Match week 29
A week or two which was cloaked under a false pretence of calm, and how the Chelsea owner's frozen assets has provided a string that can unravel men's football
Hey there and welcome aboard the rollercoaster that is the football world, we’re just going to dive right in this one.
First off, the only thing Tottenham manages to be consistent with is their inconsistency, and the last few games have been no different. We started with a measly 0-1 loss to Middlesborough in the FA cup, followed up by an impressive and wild 5-0 win against Everton, only to then manage to lose 2-3 to Manchester United at the weekend.
I have yet to gauge the impact this is having on my mental health, so I disguise it with self-deprecating jokes and pretending not to care but my heart beats really fast any time someone wants to talk to me about Champion’s League spots or who I think is going to move in the summer. It’s not like being a Tottenham fan has ever been easy, but the dissonance at the minute is really taking a toll. However, considering everything else that’s going on in men’s football at the minute, it’s not even as if anyone is paying any attention to Tottenham’s clown-y form, and neither shall we anymore, because;
MEN’S FOOTBALL IS UNRAVELING. Let me list things.
Chelsea’s owner, the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has been hit with sanctions following the UK government identifying ‘clear links’ to Putin. This means that he’s had his assets frozen - one of those being Chelsea Football Club - which sees the sale of the club being up in the air, and the day-to-day operations of the club seriously hit, as their credit card facilities have been temporarily suspended. That in turn means that Chelsea cannot receive any money from sales of new match tickets or merchandise, and that they’ll have to make due with limited amounts of spending, which will very quickly prove an issue as their monthly wage bill for the men’s team is £28 million a month (YES, FOR ONE MONTH) while at the same time, as it stands under the current license, they’re unable to sell current players or acquire new ones.
However none of this is stopping a section of the fans from continuing to chant Abramovich’s name in the stands and cheer on their owner of two decades.
Meanwhile, little has been said on how this affects the women’s team. Obviously there’s a lot less money needed to run the daily operations, but this will nonetheless affect players and staff as they too are accustomed to a certain standard. Same as with the men’s team: wages, contracts and future prospects are up in the air.
IT IS FUNNY however (no please, hear me out) how everyone are currently scrambling to sort out the current situation as it’s unfolding (and it is indeed only looking worse and worse) and Chelsea are being openly condemned by everyone from Alan Shearer to the UK Prime Minister, and all this time, it’s not as if any of this information has been very well disguised - this is all public knowledge, none of it especially new. Everyone knew how Abramvich had made his money, what and who he was dealing with. It’s just that now the situation has escalated and public optics have changed, so all of a sudden people need to be seen openly taking stands. The same standard doesn’t seem to be applied to everyone, however, and this is where the thread that might unravel men’s football is dangling.
For context: Newcastle’s new majority owners are the sovereign wealth fund PIF, which controls both the club and the Saudi state, and PIF is chaired by Saudi Arabia’s ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia are currently engaged in a war in neighbouring Yemen, a country which is currently dealing with, classified by Human Rights Watch, ‘the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.’ Manchester City, whose majority owners are the investment group of Sheikh Mansour, who is a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family as well as the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, do not have any higher ground to stand on themselves as UAE recently withheld support for a US resolution at the UN security council criticising Russia’s invasion.
It’s funny how this quick and vocal critique is not very nuanced, especially coming from the two aforementioned men, who both could be asked to maybe take a look at themselves before pointing fingers at others. Shearer, who played for Newcastle for 10 years, “believes instead that the takeover of Newcastle by the Saudi fund is “a special day” filled not with pain, guilt and chicanery, but with hope” and does not seem very keen on calling out the Saudi Arabian owners for their actions. The UK Prime Minister himself is reportedly heading to Riyadh to talk to Saudi Arabia about oil business, which is a change from chatting about being ‘one of the world’s largest sellers of arms to the kingdom.’
In the words of Barney Ronay: “This is not whataboutery. It is literally the same thing. Football owner + bloody war = undesirable. This is genuine equivalence. An estimated 10,000 children have been killed or maimed in Yemen. Shouldn’t someone in football also care about it just a little? Alan? Are there, like, any more videos?”
When talking about clubs owned by states, it’s impossible to not mention PSG. Paris Saint Germain are owned by Qatar Sports Investments which is a subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority, who since 2012 are the sole shareholder, meaning that PSG is a fully state-owned club and the only of it’s kind (so far.) Qatar, as we know, are hosting the men’s World Cup in the winter, and the controversies around the construction of the stadiums and the infrastructure to support the event have been many, as well as the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws.
A French journalist by the name of Romain Molina has now released a video report [transcript summary in English here] on some of the shady stuff that is going on in the Parisian club and it’s not so much surprising as it is JUICY. And horrible! Amidst the points there are several accounts of bullying and manipulation and general disagreements all around. This information comes off the back of PSG being chucked out of the Champion’s League, again (their main objective to win, a cause towards which they’ve poured billions of pounds..)
Is it bad if my first thought, upon these news reaching me, was “get Pochettino out of there!” ?
Meanwhile, in the women’s team, things are not looking much better. Following the violent assault on Kheira Hamraoui in November, in which two masked men dragged her out of her car and had her legs repeatedly hit with an iron bar, with her teammate Aminata Diallo initially accused of being behind the attack, not much has been resolved. According to reports, Hamraoui has suggested two additional PSG teammates are involved in orchestrating the attack, and Hamraoui has also filed legal complains against a blogger, as well as previously mentioned journalist Molina for alleged “mental harassment” and for allegedly spreading “fake news, threats and public insult.” The situation, naturally, seems to be have caused a bit of a rift in the team and it’s rumoured that several players want to leave in the summer. PSG teammates Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Kadidiatou Diani celebrated a goal for France, in their recent game against the Netherlands, by making an “A” with their hands, showing their support for Diallo.
Suffice to say that as situations are still unfolding it’s difficult to predict how it’s all going to play out, as the men’s game is not a conducive environment for nurturing optimism in sustainable change,
and at the same time I’m quietly hopeful that we’re going to see some positive changes from this, not the least in the women’s game. These events should be used as a deterrent for everyone involved, from the decision-makers to the fans, clubs and players, stimulating us to take a different route when building the expanding infrastructure of our game - one that’s not built on sand, but solid grassy ground.
ALSO, VIDEOS to supplement if that’s more your medium of informational uptake
A video of PSG completely falling apart against Real Madrid (who are known for wielding a different sort of state-power, don’t get me started…) in their second-leg meeting in the Champion’s League
A video on Abramovich’s background
A silly video on the ‘idiocy’ of buying a football club
ALSO, a funny cartoon by David Squires who is always spot on.