The power of money
Just take a look at the English Premier League now and what it was a couple of years back. Who would have even imagined that Chelsea would become such a dominant side? All that mattered back then was Arsenal vs. ManU. Chelsea was just one more team among the also-rans. If Mourinho had been coaching Chelsea back then, I'm sure Wenger would have cared two hoots about his comments. (For the uninformed, Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger are the current coaches of Chelsea and Arsenal, respectively. I hope I don't need to add that Sir Alex Ferguson is the coach of Manchester United!) But, now with Chelsea being the only unbeaten team in the league, obviously Mourinho is the man on whom all the limelight is on. So, when he calls Wenger a "voyeur" obviously it has to be big news; he can no more be dismissed as just another madman.
And the reason for this drastic change in just two years is because of the limitless funds that Chelsea has its disposal now with Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich having bought the team. Now, they can afford to buy as many players as they wish without concern for the moolah that the team manages to rake in via game tickets, endorsements, sales of merchandise, etc. I really pity the other teams in the league. How can they be even expected to compete with Chelsea in such circumstances? Whenever any player has a great season, you can rest assured that Chelsea will certainly consider buying him. Even Steven Gerrard almost gave in to the temptation after scaling the heights at Liverpool by winning the Champions League last season. If this continues any longer, they might as well not have any matches in the league and hand the championship to Chelsea forever!
And all this because of Abramovich's billions. The power of Oil has come to dictate sport as well now. What a sad state to be in? The only reason to have any hope is that ManU too has been bought over by a billionaire! And this time by an American, Malcolm Glazer (who incidentally owns a team in the NFL as well, Tampa Bay Buccaneers). Wow, the Cold War will be fought all over again - this time in the English Premier League :-) Until now, ManU haven't made any really big acquisitions other than that of Rooney from Everton. If they continue to play like they did this week - they lost to Middlesborough in the Premier League and an unheard of French team, called Lille, in the Champions League - we could soon see the power of money coming into play at ManU as well pretty soon. And then, every year, we'll have the English Premier League decided by the bidding wars that ManU and Chelsea have at the start of the season.
The only way out to maintain any sense of parity between different teams seems to be either
1. Put up every team in the league as being on sale to be bought by a billionaire, or
2. Introduce a salary cap system
They better make the obvious choice soon or shut down the Premiership ...
(I apologize for any errors in spelling out all these crazy names!)
Cheers,
Harsha
posted by Harsha V. Madhyastha @ 12:42 AM
5 Comments:
wasnt there some plan to make the ranji trophy more privatized (the guy in charge of the man singh stadium and i.s bindra are supposed to be great fans of this idea) -- to have leagues where teams would be owned and players could move around -- that will get rid of the silly regionalism in indian cricket and potentially get a lot more indian cricket to "watch" for jobless folks (like me...)
Yeah, Bindra has been having such plans for a while now. He even wants BCCI to have its own cricket channel so as to do away with all this wrangling over TV rights and also maximize profits.
But, I guess organizations will come in and buy the teams only if they see enough money it. And I think the only way to ensure sustained viewership is to have 20-20 kinda games on weekday nights and one-day games maybe during the weekend. Also, every team needs to be pretty competitive for which the number of teams will have to be pretty small I guess. Considering the amount of hype the Premier Hockey League generated, maybe a cricket league will manage to work out too.
btw.. Manu kicked chelsea's A**E... :))
Arsenal rocks!!! anyday... START of Chelsea decline:))
From what I've read until now, it was a pretty close match. It wasn't as though ManU dominated Chelsea!
Anyway, I'm certainly not complaining. :) Always good to see some competition.
hey .. I realized that the seattle's best radio channel in shoutcast is hosted by u... thanks buddy.. u made my day on my linux box:)
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