Transfer. A word that brings terror to sport fans’ hearts, headaches and arguments to their lives and is simply and plainly a painful aspect of sport. And when your sport is football then the dates are set in your calendar, from the 1st of June to the 31 of August and 1st of January till the 1st of February of every year. You prepare yourself during this period to watch, listen and read as your team is shuffled, reshuffled, turned upside down, and just when you think it’s over shuffled that one more time.
During the 2009 summer transfer window, over 460 of the finest English pounds exchanged hands between clubs to buy players in the bid to improve their teams, or to fill in missing holes, or just to show off the owners ever so large bank account. But some were justified and made sense, no one wants to lose their Premier League status, everyone wants to try and get to Europe. It was the few, or many depending on your own views, that were shameful and shocking, those few that made fans question what state the game is going towards, selling Ronaldo for 80 million, and Manchester City sold Richard Dunne for no apparently logical reason is why fans, or some fans, find themselves thinking: what’s next?
This is not a rant about the money spent in football; some boys spend hundreds of pounds on computer games, and some girls hundreds on shoes or bags, some actors get paid millions for one movie and some movies in return make millions, just by being good enough. It’s a simple formula, the best football league in a sport enjoyed by millions around the world can spend 460 million on players – just like movie stars, footballers entertain, and people pay for entertainment. The millions is paid back with tickets, shirts and pencils bought all over the world. This concept I understand, but this is more a questioning, what does this amount of money mean to the sport? This was once a sport of talent, local support, hooliganism and just football but has grown beyond any one man’s control. Now, it’s a multi-national business, the supporters as passionate internationally as they are locally, with football –arguably- more aesthetic than ever. Everything has changed, but how much change can the game take?
Season after season, a little of every clubs’, and the games’, history is slowly eroded for a shiner future, bigger stadiums take over, bigger bank accounts and the managers seem to have shorter and shorter expiry dates as the rich seem to have found a new play thing and it is football. What hope does the game have when most, if not all, the big club owners only care to make more money and win without any consideration of what happens to the club in their search for money and glory? The only answer is the fans, after all Football is the most expensive thing that can be enjoyed by the poorest of people. Manchester City, Real Madrid, Chelsea are the most obvious clubs that spend to win and have yet to stop and think about their fans or history.
By the time this article is read the storm of transfer will be on its way, and while anxious and by the end a few will be angry, no one can deny the little excitement that one’s own club will make that deal that means winning the league, going to Europe, staying in league or getting promotion. Football might be seen as a business, and the transfer window will do nothing good for anyone’s pulse or anger but in every aspect, playthings only grow to bore and sooner or later the rich and the crazy money will go and the game will still be there for the fans to enjoy. But for now we must try and make t through every crazy transfer window, and this time Hullfire Sport asked a few students about their opinions on who’ll spend that bit too much…?
E. K. Aidaros
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