Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The Champions League

Lets get few facts out first. The FIFA world cup currently is a no-match, in terms of quality, to the champions league. The growth of the champions league has been a recent phenomenon. With the arrival of players from the Americas/africas to europe, the champions league is a global platform for the players to showcase their true class. The globalization of the game has actually happened only over the last 2 decades. A quick glance at the Brazilian NT or the Argentine NT will suggest the same -almost all players are based in Europe. Note that this was not common say abt 12 years back when these teams were dominated by home-based¨players. The growth of the club-culture is a win-win scenario for the players and clubs. The player gets the money (a measly earning of 50,0000 euros a week ), a professional atmosphere and an international audience while the clubs benefit by winning titles and drawing a lot more fans. Its clearly a win-win situation for the clubs and the players. However, all this has meant that international football (hmm when a player plays for his country) takes a firm back-seat. Note the time the World cup is scheduled - at the end of the season. A lot has been made of the fact that players are too tired after a stressful season with the club. While it is largely true, cant the governing body move the WC at the beginning of the season?, pushing the tournament by 2 months from its current schedule. Wouldnt this ensure that players are fresh for the WC and given adequate rest before the tournament begins. The fact is such a schedule would be detrimental to the clubs as it would screw up 2 seasons. The bottom line is that the clubs are ruling the game.

Of course the game has benefited immensely from the globalization of the champions league. The champions league is an arena where the players can display their talents. The quality of the games are really of the highest standard. Additionally, with the increasing revenues of these clubs, they can buy the best and pay them handsomely as well. Hence, a team like chelsea, a team which was nowhere in the elite of europe as late as 2002, is currently the best team in Europe (its a very open question whether they play attractive football nevertheless they are effective). With the financial muscle of Roman Abrahamovich the Chelsea FC team can afford the likes of John Terry, Ashley Cole, Carvalho, (some of the better defenders in the world), Petr Cech, Michel Essien, Andriy Shevchenko (winner of theBallon Dor), Michel Ballack (unlucky not to win the B Dor in 2002). Of course other teams have also followed suite. All this means that only a few selected clubs dominate and will continue to dominate in Europe. The european glory days for teams like Red Star Belgrade or even teams like Ajax look realistically a distant dream. Is this doing any good for the game?. The positives are very obvious-watching a game between Barcelona and Chelsea or Real Madrid and AC Milan is almost like watching a world cup. However, this also means that the pressure on players is immense- one bad season and the knives will be out for the axing of the player (the talk about Ronaldinho can all be attributed to an ordinary season by his standards). Further, the stakes involved in some of these games are really really huge. Once a team enters the CL semi-finals or thereabouts then it just means that the team will have to focus on multiple dimensions - the league title (which are becoming extremely competitive) plus glory in Europe. It can be a glorious treble as in the case of ManU in 1999 or it can be a close photo-finish second as in the case of Milan in 2005 (lost the CL to Liverpool and then lost the Scudetto to Juventus in the last week). The margin for error is indeed very small. It is hence no surprise that not a single club over the last 16 years has been able to defend its CL medal the next season. Realistically speaking, Frank Rijkaard and Fabio Capello would not have been disappointed by the exit of their respective teams from CL as it would enable them to concentrate just on the La-Liga - a safer and more secure option.

to be contd...

1 comment:

Page3point14 said...

Everything is okay but one has to think why Roman Abramovich would prefer to take Chelsea and why not other clubs?