da bet sport： It’s the age old question in the game these days; fans, players and managers all want the club to have more of it but only a select few ever truly get their hands on it. Manchester City, Chelsea and Real Madrid have all shown over the course of the past few years that having plenty of money is certainly conducive to success, but is that in itself a guarantee?
da dobrowin： Firstly, let me just lay my argument down for all to see – money is the single most important factor currently operating within the global game. To borrow and paraphrase the speech Mr Smith gives in the second Matrix film “it guides us, it drives us , it defines us, it is money that binds us.” So much of the game as we know it is dictated by how much you have, but in football, there are no guarantees and without the right man at the helm, the right system or style, having untold riches can only lead to an inflated disaster both on and off the pitch.
Manchester City serve as a fine case in point having ended their 44-year wait for the league title last season during a campaign where by and large they were head and shoulder above the competition. You could accuse the club of having essentially ‘bought’ the title, which would seem a petty complaint given the money spent by previous winners, but it’s certainly an interesting case using the above theory of having all the right ingredients in place first.
Mark Hughes spent £127.7m on players back in 2008-9 and he followed that up with £118m the season after. Progress was slow but slowly but surely Manchester City were beginning to establish themselves in the top six. However, when you consider that this hugely expensively-assembled side included the likes of Robinho, Shay Given, Wayne Bridge, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor and Craig Bellamy, just two seasons on and none of those players even played a part in their title win.
Like a kid in a candy store who didn’t know what to do with himself with so much choice, Hughes wasted money on a grand scale and bought plenty of players simply not up to the challenge of being in a title-winning side. While it may have been harsh to sack Hughes when they did, you could hardly criticise them now for placing their faith in Roberto Mancini instead, a manager with more ability who brought in players of better quality and won the FA Cup and Premier League title inside his first two years. Would they have done that with Hughes still in charge? Extremely doubtful.
Mancini spent £230m on players over the course of two summers, an astronomical figure, but importantly, the players he brought in, such as Sergio Aguero, Yaya Toure, David Silva and Mario Balotelli were all absolutely instrumental at different key junctures in the season. Money is a fantastic tool to have in your armoury but it all depends how you use it and without the right man in charge, City’s wait for the title would probably still be going on to this day.
Roman Abramovich’s millions helped transform Chelsea from a top six club in the Premier League on the verge of bankruptcy into a major player on the European stage and while their Champions League triumph last year had a large helping of fortune about it, there’s no denying that it was the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of sustained investment, but the fact that they had to wait so long to win it disproves that money guarantees you success. Yes, the side assembled was hardly done on the cheap, but it was their team spirit which played the biggest part and without it, as they displayed under Andre Villas-Boas previously, they were riddled with inconsistency.
Liverpool spent north of £80m in 18 months after Fenway Sports Group took over the club, but a deeply flawed transfer policy of buying expensive British players has cost the club dearly in the long-run and the ruinous nature of their acquisitions is still impacting on their movement in the transfer market now. Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing cost £55m together in total yet they’ve contributed very little.
Over in Spain, while Barcelona are often lauded as the very model by which every club should aspire to be like in the future, playing as many as seven or eight academy players every week, the three of four that they didn’t bring through have certainly been brought in at a cost, with Javier Mascherano, Alexis Sanchez and Daniel Alves hardly signed on the cheap, while Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid finally reaped the rewards of their £80m man Cristiano Ronaldo last season as they pipped their bitter rivals to the league crown. Would they have done it without the Portuguese forward? Of course not, but it was the system and talent around him which made the difference this time around.
Money does not guarantee success in football but what it does do is increase your chances of achieving it and grants you more opportunities to display your quality in games of magnitude. As a standalone factor, it is important but not decisive and financial mismanagement is commonplace in the game. Without the right manager and most importantly players, money can often act as something of a burden on the side, like an albatross around its neck with the weight of expectation dragging it further down, but with the right ingredients, as Manchester City and Real Madrid showed last season, it can prove an unstoppable force.
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