalf of you all: Leave us alone.