In weather-conscious Britain and Galicia, every
month is a record for some reason or other. And, with a couple of
days to go, I nominate this June as the least good since I came here
more almost 14 years ago. It was so bad last week that, while friends
in the UK were complaining they couldn't sleep because of the heat, I
was putting the duvet back on the bed. Here's hoping for a decent
July and August.
So, Richard North called it wrong and Mr Juncker
was duly anointed President of the EU Commission. Last week I pointed
out there were 2 diametrically opposed views on record in the UK -
one that current events meant that a Brexit was inevitable and the
other that it was now impossible. I wonder if yesterday's denouement
has produced unanimity. Meanwhile, here's the take of an arch quitter
- A New Career for Kim Jong Juncker.
When I saw the daft Presidenta of Argentina - Mrs
Kirchner - insisting the country wouldn't pay its debts to "vulture"
capitalists, I wondered if she knew what she was doing. And, since
she was supping with the Devil, whether her spoon was long enough.
So, I wasn't surprised to later see full page ads in Spanish papers
claiming that Argentina was being prevented from paying its
debts. By which, I guessed, she was offering to pay off only some of
them. And now I see a US court has blocked part-payment, putting
Argentina at risk of a second bankruptcy. Not a great way to run a
country. Perhaps the UK could help by selling them the oil-rich(?)
Malvinas. Named after Frenchmen, by the way. From Saint-Malo.
I've long thought the EU would eventually collapse
under the weight of its internal incongruities. So I'd naturally warm
to these comments from Christopher Booker: When history comes to
be written, this reckless attempt to expand the EU’s empire right
into Russia’s backyard will be seen to rank alongside the crazy
gamble of the euro as the two most obvious symbols of how the
“European project” eventually over-reached itself. And the choice
for the most powerful post in the EU of a man so blatantly unsuitable
for the job is just another symptom of how we are now looking at an
increasingly dysfunctional vanity project which is destroying itself
from within.
More recently I've said that the problem with
English footballers is that they're simply not smart enough. As
someone else has written this weekend: Some footballers need to
appreciate that football is a cerebral activity as much as a physical
one. They need to train the brain more. Andres Iniesta, a world and
European champion, took on extra university studies to sharpen his
mental faculties.
Finally . . . For English fans - and others -
here's a fascinating analysis of why England are now perpetual
losers. I suspect the chances of his recommendations being
implemented are close to nil.
World Cup 2014: Bad football, bad capitalism -
Why England lose. By David Clark
The inquest into England’s worst ever World Cup
campaign has focused on the usual questions of team selection,
tactics and the attitude of the players, along with the obligatory
search for a scapegoat. Comparatively little attention has been given
to the deeper structural and cultural factors that have inhibited
England’s long-term performance on the pitch. Poor coaching? A
dearth of talent? A dysfunctional league structure? Sure, but these
are just symptoms. There are more fundamental reasons for England’s
48 years of hurt and they reflect the deficiencies of our society and
economy more generally.
The story of football in this country is, of
course, inseparably linked to the rise of industrial capitalism. It
was the creation of an urban working class that provided the catalyst
for football’s emergence as a form of mass entertainment. Britain’s
trading empire was the transmission mechanism that turned it into a
global sport. But having gifted football and capitalism to the world,
Britain quickly became a second-rank power in both. By 1914, Germany
and the United States were well on the way to becoming the dominant
industrial economies. As Jonathan Wilson notes in his book Inverting
the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics, the spirit of
innovation in football moved abroad almost as soon as other countries
adopted the game.
This is more than simple coincidence. In
economics, as in sport, a mix of hubris, insularity and misplaced
cultural superiority meant that Britain was reluctant to learn from,
or even acknowledge, the extent to which other countries had taken
our ideas and improved them. The footballing authorities believed
there was a correct way to play the game—direct, uncomplicated and
physical, corresponding to a peculiarly English upper-class notion of
manliness. Signs of professionalism, like training, were frowned upon
and even the Scottish innovation of passing the ball instead of
rushing at the goal was resisted at first. These attitudes are still
reflected in the way the sport is often coached at youth level, the
cries of “shoot” whenever the ball passes the half-way line and
the frankly ludicrous debate about whether England should practice
penalties.
British capitalism is in many ways the economic
equivalent of the long ball game. The “gentlemanly” values that
permeated the City before the Big Bang may have been swept away like
the Corinthian ethos in sport, but their legacy endures in a
managerial culture that prefers the muscular, route-one approach to
profit making over the patient style of our foreign competitors. It
has produced an unstable, lop-sided economy that chooses financial
engineering and credit-fuelled growth over the difficult business of
making products that other countries want to buy.
The link between short-termism in football and
industry becomes more obvious when you consider the emergence of the
PLC as the dominant form of club ownership. One consequence has been
the emergence of a hire and fire mentality that has seen the tenure
of league managers halve in the space of two decades to less than 1.5
years, despite compelling evidence that sacking the manager usually
does more harm than good. Last season’s dismissal of David Moyes
was even timed to coincide with the opening of the New York Stock
Exchange.
The proportion of homegrown players in the
top-flight football has shrunk from 69 per cent to 32 per cent since
the launch of the Premier League in 1992, narrowing opportunity and
draining the pool of talent. Free movement and the short-term
pressures of the game combine to make this inevitable. Why waste time
and money nurturing a local player who may or may not turn out to be
a superstar when you can buy one off the peg from abroad, especially
when you’re a manager with a life expectancy of 1.5 years? The same
link between rising labour mobility and collapsing training budgets
in the wider economy is the reason why immigration is now a proxy
issue for economic insecurity.
England’s prospects are unlikely to improve
without serious reform designed to redistribute power and resources
within the game. The first step should be to do something about an
ownership structure that has turned our top clubs into little more
than a collection of investment assets and oligarchs’ playthings. A
move towards the German system, where majority fan ownership is
mandatory, would create the committed, long-term ownership needed to
change the priorities of football governance. Bundesliga clubs invest
twice as much in youth football, have twice as many homegrown players
and keep their managers for twice as long. The shift could be
gradual. Why not require Premier League clubs to transfer a
proportion of gate receipts each year into a supporters trust in the
form of a shareholding until it reaches 50 per cent +1?
A second objective should be to redirect
investment towards youth training. There is no shortage of money in
the game; it’s just going to the wrong places. Premier League clubs
spend 71% of their revenues on players’ wages compared to 51% in
the Bundesliga. There may be little the authorities can do to stop
clubs from spending money in this way, but why not oblige top clubs
to contribute a proportion of their payroll to fund the youth
academies of clubs in the lower divisions? Those who spend the most
trying to buy short-term success should invest the most in securing
the long-term future of the national game.
It would be too reductive to suggest bad football
is the result of bad capitalism and more accurate to say that they
share common roots in a national culture based on short-termism and
laissez-faire. Building a more “responsible” capitalism would
create a wider context of reform in which the game’s deficiencies
could be finally addressed. The alternative would be to carry on as
if nothing is really wrong until the next financial crash and the
next World Cup exit.
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