Vesper

lol well then neither do I!!

yes I posted on Jimmy 4 days back and was shocked no one said anything the site is so dead atm

Another legend leaves us. RIP

I already posted it (look 4 posts back on this thread) cheers

I cannot believe we are going with a Palace kit for an option! Red is the colour........................... OF SHIT ffs this one is oki

‘Fundamentally, football is fucked’ – what agents are doing and thinking now https://theathletic.com/1725847/2020/04/11/agents-transfers-wage-talks-lallana-willian-bosman/ As usual, their mobile phones haven’t stopped ringing. The only difference for football agents is that it’s not the sort of calls they’re used to taking at this time of year. Sporting directors, chief executives and managers have other things on their mind right now than making signings. “I’ve had two inquiries from clubs asking about a player and that’s it,” one of the country’s leading agents says. “It’s dead quiet.” Instead, the voice at the other end tends to be a player, asking for advice about pay cuts and deferrals — a subject that has driven some footballers around the bend as they canvass opinion among their squad about the latest proposal. More often than not, the player at the centre of it all ends up going round in circles. “This is carnage, I’ve been on the phone for 12 hours,” one Premier League captain told his agent this week. “No one can agree,” the agent adds. “You’ve got lads at Manchester City, Man United and Liverpool who all want to do one thing, then you have the lads at Burnley and Norwich. Pay cuts and deferrals will be individual, for sure. It just makes sense.” While the 20 Premier League captains did come to an agreement this week on the formation of an initiative that will help to provide funds for the NHS in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, accepting pay reductions at clubs is a totally different matter. Some players are hugely sceptical, according to their agents. “A lot of the players at one club were saying, ‘I know what’ll happen, we’ll take a deferral, a cut, then we’ll go and sign some crap player from abroad for £30 million who plays five games for the club and we’ll pay them off three years later.’” For now, agents are doing a lot more listening than negotiating. Essentially, they are providing support and guidance to their clients at a time of huge uncertainty — the majority of professional footballers aren’t millionaires who are set up for life. “It’s advice on wage cuts at the moment,” says one agent. “Your players will ask you, ‘What do you think?’ “Say a player is on £10,000 a week, and he pays 50 per cent tax, so he’s on £5,000 net. Then the club want another 30 per cent? Not to say someone couldn’t live off that, but it’s all relative. He’s got a 15-year mortgage because he’s due to retire when he’s 35. He bought his house when he was 20. So it could’ve been £600 a month over 40 years, but instead he’s paying back £5,000 a month. The outgoings are geared up to these boys retiring at 35.” Most agents are keen to avoid becoming directly involved in negotiations around pay cuts and deferrals. The cynic would say that is because there is no money in it for them, although that is not strictly true. In theory, a pay cut for a player should mean a pay cut for his agent, bearing in mind they normally get a percentage of their client’s salary. “I’d expect to feel the same pain as the players felt,” one agent says. “Sometimes clubs want a specific figure as an agent’s fee instead of a percentage. If you’ve got a specific figure put in, you won’t be affected. I would say one out of five deals are done like that, and that’s usually the club being smart because they don’t want to incorporate add-ons into the agent’s fee.” Generally, agents see these pay discussions as an issue for the players to resolve in talks with the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and their club. In that respect, a player’s representative is little more than a sounding board. “We’re trying to stay out of it really,” another agent explains, “because we need to maintain good relationships with the clubs as well as the players. The PFA are fighting for them, that’s what the players want them to do.” The negotiations are anything but straightforward, not least because financial circumstances will differ greatly within the same dressing room, never mind within leagues. “A unilateral agreement was never going to happen in a million years,” one agent says. A sports lawyer, who works with Premier League agents and also represents Football League clubs, agrees. “You cannot just impose a blanket pay cut,” he says. “You need to show the players why the money needs to be saved in each individual case. It may be a certain number of weeks for a deferral, that is fair. But a 30 per cent cut just isn’t fair. Can you imagine walking in one day to Morgan Stanley and telling everyone ‘you are docked 30 per cent wages’? It just wouldn’t happen. “I had a chat with an agent yesterday. He was saying a banker would earn £2 million annually, he would have a longer career, he would have a university degree and a private school background, as well as family wealth. A footballer might have grown up in a council house, can’t believe where he came from and has a soccer school in his local area. That’s what these guys are really saying and thinking.” There is another intriguing aspect to all of this and it should probably be filed in a boardroom folder marked “reap what you sow”. Some football club owners have generated a lot of goodwill within their club over the years because of their personality, the way they interact with players and staff, and more generally how they run the business. Others have little or no meaningful contact with the players and have done next to nothing to build up any debt of gratitude over time. Not surprisingly, those relationships will have a significant