Socialist Football Is Our Future

Is there an inverse correlation between international tournaments and successful transfers? Don’t worry, that’s not a phrase out of the Star Trek scriptbook or anything. I’m just wondering, because several Premier League managers have claimed that they won’t be using Euro 2008 as a shop window to check out the latest European talent, while Arsene Wenger has intimated he’ll be doing exactly the opposite, which presumably involves sitting at the side of the pitch with one leg crossed over the other, casting shifty sideways glances and occasionally balancing a ten Euro note between his index and middle fingers.

Because the transfer window doesn’t officially open across Europe until July 1^st, the tournament will have been over by a couple of days and managers will get to see any prospective purchases before they arrive at their new clubs, wiping sleep out of their eyes like long-distance lorry drivers in a Little Chef just off the A3. Most importantly, they get to see if their new sixteen million pound Balkan waif (who could he mean?) comes through it all unscathed.

There’s not much point buying before you try in normal circumstances, but in football you kind of have to. Wait, and the market shoots up exponentially. But there must have been a few Premier League managers breathing a few sighs of sweet relief when the ten million quid they’d squirreled away in shoeboxes with ‘For Bafetimbi Gomis’ markered on the side was still there behind the sofa. Of course, it’s silly to assume that on the basis of one performance a player is not worth buying, full stop, but I do think that the tournament environment creates a bubble around itself, and anyone wishing to partake in its fire-sale needs to be seriously wedged up.

How many players can you name that post-tournament, have gone on to be real hits in the transfer market? And I mean, real legends? Yeah, Ribery moved post WC ’06, but he was already on his way to Bayern. Same with Luca Toni. Ditto Hargreaves, to Man Yoo. The great players are either on their way or so entrenched in their current club as to be more difficult to remove than an old person from next to a tin of shortbread.

I wonder what Newcastle saw in Stephane Guivarch in 1998 to make them pay all that money for four appearences and one goal. Or Aston Villa for Didier Six in 1984? I can only think of two words. Tax loss. There was a famous Villa story Graham Taylor told about Doug Ellis, who was told in the late eighties he had £1.4 million to spend, so Taylor phoned up Millwall and asked for Teddy Sheringham. They refused, but accepted a bid of £700,000 for Tony Cascarino. Next thing Taylor knows, Ellis has paid £1.4 million for the fake Irishman, all because if he’d not spent all the money before the end of the tax year, he’d have had to pay more tax on it!

Buying a player from a tournament (and Tony Cascarino doesn’t count) is still seen as the height of glamour, even if they were completely mediocre. For some reason supporters and managers think they’re window shopping at Asprey’s rather than scrabbling around the bargain bins in TK Maxx. There is logic there - the best sixteen teams in Europe duelling day to day, and these are the best twenty-three of those, but only eleven play at a time and most of the games as well. That sub who comes on with six minutes to go and scored a tap-in because his knees aren’t sliding out of the front of his legs in fatigue is not worth sixteen million, not really.

So you’re damned if you buy beforehand, and damned after. Transfers are just one big game of chance but things like tournaments and transfer windows really do exacerbate the problem. About a billion pounds worth of transfers are estimated to be undertaken across Europe as soon as the doors open at 9am on July 1^st, and less than one percent of it will be money wisely spent.

The only way to solve this problem is to get radical. We’re always told the European Union won’t let us do this or that in the workplace, but sportsmen are exceptional circumstances. Well, let’s make it even. In honour of UEFA president Michel Platini’s socialist credentials, let’s socialise it. Scrap transfer fees, scrap agents. Let the player fend for himself. He’s going to have to, one day.

Think about it. If I want to find out what it’s like to work in a factory that makes inner tubes for bikes, I wouldn’t expect my employers to pay for it, oh no. I’d have to take holiday, use up annual leave, get permission. Football should be the same. If a player feels like playing for another club, he should have to do work experience. He should have to make jokes with the tea lady about weak tea. He should have to wear the hilarious yellow bib that denotes ‘worst trainer.’ Any loss of earnings, he gets back in a signing-on fee.

If a club wants to buy a player, which means breaking an existing contract, the club need to know if they’re doing it for the right reasons. So instead of sitting down with an agent, they interview the player. The player has to bring a CV, wear a cheap suit, smile wanly at other prospective candidates. You can imagine it: ‘So, Monsiuer Benzema. Don’t be nervous. Firstly, tell us about yourself…’ Then the club will know if they’re getting an ego-maniac or a team player.

Let’s start taking the onus off these players to put on a show, making them look a pale shadow in the long season post tournament, and equip them for life instead. We all have to get interviewed at some point in the future, why not footballers? Then it might just break the thrall to which we’re all slaves, every week in the year, to our club and country. I feel an anthem coming on: Unite, Baggy Shorted Brothers!

Chris Stanley