(right PELE: perhaps the world's best player ever)
So what the hell is going on with the big European Soccer-Crazed Nations?
The 2006 World Cup finalists France and Italy are already home, supping wine and sipping cappucio watching the final 16 teams on their televisions. Germany will likely eliminate England, continuing England’s curse of losing to nations that they defeat in war (Argentina/Germany). Spain will possibly be eliminated by Portugal.
Yet in League football Italy, Spain and England, and to lesser extent Germany, absolutely dominate the world. But not the World Cup.
It was easy to predict North Korea’s elimination. Everyone outside Kim Jong-il’s inner circle predicted that one. But then few would’ve predicted that Germany and Spain would be beaten by Switzerland and Serbia. Or, that Italy, current World Cup holders, would be held to draws with the likes of New Zealand and Paraguay and then eliminated by Slovakia.
It is increasingly looking like the World Cup finalists will be two Latin American teams.
I grew up in the period of the peak of Brazil’s ascent in world football. Their star, Pele, went to the World Cup final and won a record three times. During the 70s and 80s there was a clear distinction made between the slower, more defensive soccer method of Europe and the dynamic, offensive style of Latin American teams. Over recent years neither style seems to have eliminated the other. They may in fact have merged.
But there has been a huge change in soccer since Pele’s Brazil won the World Cup in 1970. According to Dutch soccer author and expert Simon Kuper, the average soccer player ran about 3km per match in the 1970s. Today soccer players often run 10km in a single game. The intensity of soccer has been ratcheted up to an incredible degree. No-one stands around waiting for the ball. It’s actually just a mirror of what’s happened in all our workplaces. And our lives.
It’s also not an empty cliché to say that money dominates the game. It does so in ways it never used to. Soccer franchises and games are now a $250 billion global industry.
In the 1950s a professional soccer player in English League football made no more than a skilled blue-collar worker. Then came televison. Television did not kill attendance at live games. But in ways that radio could not do, it deepened and widened the reach of soccer. English soccer 30 years ago, for instance, when I was attending Chelsea games, was a male-only sport. Out of 40,000 standing room fans at Stanford Bridge, you would perhaps see a dozen women. Some Saturdays you wouldn’t see a woman. Today that’s all changed. Now it is a family sport, widening its consumer appeal and it’s profit potential.
TV and cable TV helped extend football’s reach to the globe. The market economy chased the money. The money brought the game to more people. The game became more globalized. The game became more intense and the game has been more intensely tailored to its profit potential. Despite routine complaints from top FIFA officials about big money distorting the game, big money has intensified the race for the top League spots and in turn led to a massive monopolization of the biggest teams.
Rated by their capital assets, teams like England’s Manchester United (worth $1.8 billion), Spain’s Real Madrid ($1.3billion) and Italy’s AC Milan ($800 million) dominate their country’s leagues. Of the top 10 League teams in the world all are European. All are either in England, Spain, Italy or Germany. England now has 2 almost absolutely dominant teams (Chelsea and Man U.). Spain the same: FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. Italy has AC Milan, Inter-Milan and Juventus, all in the richest top 10 clubs in the world.
Fewer and fewer teams dominating more and more football. Lenin foresaw it. Well, in his own way.
These big 10 European clubs, also including Germany’s Bayern Munich, are not fielding homegrown stars. A hundred years ago players were all local. Fifty years ago the best players gravitated across their countries to play for their nation’s best League teams. In the last 10 years English, Italian, Spanish and German clubs have searched every single corner of the planet to pick up the best players. Soccer has become globalized in the same way other big capitalist businesses have.
These are the World’s top10 League clubs followed by the number of non-native born players (ie players robbed mostly from poorer nations.)
1.Manchester United (31 out of 47)
2. Real Madrid (9 out of the top 13)
3. Arsenal (26 out of 30)
4. FC Barcelona (14 out of 26)
5. Bayern Munich (8 out of the top 11)
6. Liverpool (9 out of the top 11)
7. AC Milan (15 out of 28)*
8. Juventus (13 out of 24)
9. Chelsea (8 out of the top 11)
10. Inter Milan (Has only ONE Italian player in the first eleven)
* AC Milan is slightly exception as it is owned by the anti-immigrant Italian billionaire and Prime Minister Burlesconi, but it still follows the general trend.
So Football Capitalism has reached around the globe and bought up the world’s best players. So how has this affected, adversely or otherwise, the fortunes of Europe in this World Cup. I’ll try and take that up in Part 2.
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