impact on how players feel about helping their owner or chairman in a time of crisis and whether they believe the situation is as grave as they are being told. “The thing you have with the Brighton boys is that they like the owner,” an agent says. “Tony Bloom, Brighton’s owner, does everything he can to help the players. They know that if they went to him in any other circumstance with a problem he would help them. But some of these other owners would say, ‘It’s not my problem.’” It’s not hard to imagine players at Tottenham Hotspur or Newcastle being reluctant to assist chairmen or owners who have a reputation for penny-pinching and were quick to furlough staff at the first opportunity. One agent suggested that Tottenham’s players may struggle to have sympathy for billionaire owner Joe Lewis, particularly those who have been aboard his yacht and seen the lavish decor. While pay talks are occupying the minds of agents and dominating their conversations with players at the moment, there is a bigger picture for them to consider when it comes to their role within the game. Some are worried about their livelihoods — not every agent is signing off multi-million pound deals like Mino Raiola and Jorge Mendes — and wondering when, realistically, they can expect to be paid the fees they are owed. Others are trying to imagine what sort of state the summer transfer window will be in when it finally opens for business. Bosmans and bargains — that’s the transfer market theme for the 2020-21 season, according to those who make a living out of moving footballers. It will be a buyers’ market, for sure — and that, naturally, suits the clubs who don’t need a helping hand in the first place. “For Man United, Chelsea and Man City, buying players will be like businessmen buying businesses that are on the floor. They will see this as a way of maintaining their place at the top of the table for the next five years with no big transfer fees needed,” one agent said. That comment was made before Ole Gunnar Solskjaer talked about how United “might just be in a situation you can exploit”. For some wider context to that remark, Solskjaer was responding to a question from Gary Neville, who later accepted that he shouldn’t have used the word “exploit” when he asked his former team-mate about United’s transfer strategy in the wake of a global pandemic. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of that episode, the reality is that Solskjaer was saying what everybody in the game already knows. United, along with football’s other financial powerhouses, will be able to capitalise on the dreadful state that many football clubs will be in when the summer window opens, and that could have severe consequences for some. In the Championship, where 11 players were sold for fees in excess of £10 million last summer and the 24 clubs made a collective £140 million profit on transfer deals to partly offset the financial mess elsewhere on their balance sheets, the market is expected to collapse. One agent described it as “a broken division”. Another predicted the big clubs will pick up the best young talent in the second tier for knock-down fees. Expect more fees closer to £5 million than the £25 million Tottenham spent on Fulham’s Ryan Sessegnon last summer. Some agents — and this, whether you like it or not, is how the business side of football works — are already sensing that doors are opening in a way that wasn’t possible before this pandemic. “I spoke to an agent and the situation has sorted him out big time,” adds the sports lawyer. “The club that has his prized asset now needs money. There will be so much less resistance. You go from public enemy No 1 to being the guy who was sold to save the club.” Warming to his theme, the lawyer says that he senses a chance for a select group of Premier League clubs to do exactly what Solskjaer spoke about, aided by a growing belief that Financial Fair Play rules will have to be loosened. “Leicester should be going for it in the summer,” the lawyer adds. “Or Everton. Go for it big time. FFP will be a bit relaxed. You can go big without spending too much money. You can get two £60 million players for £30 million this summer. Leicester or Everton could not normally do that. Now they could. They can say to clubs in Italy or Spain, take it or leave it, because the money isn’t coming from anywhere else. Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Ajax… players will be there for the taking. You could have a real go.” Not every club will have that financial wherewithal, which is why another agent thinks that free transfers will be in vogue again. Willian at Chelsea, Jan Vertonghen at Spurs, Liverpool’s Adam Lallana and Ryan Fraser at Bournemouth are among those who stand to benefit as their contracts wind down. At the very least, the pool of clubs interested in signing them will have grown. “There was so much money out there before that clubs would pay for the player they really wanted. They wouldn’t take a Bosman because he’s a Bosman — he had to be good enough,” an agent explains. “But this summer it might switch around. Now, because of this crash, we don’t know where the transfer market is, so Bosmans might be more valuable than at any time since Steve McManaman’s days. Bosmans could have their heyday again.” Another agent echoes those sentiments. “I am already getting calls from clubs asking, ‘Is he going to be a free? We’ll have him.’ Before the coronavirus they weren’t even looking at that player, they were looking at spending £3-4 million abroad. They can’t be thinking along those lines anymore. Now the coronavirus has struck, those free transfers are going to become premium players, they will be snapped up at the earliest point.” Forget the violins. Few will have any sympathy for football agents when they think about the fallout from the coronavirus and the jobs that could be lost in this profession. The 92 professional clubs spent about £318 million on agents last season (£260 million of that expenditure was in the Premier League, including £43 million from Liverpool alone), which is a staggering sum. It is little wonder that supporters — and some club executives for that matter — believe that far too much money is going out of the game and into the pockets of agents. The reality, though, is that footballers need representation and, as with any industry, there are good and bad people making a living out of being agents (or “intermediaries”, as FIFA decided they should be known after the world governing body controversially abandoned its licensing system in 2015). Agents normally get paid their percentage of the player’s salary, or a fixed fee if that is what was agreed, in two installments: in February and September. All payments made by a club to an intermediary have to go via the FA’s “clearing house” first, along with the paperwork. The process at the FA can be slow, but nothing compared to how long some clubs take to transfer the money in the first place — and that was the case when football was operating as normal. While the big agencies in the UK (such as Stellar, Wasserman, Base Soccer, New Era and Unique Sports Management) will be able to ride out this storm, some of the smaller companies — and especially those intermediaries working in League One and League Two — may well struggle to survive. “God knows how some of the agents operating at, say, Doncaster will get paid,” says an agent working for one of the five mentioned above. “Clubs at that level will eventually turn £3,000 in February into £500 a month from October, when the season is up and away and they’ve got fans in the ground. And then they’ll be so far behind in terms of September’s payments.” It is not uncommon at Championship level for agents to pursue payments for six months or more and to send letters threatening to sue before seeing their money. Nobody wants to go down that route, but it is often a case of needs must. One agency spent two years chasing a five-figure sum from a League One club, eventually agreed an installment plan, received the first payment and then the money dried up again. “You have to send letters a lot,” says an experienced agent. “We aren’t getting paid at the minute. We’ve got it in our heads that we might not get paid for six months. But I know I’ll get paid by certain clubs. In theory, agents could say to all clubs, ‘We want our money, pay it or we’re going to sue you.’ But do you want to sue a football club at this moment in time? We won’t do that. But some agents will if they need to survive.” It is understood that one Championship club has already said that it will defer all agent payments for a year. The way things are going, that could be one of the better agreements in the Football League. Another agency told The Athletic that, in the wake of the pandemic, they are basing their financial forecasts on not receiving a penny of the money they are owed from League One down. It is almost unthinkable in this financial climate to chase an invoice at that level. Then again, Premier League clubs present their share of challenges too. “Agents are always the last people to be paid — every time,” says the sports lawyer. “I had a chat last week with an agent of a Premier League player. He was due money in a few months’ time — you are normally paid in February or September, but some installments can be paid in June. I said to him I wouldn’t be surprised if you get asked by this actually quite healthy club to defer it. He said he would defer, within reason. “But there is so much paperwork that goes into these agency agreements. You need to tweak the FA paperwork, there are forms to be doing. Will agents want interest? Will agents want legal fees paid by clubs for the amending of agreements? They would be absolutely entitled to expect that.” Except what people are entitled to, and what people can expect to get, are two different things in the world right now. Plus, there is a balance to be struck in all of this — nobody wants to burn bridges. “Realistically, agents are in a weird position,” the sports lawyer adds. “If I have a player in a first team at a club, I am not going to present a winding-up petition to that club. It would affect your client and future relationship. “I expect agents to have a lot of offers made for payments deferred. Clubs will use that to their advantage. There are cases when agents are due money owed nine months ago. Now you hear from clubs, ‘We were going to pay, but coronavirus…’ I am sorry, but that is bollocks. “One of those particular clubs has a wealthy owner who doesn’t put his hand in his pocket. We are talking five and six-figure payments here. These agents are not millionaires in most cases, they do their accounts and their VAT and are good guys. You cannot just write off money like this. Junior agents will be on £20,000 per year plus commission. It is going to be really difficult for agents, balancing between upsetting clubs they are dealing with and protecting their own agency.” In truth, there are so many unknowns in all of this, right down to how long the summer window will be open for business. One leading agent envisages everything being crammed into a few weeks, which is how clubs often end up doing their deals anyway. Another says the total opposite. “It won’t be condensed. It will be 12 weeks. The law (as laid down by FIFA) is 16 weeks, of which January is one month. So they’ll then do three months from a sensible date.” Then there is the question as to what exactly happens with the players who are out of contract on June 30, especially as we now know that the season will almost certainly be extended in the Football League as well as the Premier League. Agents are being quizzed every day by players who are in that position of being on a free transfer in the summer, and unable to come up