By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Apr 12, 2011) US Soccer Players -- A day after Stan Kroenke’s move to become the majority shareholder at Arsenal, sections of the English media have opted for exactly what you would expect. There’s no love for foreigners taking over English clubs, well, except when they’re willing to absorb debt for the sake of trophies. Then it’s sort of ok, unless they stop paying.
It’s an odd world the Premier League has created for itself. One where fan groups hold onto small amounts of shares in the hope it gives them more of a voice than just being that company’s customers. A place where all involved are trying to work out what UEFA’s new financial regulations might mean for them. And all while chasing trophies that in the contemporary era come with a price tag, the cost of putting together a world All-Star squad capable of winning them.
The Premier League priced itself out of being an all-English concern some time ago. There simply don’t seem to be 20 Englishmen or women willing to put the kind of money required into the civic concern of supporting a football club. Fair enough, considering most Premier League clubs happily tried to turn themselves into global brands with an international reach. Why not extend that to the person actually paying the bills?
Some have already tried, but it’s hard to stress the special case for Arsenal when Manchester United and Liverpool are already run by foreign investors. There is no special case. Arsenal aren’t just another club, far from it. They’re one of a handful of clubs attractive enough to get that foreign investment and the level necessary to push for trophies. As groups go, it’s one most of the Premier League – not to mention the lower divisions – would like to be part of. Even when it doesn’t work out, it tends to be a better option than simply trying to carve out an identity outside of the top five or six.
As a group of businesses, the Premier League has created a peculiar environment where staying in that top five or six is no longer enough. Second is no longer enough for a group of clubs that have decided they’re the one and only vanguard for the Premier League brand of soccer. It’s the old Super League without the framework, dividing off the top tier and making it the realm of the well financed willing to spend. Without that, it’s a quick slide into the kind of mid-table obscurity that might as well be relegation the way the elite keep score.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Arsenal are no different. The motivations are the same, along with the end result. They know full well what it takes to remain elite, and it’s why the rest of the London Premier League clubs not called Chelsea are currently chasing Arsenal’s stadium model. To pretend, as some in the English media are doing, that Arsenal already hasn’t drawn a line between past and present is simply too convenient. After all, their hallowed stadium with the marble entrance way and all of that history is now a condominium community.
Yet the myth of Arsenal as different is allowed to persist. Somehow, they’ve earned a loftiness denied the other elite clubs, including the two historically biggest clubs in England that are still resident in their old stadiums. Maybe for some, Arsenal has to be different. They have to be the ones telling an alternative story to what we’ve seen over the last decade of English club soccer. It’s quicker to turn the story into something bordering on that convenient jingoism that always shows up when ‘foreign’ and ‘owner’ are combined in English soccer. That version almost tells itself, even if we’ve all heard it before.
Compared to every other high level professional league in the world, English soccer is nothing special. The motivations are the same. The need to spend to create success is no different. That’s where the Premier League finds itself, and some would see that as an accomplishment. Holding up any club as a relic to a bygone era, even when arguing that era is better, normally doesn’t work if that club is still in contention. It’s the Boston Red Sox scenario, when the hard luck club with the rabid fan base and authentic stadium realize they have to spend on players if they want a title.
Winning remains the real culture among the historically strong clubs. Otherwise, they end up just like everybody else.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
