There is a banner up at Old Trafford football ground. Everyone in Manchester with a passing interest in football (and many beyond its boundaries) knows about it. It shows the number of years since Manchester City last won a trophy. This year, it threatens to tick over to the number 35. In fact, by the end of February it will have done.
I asked a United fan last week who he would rather win the league – Liverpool or City? He said it was like choosing between drowning and being shot. But his main arguments in choosing Liverpool were that it would mean more to us (just, because of the 34 years), AND United would have to tear that banner down.
So you’d think that for every City fan on this planet, if they could have one thing, it would be to win a trophy – any trophy. Carling Cup, FA Cup, Europa League, the Premiership. Anything. For most of us, it would be the first time the team we have supported all our lives will have won something.
And not surprisingly, most fans do list a trophy as the priority, this season, any season.
But not all fans. And, I suspect, not City’s manager or owners either.
And for why that would happen, you need look no further than the Champions’ League. The league of Champions, and those that weren’t quite champions, and loads of teams who were nowhere near being champions. In any other sport, 4th would mean failure – it wouldn’t even get you on the podium. But in the money-orientated world of top-flight football, 4th is everything – a possible gateway to untold riches and possible world domination.
As we all know, modern (top-flight) football is all about money. And here are the numbers to show why the Champions League is so, so important.
Teams competing in the UEFA Champions League group stage this season can expect to receive a minimum amount of €7.2m according to the “revenue distribution system” in place for the 2010/11 campaign.
Each of the 32 clubs that took part in the group stage received a participation bonus of €3.9m, plus a match bonus of €550,000 per group game played. On top of that, the following performance bonuses were paid: €800,000 for every win and €400,000 for every draw in the group stage.
There are additional payments made to the teams that progress in the competition with €3m the reward for advancing to the round of 16, €3.3m for reaching the quarter-finals and €4.2m for a semi-final place. The winners of the final at Wembley Stadium on 28 May will collect a further €9m, with €5.6m going to the runners-up.
So, win all your six group games and you would earn €15m – comprising €12m for your group stage performance plus €3m for getting to the last 16. If Manchester United had beaten Barcelona in the final of May 2009, they would have earned a cool €45m. It is estimated this year’s winners could pocket close to €60m.
In addition, participating clubs are entitled to a share of the market pool based on the commercial value of their domestic television market, the number of UEFA Champions League matches they play this season and their final position in the domestic league table last term. They will also keep their UEFA Champions League gate receipts.
Each of the 20 teams that contested the play-offs received €2.1m.
The Telegraph ran an article the other year where it stated: Telegraph Sport understands that Uefa’s internal forecasts predict a 35 per cent increase in Champions League commercial and broadcast income for 2009-12, taking gross income to more than €1.1bn, an increase of around €300m on the €820m or so generated in each of the last three seasons.
Currently Uefa distributes almost €600m to the 32 clubs competing in the Champions League group stage, but that figure could rise to more than €800m from next season, heightening fears that the financial gap between the European elite and their domestic competitors is too wide.
Culture secretary Andy Burnham and FA chairman Lord Triesman have both voiced concerns this season that financial disparity is affecting the competitive balance of English football, and such dramatic increases in Champions League revenue will amplify the issue.
Regular Champions League football has helped United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal render the upper-reaches of the Premier League predictable, with only Everton breaching their dominance since England’s Champions League representation rose to four. The concern among their domestic competitors is that European success becomes self-perpetuating, providing additional income sufficient to fend off challengers in all but exceptional circumstances.
Unlike Manchester City fans, Roberto Mancini has not had 34 years of hurt – far from it. He’s had quite a charmed life, if truth be told. He has to finish top 4 this season – it’s pretty certain his job depends on it. Finish 5th and win the FA Cup, and I wouldn’t guarantee you he’d keep his job. Finish 4th and win nothing, and I can guarantee you he will be in charge next season.
The reasoning is simple, if not shared by many/most of the blue persuasion. It’s that aforementioned gateway to a “better world”. Champions League football (providing City got through a qualifier if they finished 4th – what could possibly go wrong?) means City are more attractive to world-class players, it means City are earning a lot more, and thus closer to becoming self-sufficient and satisfying Platini, it means more high-profile games, and with all that, with the players and the income, a greater chance of winning trophies from that moment onwards.
And there are City fans that see it that way too – it relies on a gamble that getting in the Champions League will mean everything else will follow – and what’s another year to wait when you’ve waited all your life?
In addition to previous points, if as expected City finish outside the top 4 and Mancini loses his job, then once again City will have to recruit a new manager, and go through yet another building process with new players and new systems and new routines and changes to staff and the endless cycle of repairing damage that seems to define the club. Top players may leave – Tevez will for starters, and recruitment will mean more persuasion skills from Cook and Marwood. And more money, of course. Above all, a top 4 finish would bring one thing the club has lacked for decades – stability. Another year for City with the same manager? Blimey, it might just work.
But to many, to most in fact, the emotional attachment to the football club does not include financial analysis of what finishing higher may bring. It does not include analysing business models, or fair play criteria. There are those, as always, that would even welcome a change of manager. For the first time in many blues’ lifetime, a trophy looks not only possible, but probable in the years to come. And that trophy is all that matters – break the duck, break the curse, and everything else will follow. They have pictured the moment of a City captain lifting a trophy aloft as confetti rains down from the sky for far too long. The Champions League can wait for now. Winning the Carling Cup trumps playing Barcelona in the Champions League, when the heart rules over the business head. And rightly so.
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