with a clear answer, with FIFA’s vague guidance earlier in the week doing nothing to help matters. Realistically, none of those soon-to-be out-of-contract players — and there are hundreds of them in the Championship alone — will want to take a pay cut or defer wages unless it is imposed on them. Some of those players actually stand to benefit by the season being extended, given they are on salaries that they will not be able to command elsewhere. But will they even want to play on if they are jeopardising a long-term deal for a short-term contract extension? As for loan players, that is another huge issue. One Premier League player is costing the Championship club where he is on loan £20,000 a week, which is a lot of money at the best of times. It is financial suicide when that club has no realistic prospect of winning promotion. “Loans are a problem,” an agent says. “It doesn’t affect them (the players) because they’re getting paid by their parent club (which is what happens with all domestic loans). But say a Championship club is mid-table, the season is extended for six weeks, they’re going to have to keep paying the parent club until the season is over even if they don’t want those loan players. And it’s not like they’re playing for prize money, like in the Premier League. It will kill some of the Championship clubs.” Desperate times call for desperate measures. Agents anticipate Championship clubs being open to renegotiating transfer clauses that would ordinarily have been triggered further down the line — for example, payments that are due depending on Premier League survival or a player reaching a certain number of appearances. That could mean clubs writing off six-figure sums to get their hands on cash now. The landscape is constantly shifting in the top flight, too. One Premier League club held a video call with an agent recently with a view to signing a player who was in line to join another top-flight team for the 2020-21 season. The selling club are desperate for money, but the original buyer is stretched to the limit financially, so they are at the risk of being outbid. The player’s new buyers are confident they can land him for as little as £500,000 more than the fee that was previously agreed. That a Premier League club could lose out on a signing over that small a sum says everything. One agent is working round the clock with two clubs to extend an option-to-buy in a loan deal. The option is to buy for £15 million, but it expires on May 5. The player wants to make the move permanent but the loan club will not be in a position to make a decision or pay the money by that date because of the uncertainty. The parent club will probably seek a higher fee if the clause expires, but equally in the current climate they might not get a higher fee. So the agent hopes brokering an extension will suit all parties, but it’s a race against time. There are brutal mind games at play, too. One agent talks about a young Premier League defender who is destined for a multi-million pound transfer this summer and says that the player’s chances of leaving could be helped if he refuses to give up a chunk of his wages. The agent’s theory is that the player’s employers will be in a more desperate state as a result and therefore likely to accept a lower offer for him when the window opens. Another agent — and this illustrates just how confused the thinking is in football right now — takes the opposite view and believes that his client has a far better chance of getting a big move to another Premier League club if he “doesn’t piss the owners off now” and instead accepts a pay deferral. “It could get to the summer and they say, ‘We’re gonna ask for £30 million for you.’ He can turn around and say, ‘Well, hold on a minute, I helped you out a few months ago. Now you’re holding me to ransom?’ Football, like so many other businesses, is in uncharted waters and there is an awful lot of second-guessing going on. It is impossible to say with any certainty what will happen over the coming months because there is no precedent for this sort of crisis. Indeed, that raises an interesting question in itself: will future contracts protect against loss of earnings in the event of a pandemic? “A couple of my clients abroad have income protection insurance, so they should be OK theoretically,” the sports lawyer says. “Standard contracts in England don’t have force majeure clauses if a season is suspended. But in Scotland, they do. “At Hearts, all the players got a letter saying there will be a 50 per cent reduction. The agent called and asked if it was allowed. It turns out it is. The Scottish contract has a cover page and then three schedules attached to it. These are standard PDF documents for the standard SPL contract. But it is there, in black and white, schedule 3, paragraph 12, ‘In the event of the Scottish FA deciding that the game shall be suspended, either entirely or in any district or districts as provided for in the articles of association of the Scottish FA, this agreement shall be correspondingly suspended, unless the club is exempted from such suspension or the club otherwise determines.’ “That’s all it says. There is no explanation. Nobody has foreseen it happening. That’s why a club like Hearts can turn around and say: ‘Take a 50 per cent pay cut or we suspend your contract.’ The players have signed this. Hearts and other clubs are relying on it.” It is understood that Hearts are not yet enforcing the clause and still hope to agree a deal with the players before there is a need to resort to it. Elsewhere, the conversations carry on, between the leagues and the union, between the union and the players, between the players and the clubs, and between the players and their agents, to try and somehow find a resolution. Maybe it is easier to look for a conclusion. As one agent put it rather succinctly, “Fundamentally, football is fucked.”

