Be fair to Platini

To be fair to Platini, he has made no secret of the fact that he is concerned about the financial imbalance in football and particularly the increasing dominance of the CL by English clubs. This is no different to people complaining about the dominance of the Premier League by the big 4. Whether he is going about this in the right way is open to question. The alleged domination of the Champions League has come about through the financial strength of the Premier League and its deals with Sky and other TV companies. This is what has given United, Liverpool & to a lesser extent Arsenal their financial muscle.

The pre-occupation with debt in relation to United, Liverpool and Arsenal is a red-herring as that debt has only been used to fund the purchase of the clubs themselves (or the building of the Emirates in Arsenal's case) rather than team-building to a level that would have been unaffordable otherwise. In fact there's a case for saying that this level of debt has actually restricted their opportunity to buy top class players to some degree.

The City bid for Kaka just gave him another stick to beat the PL with. There is no logic to his statement that £100m is too much - it's just emotive. What is or isn't too much is entirely subjective - I expect the same fuss was made about the first £1,000 player. He would have a point if our youth team had won the Carling Cup, our reserves had won the FA Cup and the first team had won the PL & CL for the last three seasons but we haven't. In fact we have been one of the worst at living within our means, even under John Wardle where we spent around £10m a year more than we got in. Thaksin Shinawatra was even worse and seemingly borrowed money we had little hope of being able to repay while staying afloat.

I don't have a problem with a regulatory regime where clubs are restricted to spending what they earn, as long as the cake is divided more equally, as it is in the NFL. Of course, while we've got untold riches then I'm happy to wait awhile for that.

CITY1894

This entry was posted on February 6th, 2009 at 04:30:24 pm and is filed under News.

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5 comments

Comment from: ur a mad man [Visitor]

Dont be fair to platini bloody hell r u soft in the head he is totally anti english and that is the only reason he will do this, get real be fair

06/02/09 @ 17:07

Comment from: George [Visitor]

i agree with platini i hate man united liverpool chelsea and arsenal they are too much i dont wish them the best in the champions league i want them to be knocked out english premier league is boring because of these teams to man city spurs i wish them the best i will love the eufa final to be spurs and man city

06/02/09 @ 22:42

Comment from: tierney [Visitor]

the fact of the matter is if we could of got kaka for 35 mil we would have payed 35 mil. AC millan oviously said they would not let kaka go for less than 100 mil so we had 2 pay 100 mil. if you are going to belame anyone for inflated prices in football blame greedy clubs.

06/02/09 @ 23:32

Comment from: The Oracle [Visitor]

Platini behaves like a child. Churlish and full of spite. When asked yesterday what he liked about english football he made pathetic remarks like 'the quality of the grass'. Grow up Platini. He also opened up his press conference by stating that he doesn't read the english papers and he has never been to the new wembley, well thanks for letting us know that then. personally I can't believe somebody so petulant and immature can actually have such an important role in football. It's a shame your French league is crap mate, I can understand a little bitterness, but stop going public with it. Dont hate, appreciate!

07/02/09 @ 01:56

Comment from: john tamburri [Visitor]

47 million for Zidane,38 million for Figo,35 million for Crespo,nothing said about these fees payed years ago.Lets face it all City was trying to do was sign a great player,it would have been great to see him plaing over here.It would have been new money coming into the game,not borrowed.Lets face it Pratini hates the english and our league.Anyway he would have a job getting his plans thriugh the european courts.it would only take one player to take them to court with restriction of trade and he would end up with egg on his face,GOOD.

07/02/09 @ 18:48

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