At least no one can accuse Asian football authorities of failing to sweat the small stuff. It would be easy to overlook the little things, after all, when their job is to cultivate and promote the most popular sport on the planet for the benefit of nearly five billion people spread across a third of the planet’s land.
In many ways, then, it is admirable that the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) can still find the time to dictate precisely which water bottles, with which labels, fans should be allowed to carry into stadiums. This attention to detail will reassure you that the future of football – from Beirut to Beijing and Ulaanbaatar to Hobart – is in safe hands.
Unfortunately, that’s not exactly the picture that emerges from a report commissioned by the world football players’ association, FIFPro, which assesses the benefits and weaknesses of Asia’s most prestigious club competition, the Asian Champions League. Instead, the report documents a tournament that functions as an almost perfect microcosm of the general direction of soccer around the world.
There is plenty of the kind of official nit-picking beloved of sports authorities. As well as tackling the critical issue of water bottles, the AFC’s “clean stadium” requirements – the rules which stipulate that arenas for Champions League matches must be free of unauthorized advertising – address pressing issues such as logos on the backpacks and the brand on the bottle caps.
The AFC seems much less concerned with whether the tournament actually works for the clubs involved. According to estimates by two competing teams, enforcing the clear stadium rules alone costs $50,000 a game.
Travel for away matches is even more expensive. In Europe, teams usually travel first class – for what, in the report, are described as “high-performance purposes”, a logic that unfortunately does not apply to New York Times reporters – but the sheer geography of Asia means that it is not a selection. The average distance traveled for a road match in the Asian Champions League is approximately 2,300 miles.
That makes even the flying economy especially onerous: An Australian team reported spending $95,000 to transport and house its players and staff for a match in Japan, significantly more than the $60,000 subsidy it provides the AFC until the next rounds of the competition.
There some of the 40 clubs that have made it through to the group stage will be able to make up for the losses they have accumulated along the way. But just a few of them: Half of the $15 million prize money is awarded to the eventual winner and runner-up. Losing semifinalists may win $500,000. FIFPro’s findings suggest that the majority of teams are losing significant money on participation alone.
“The result is that competition is less accessible for those clubs that are eliminated early, who also tend to be clubs from smaller or less developed markets,” the report said. Urawa Reds, the Japanese club that won last year’s edition, told the association that only the finalists would win enough prize money to recoup their costs.
So obviously it’s good news that the AFC has already decided to change the way the competition works. From later this year, the Asian Champions League will consist of only 24 teams.
Instead of the traditional home and away matches in the knockout rounds, the quarter-finals and beyond will borrow a format recognizable from the later stages of international tournaments: one-and-one-half matches played in a single country over the course of just over a week . It should come as no surprise to anyone that, for the first five years, this final phase will be held in Saudi Arabia.
The design, as it happens, is good. And given the sudden influx of big names into Saudi Arabia’s squads over the past year, the timing is also impeccable.
Fewer teams means that every game in the new format should be of a higher quality. Consolidating the later rounds in one location will allow for more meetings between teams from the east and west of the continent. (At the moment, the best of Japan and South Korea can’t meet powers from Iran and Saudi Arabia until the final.) Teams that make it that far won’t have to plan or pay for much big-ticket travel. distances.
The relatively limited detail that has emerged, however, does not make encouraging reading for anyone hoping that this might be an opportunity to make the competition work for everyone. The AFC can’t say much about how big Asia is, but it also hasn’t offered any assurances about whether it plans to increase travel budgets or reduce its requirements for approved stadiums from its partners.
What is known – it was very much in the headlines when the transformation was announced – is that the winner of the tournament will receive about $12 million. The runner-up will receive $6 million.
As far as FIFPro is concerned, there is a good chance that much of the remaining “value associated with the top later rounds is concentrated in the AFC and the host country”. The final tournament will be a tempting property to sell to broadcasters. No one has said, so far, how much of the revenue it could generate would go to the competition’s clubs.
This, of course, would be a significant missed opportunity. It is the stated aim of the AFC to help spread and improve and support the game throughout Asia. She has, in the changes to her most famous competition, the perfect opportunity to do just that.
And yet there is a very good chance he will reject it, preferring instead to pour wealth into those clubs that need it least, while passing on the benefits that will flow from the new format to a handful of the strongest, richest teams in the strongest , its wealthier groups. championships.
He will do so because of the abiding belief, held throughout football’s executive order, that growth in football is a product of pull, not push, and that change occurs from the top down, not the bottom up. The vast majority of clubs and countries under the patronage of Asian football leaders will be banned and left behind, the authorities’ interest only drawn when the wrong type of water bottle, with the wrong type of label, tarnishes the world. has created.
Choose your Tomorrow
Xabi Alonso could really do without it. He is three months and 12 games away from handing Bayer Leverkusen their first Bundesliga title. He could still finish his first full season in charge by winning the league, the DFB-Pokal and the Europa League. The economics of modern football dictate that this is not really meant to happen.
You have to go back a little to remember a more auspicious start to a coaching career: to Pep Guardiola’s glorious 2009 Barcelona campaign, perhaps, which culminated in a Spanish title and the Champions League trophy. or beyond, in Jose Mourinho’s star explosion at Porto six years earlier.
Unfortunately, through no fault of Alonso’s, Alonso can now expect an achievement that should be celebrated on its own merits to be relegated – at least in terms of its presentation – to little more than a hearsay. Everything Alonso delivers at Leverkusen in the coming weeks will be framed as promoting or diminishing his candidacy to be the next manager of Liverpool or Bayern Munich.
This is as much in the nature of modern football as the financial reality that Alonso defies so spectacularly, of course, but it’s also a shame. What he could achieve at Leverkusen this season deserves to be celebrated for what it is, not where he can still take it.
Everything has a price. It is not clear why.
Unsurprisingly, Manchester United have come up with Dan Ashworth as the ideal candidate to spearhead the (overdue) modernization of the club. His work – with West Bromwich Albion, England, Brighton and current club Newcastle – has been undeniably impressive.
Nor is it surprising that Newcastle are so keen not to lose him that they have put him on almost two years of what the British call gardening leave: Essentially, Newcastle have let Ashworth stop working but will prevent him from taking another job paying him. to do nothing until his contract expires. Newcastle have suggested that only compensation of around $25 million would persuade the club to change their minds.
What is a bit puzzling – and this is a genuine inquiry – is why Newcastle should be asking for a fee at all. Ashworth has an office job and wants to go do another office job. It’s hard to think of another industry where his current employer could demand money from a rival company to allow this to happen.
We accept transfer fees when they involve players, of course, because that’s the way football has always worked. Managers, too, increasingly have release clauses in their contracts. Whatever form they take, however, they are essentially compensation amounts designed to persuade a club to break a contract.
However, when addressed to people who are not present on the field in any way, to those ranks of workers who exist near or above the line where football becomes less of a game and more of a business, they feel more than a little inconsistent. scary enough, certainly, to make you wonder why they exist.