The end of Chelsea’s Brazilian experiment https://theathletic.com/1734901/2020/04/11/brazil-chelsea-brazilians-oscar-ramires-wallace-luiz-david-piazon-kenedy/ At one point during a 5-0 win at Swansea on January 17, 2015, five of the 11 players Chelsea had on the pitch were capped Brazil internationals. As things stand, the figure next season is going to be zero. Should Willian leave Chelsea as expected this year — he said in an interview with Brazilian media this week that he was off — it may not only be regarded as the departure of a dedicated servant, but also the end of an era in the club’s history. Chelsea have had at least one capped Brazilian in their squad since Alex made his debut in 2007, but the love affair with talent from South America is in danger of fizzling out. Jorginho (who left for Italy when he was 15), and Emerson Palmieri (who moved there at 20) are still there of course, yet the connection to the land of their birth is diluted somewhat by their decision to represent the Azzurri at international level. It is a remarkable turn of events. Stamford Bridge has danced to a bit of samba beat from the moment one of Roman Abramovich’s key advisors Piet de Visser met influential Brazilian agent Giuliano Bertolucci. The pair struck an accord, and Alex was signed by Chelsea in 2004. (He was instantly loaned out to PSV Eindhoven, where De Visser was working as a scout, due to work permit issues.) As the defender’s representative, Bertolucci was obviously already in contact with Chelsea, but the sealing of a bond with De Visser helped him become rapidly accepted into the inner circle. He was developing a fine reputation for spotting gifted players back in his homeland. This in turn led to him setting up an alliance with Kia Joorabchian, a good acquaintance of another trusted Abramovich aide, super agent Pini Zahavi. Joorabchian, an Iranian businessman, had founded Media Sports Investments and formed a partnership with Brazilian football club Corinthians. For all parties it represented an opportunity. Chelsea had a gateway to sign players from a country that had won five World Cups; for Bertolucci and Joorabchian, there was a wealthy European club where they could position clients, then reap the financial rewards. Some of Chelsea’s most important players of the last decade — Oscar, Ramires, David Luiz and Willian — all stem from the Bertolucci-Joorabchian stable. Not that Abramovich relied on these two men alone. Zahavi was employed, albeit unsuccessfully, in the pursuit of Neymar from Santos in 2010, while striker Diego Costa, who led the line for Chelsea from 2014-17, is a client of Jorge Mendes. But one by one, Chelsea’s Brazilian contingent has left and there were even reports last year, which Joorabchian denied, that his bond with the west London club had cooled markedly. There is certainly a question mark over whether Brazil will ever be so healthily represented again. Chelsea have spent in excess of £20 million in trying to find the next crown jewel among Brazil’s young players such as Lucas Piazon, Nathan, Kenedy and Wallace. The first trio have been loaned out on several occasions and have just 15 starts between them (Kenedy 13, Piazon 2, Nathan 0), while Wallace joined Figueirense last year after failing to make a single appearance. Tim Vickery, a journalist who has covered South American football for the likes of the BBC since 1994, believes the quartet’s struggles may have led to a change of approach. “If that relationship is ending and you’re looking for reasons why, just look at the players Chelsea and England are producing now,” he tells The Athletic. “Maybe there is not the need to import Brazilians if you can have your own. Some of the recent signings from Brazil haven’t really come off. The hype around Piazon in Brazil was unbelievable but where is he now? (On loan at Portuguese club Rio Ave.) People in Brazil thought he was going to be world class. Kenedy is another. “The way the market has gone if you’re 23 and still in Brazil, you’re considered a bit old for European clubs. They want them by 19-20. But if you buy at that age, it is such a lottery. Recently a French club came over, we don’t know who it was, but they left some notes. One of the things they observed was how poor football in the country has become. They also said the young talent may be good, but Europe is producing players just as good. Maybe that is something which is weakening the relationship — clubs like Chelsea have learnt to use their own. “I think Willian leaving will be regarded as the end of an era at Chelsea among Brazilians. There is not the same connection anymore. No one else is coming through.” Having spent seven seasons in west London, Willian has made a significant contribution to the winning of five major honours. However, his demand for a three-year contract has been given short shrift during negotiations and a free transfer elsewhere is now looking a certainty. In terms of who was the most successful Brazilian at Chelsea, Luiz comes out on top with six trophies. But in terms of popularity or who made the biggest impact back home, Ramires emerges as a leading contender. Ivan Nolasco Jr is the secretary of the Barra Mansa Official Supporters Club, which is the only official one in Brazil recognised by Chelsea. He also runs the Chelsea Fans Brasil website. He states: “If I had to pick one Brazilian who will always be remembered by fans here, it would be Ramires. He was so important in the Champions League campaign in 2012, particularly against Barcelona. He played a big role in winning a trophy we had been chasing for so long.” Rafael Franca, editor of the Chelsea Brasil website, adds: “The tragic 7-1 defeat against Germany in the 2014 World Cup semi-final ended up undermining Luiz’s reputation here. I would pick two key players: Willian, for his consistency, and Ramires, for his importance in key moments.” Some of their other countrymen fared less well. For example, striker Alexandre Pato joined on loan from AC Milan in 2016 but made just two appearances, scoring once. The biggest disappointment of all was also arguably the biggest arrival: 2002 World Cup-winning coach Luiz Felipe Scolari. He took over in the summer of 2008, but was gone by February the following year. What hasn’t been in doubt is the club’s training ground has proved to be a very lively place