Avoiding the Drop

This week saw the arrival of two news stories concerning the financial health of football. First came the news that Portsmouth F.C. is for sale- again. If I am not mistaken, should the club be sold, it will be for the third time this year. Today brought the news that Stirling Albion F.C. has been informed by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that they have eight days to clear their debts or they will be “wound up.” This is the second time in seven months that HMRC has had to issue this threat to the club. Albion are not a “big club” in Scotland, but on the pitch they are in first place in the Scottish Second Division, so the quality of play is not the issue, money is. This all comes on the heels of the Livingston F.C. “saga” that I covered here over the summer and into the beginning of the 2009-2010 season.

Over the last eight months we here at Avoiding the Drop have- whether we intended to or not- have done a fairly thorough job of chronicling these and the other financial woes that have plagued the recent history of world football. We have done this in stand-alone pieces (on clubs, kit manufacturers, etc.), through weekly series (“They’ve Fallen and They Can’t Get Up!), and touched upon the subject in pieces on the normal day-to-day goings on in the football world.

Most of these financial problems have been- and, more importantly, continue to be- self-inflicted. I don’t think there’s a great of debate over whether or not a great many clubs have spent their way into ruin- they have- and I’m not sure there is much sympathy for these clubs- at least not from me. Clubs have been living on credit for years now and when the economy collapsed, revenues began to shrink, and creditors began calling in their debts, these clubs were left to scramble to stay solvent. In most cases they have resorted to the traditional solution for a cash-strapped club- selling players- or by selling the club to a new owner who is willing to take on the club’s debt because that is now the literal price one pays for the prestige of being the owner of a football club circa 2009. While a few clubs have been able to buy time through these and other measures, it still appears that the bottom is going to fall out at some point in the near future unless radical changes are made.

The global financial crisis also exposed other problems in world football: countries that have too many leagues to remain financially stable, leagues that have too many clubs to remain financially stable, clubs and leagues that are too dependent on television and kit sponsorships- to name only a few of the major problems. One cannot help but think that the situation is probably going to get worse before it gets better. Clubs- including big ones- are surely going to be relegated for financial reasons in the near future, and some clubs- including big ones- are probably going to disappear as we know them, and maybe all-together. For example, as anyone who follows La Liga probably knows- whether they want to admit it or not is another matter entirely- when the other financial shoe drops in Spain the scene is going to be chaotic and ugly.

The maxim is as hackneyed as they come, but within every crisis- and this is a crisis- there is an opportunity. An opportunity, however, is difficult to take advantage of if you do not have a plan, and I have a plan. It’s not perfect, it’s going to require a lot of compromise, it’s going to require people to have new expectations about both club and international football, and perhaps more than anything else, it’s going to make a lot of people angry…and I’m okay with that.

On November 6^th I’m going to put forth my plan for fixing football in one of the countries that has been hardest hit by these issues in the hope that it can serve as a blueprint for change and improvement in other countries. I invite your feedback in whatever form it takes.