due to the presence of Brazilians, most notably Luiz and Costa. The latter is still a figure of some renown in Brazil despite defecting to Spain before the 2014 World Cup. Willian, Ramires and Oscar were friends with them and would socialise, too, despite being regarded more as family men. Indeed, at one point they all lived on the same street near Fulham’s Craven Cottage. That was particularly helpful for wives and partners to also bond in an unfamiliar city. When it came to organising social gatherings or making practical jokes then Luiz, who was at Chelsea from 2011-14 and 2016-19, was the main ringleader. His top floor apartment in Putney overlooking the River Thames was a regular meeting point. It helped that not only was there a great view over the English capital, but there were also an array of entertainment on offer including arcade games, a pinball machine and pool table. Such get-togethers helped everyone improve their English as well as still enjoying the taste of food from home. However, despite being a popular figure at the club, Costa never showed any interest in learning English. As far as Luiz was concerned, anyone was welcome at his home. On one occasion he even invited one of the groundsmen at the club’s training ground, who happened to be Brazilian, back to his place on Christmas Day to celebrate. Luiz and Costa, who was at Chelsea between 2014-17, may have been the biggest characters of all the Brazilian contingent to be purchased, but the stage had been set by right-back Juliano Belletti. He is most famous back in Brazil for scoring the winning goal to help Barcelona win the 2006 Champions League final, yet his stay at Chelsea between 2007-10 helped raise the club’s profile. “At that time it was rare to see Brazilian players in the Premier League,” Belletti explains to The Athletic. “I was at Barcelona when I found out that Chelsea and Jose Mourinho were interested in me, but even then I knew that it was a big opportunity for me, both on a professional and personal level. “It was incredible. The club, the fans, the city… they were great times. We went out together as a group sometimes and had family meals at each others’ houses. On rare occasions, we would go to a Brazilian restaurant. There was real friendship between us. The other players were always really interested in Brazilian culture. Music and football especially: they would ask about Brazilian players, the young guys coming through. “Once, I organised a party for my birthday at my house. We had a Brazilian lunch: barbecue, beans, all the trimmings. Almost all of the players in the squad came. But they didn’t eat much. The next year I made Spanish food and they ate more! Didier Drogba, Florent Malouda, Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira were always the most interested when it came to Brazilian music. We had samba on all the time. The best thing was to see the respect and admiration everyone had for Brazil.” So could the potential absence of Brazilians damage Chelsea’s popularity in that part of the world? A survey conducted back in 2018 estimated that the club were the fifth most supported in Brazil with 320 million followers — only trailing Barcelona, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich. Joao Castelo-Branco, who is an England-based reporter for ESPN Brasil, doesn’t think the forecast is quite so severe, although agrees the loss of Willian could have an impact. “Will Chelsea keep their Brazilian fans? Definitely,” he insists. “You still see Arsenal with a huge amount of fans in Brazil (from the Invincibles era, which included Gilberto Silva and Edu Gaspar). That was the moment when the Premier League was really getting big over there. They still have a massive following over there “Chelsea’s wave came straight after that, so the Brazilians who got into watching the Premier League at that point followed them. They also had Scolari, who is a massive character in Brazil, had won the World Cup and then come to Europe, so a lot of people wanted to see how he was doing. A lot of people liked him and wanted him to do well. “When he came to Chelsea it was huge, because he was the first Brazilian manager in England. We haven’t got a big tradition of Brazilian managers in Europe, so him coming to the Premier League, to a club like Chelsea, was massive. “Whether they continue to get new ones is a different story — I’d imagine now the younger generation will be looking at Liverpool and Manchester City.” There aren’t too many signs of pessimism among their backers based in Brazil either. Franca says: “There was a real boom after the Champions League win in 2012. I’m from Rio de Janeiro and it’s quite common to see Chelsea shirts there. The fact that Chelsea had four players in Brazil’s 2014 World Cup squad (Luiz, Willian, Ramires and Oscar) was good for the club’s popularity. But the expansion of Premier League coverage on ESPN Brasil was the real game-changer. Only the Champions League can compete with the Premier League on television here. This has created a real passion for English football.” Nolasco Jr feels similar, although is watching events with a bit more of a heavy heart. He says: “We’ve seen more and more Chelsea fans in Brazil over the last decade. More games are on television, which has helped that growth. The presence of Brazilian players has helped the Chelsea fanbase grow in Brazil ever since Alex joined. And then we had Ramires, Luiz, Oscar, Willian. They are names that captured the attention of the public, and prompted the broadcasters to show more Chelsea games. It has been really great to watch. It was always great to see Brazilians wearing the blue shirt. Many of them represented our country really well and were missed when they left. “Willian has been an important player for Chelsea and if he does leave, Brazilians will view that as a real shame. Hopefully we’ll sign another Brazilian soon.” Chelsea could always dip into the market in future to keep the Brazilian connection alive. There has been speculation for over a year that they are keen on Philippe Coutinho, who is another client of Joorabchian’s, and talk of a loan deal from Barcelona has intensified in recent weeks. But the days when five were part of a title-winning squad, as they were in 2014-15 (Oscar, Ramires, Costa, Willian and Filipe Luis), are unlikely to ever be repeated.

Will a relaxing of FFP rules tempt Abramovich to spend big again? https://theathletic.com/1737149/2020/04/10/abramovich-spending-roman-chelsea-ffp-coronavirus/ September 1, 2008. Manchester City supporters remember the date as the moment Abu Dhabi United Group signed off their takeover, altering the club’s trajectory forever. From a Chelsea perspective, it signified the end of Roman Abramovich’s thrilling tenure at the top of the transfer market food chain, a changing of the guard immediately underlined by City’s victory in a public tussle to sign Robinho from Real Madrid. No individual, no matter how wealthy, can match the spending power of an oil-rich state. Abramovich recognised the new reality of English football, and the sustainability drive that Chelsea had already embarked upon was ramped up. They supported the introduction of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations in 2011 and have taken pride in balancing success on the pitch with compliance in the yearly accounts ever since. Chelsea’s net spend under Abramovich Abramovich has spent his own money — and continues to do so — to keep Chelsea competitive in the top tier of English and European football. But since 2008, every investment has been made with the knowledge that he will never again enjoy the kind of financial edge to rival the early years of his ownership, when his unprecedented spending kick-started a cascade of trophies at Stamford Bridge. Those days are gone, but over the past month, events beyond Chelsea’s control have shifted the landscape significantly again. European football is on hold and clubs all over the continent are feeling the effects, with the fallout sure to condition this summer’s transfer window — whenever it actually ends up taking place. “The original plan had been for quite sweeping changes this summer, with six or seven incoming transfers, but the pandemic has forced a rethink,” a Premier League club’s head of recruitment, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells The Athletic. “I'd say it's far likelier now that we'd bring in two or three, players who were identified a while back and are well known to us, on a far stricter budget. No one really knows how the transfer market is going to react to the current crisis. “Most people expect prices to come down, that you won't see £100 million fees for players, and clubs will need time to rebuild after a period without football. Yes, there may be ‘bargains’ out there, and I've seen talk even of clubs who are competing in the Champions League — not the very elite, but that second group of clubs — being vulnerable. “But those assessments can't be sweeping. We've seen Bundesliga clubs pooling money to help bail out other clubs further down the pyramid there, which doesn't suggest they're overly struggling. It is all relative: there simply won't be the same amounts available to spend in the market, for most clubs, as there would be normally. Not unless you have an owner with bottomless resources who is willing to pour money into the club.” There are signs the door may be opening for clubs less vulnerable to European football’s broader economic challenges to separate themselves. UEFA has set up a working group to explore how FFP rules might be relaxed or even suspended for a period, in response to lobbying from major leagues and clubs. The Premier League’s own financial compliance rules are open for discussion, and the traditional March deadline for clubs to file their accounts has been extended to June 30. If breakeven requirements are temporarily removed, a select number of clubs stand to benefit most. City and Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain have the resources to outbid everyone except one another, while Manchester United are confident their vast cash reserves will stand them in good stead in transfer negotiations to come. Abramovich can help Chelsea gain a similar edge if he so chooses — just as his presence has already positioned his club better than most to navigate the difficult months ahead. Among its million other ripple effects, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced Premier League football clubs to think more deeply about their role in the world beyond the sport bubble. Chelsea have made that adjustment more impressively than most, in part because they had less of an adjustment to make in the first place. Chelsea Foundation has been one of English football’s more ambitious and impactful charitable organisations for several years, with the cornerstone of its work being the award-winning campaign against antisemitism personally launched by Abramovich in January 2018. Ever since the shutdown, its considerable resources have been refocused solely on the public health crisis. The Millennium Hotel at Stamford Bridge, made available by Abramovich to NHS staff and key workers three weeks ago, is operating at 90 per cent of capacity. It’s likely that the neighbouring Copthorne Hotel will also soon be at their disposal, while Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has been informed that the stadium’s catering, car parking and conference facilities can be used if needed. That conversation, led by chairman Bruce Buck, is ongoing. Chelsea’s medical staff have been given permission to bolster frontline health services if they wish to do so. The club’s foundation and well-being staff are in frequent communication with the old and vulnerable via regular phone calls, newsletters and video messages. Regular workout videos on the club’s social media channels are aimed at keeping others physically active during the lockdown. Then there is also the club’s partnership with UK charity Refuge, which senior figures at Chelsea established at the urging of Abramovich when the club became aware of statistics that highlighted a worrying increase in incidents of domestic violence since the period of self-isolation began. Abramovich’s backing has given Chelsea the stability to maintain extensive community outreach programmes without placing a burden on the public purse. All of the club’s staff remain on full pay, and none have been placed on the UK government’s furlough scheme; the optics of any multi-billionaire — even one with a relatively fresh sense of grievance against the Home Office — unloading costs onto the state at a time like this are virtually impossible to recover from. But club officials point to the fact that Abramovich has never sought to take money out of Chelsea or to shirk the costs incurred in his running of the club. Last year he undermined persistent questions about his long-term commitment by pouring in a further £247 million of his personal wealth to bankroll significant transfer spending in a year without Champions League football. This year poses different, unprecedented challenges. Chelsea were well placed financially before COVID-19 shut down English football: their next financial results will include £115.4 million banked from player sales, headlined by the departure of Eden Hazard to Real Madrid. They were back in the Champions League, and on course to qualify again, and they are one of only three Premier League clubs to have no outstanding transfer payments due to other clubs — their previous transfer ban, of course, plays a big part. There is no knowing exactly how the current situation will play out. If football does not resume for many months, Premier League broadcasters demand their money back and UEFA do not deliver the expected FFP reprieve, even Chelsea may be forced to make difficult decisions. But as things stand, there is a quiet confidence that the club will reach the other side of this crisis relatively unscathed — a confidence that springs from the enduring commitment of Abramovich. The tantalising question is whether Chelsea can actually emerge stronger. Abramovich has not escaped the global economic downturn caused by the virus; his net worth has dropped $1.96 billion (£1.57 billion) since the start of 2020, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Good Friday. That figure represents 13.3 per cent of his overall fortune entering the new decade. By way of interesting comparison, former Chelsea suitor Sir Jim Ratcliffe lost $6.05 billion (£4.86 billion) in the same span. Not that Abramovich’s billionaire status will be under threat anytime soon. Bloomberg estimate his remaining net worth stands at $14.4 billion (£11.5 billion), making him the 80 wealthiest individual in the world. He has also diversified his investments considerably in the years since 2003, and so is less likely to be heavily depleted by sudden fluctuations in specific financial markets. He retains the capability to bankroll vast, transformative transfer spending. When the window does re-open, Chelsea will not be subject to the inhibitions borne of having taken austerity measures, nor will they have leaned on the UK government during this crisis, as rivals Tottenham have. With the need to satisfy FFP and Premier League financial rules seemingly temporarily removed, the only limits to Abramovich’s ambition will be those of a handful of even richer rivals, or the ones he sets for himself. Chelsea’s recruitment operation remains active, even if Scott McLachlan’s international scouting operation has been reduced to video and data analysis by the global shutdown. Marina Granovskaia is still talking to agents and clubs, and Frank Lampard continues to lead discussions about potential first-team targets to supplement the arrival of Hakim Ziyech from Ajax. The message coming out of Stamford Bridge is that Chelsea’s sustainability model — supplementing signings with Granovskaia’s talent for maximising sales, as well as relentlessly pursuing new commercial income streams — is expected to remain the guiding philosophy. Abramovich has embraced the spirit of FFP more than most of elite football’s modern benefactors, and six more major trophies since 2012 constitutes a rich reward for his commitment to the concept. But the next transfer window may be unlike any that has come before it. Chelsea were already gearing up for a key summer of recruitment. If what many anticipate to be a buyer’s market is not tempered by the need to balance the books, Abramovich will be presented with an opportunity not available to him for nearly a decade.

Friday April 10 2020 Football Nerd Will teams blooding youngsters have a post-coronavirus advantage? By Daniel Zeqiri Arsenal are one of the clubs giving minutes to young players CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES Through football's coronavirus hiatus, we are committed to providing a weekly newsletter of facts, analysis and retrospectives. If there is a topic you want us to cover please email [email protected]. Above all, stay safe. The coronavirus crisis risks draining all liquidity from football's transfer market, meaning those teams with their eye on an expansive rebuild might need to come up with contingencies. If the market is stagnant whenever the next window opens, promoting academy products to fill squad roles could be a necessity and the teams who have already started this process may have an advantage. Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal impressed this season by giving minutes to players aged 21 or younger, behind only Norwich City whose collection of talent is likely to attract admirers. While there are always high hopes for academy players establishing themselves in the first-team, those players can also be a valuable financial resource when the market picks up again. Chelsea have been trading a vast number of players for many years, enabling them to balance the books in an era of financial fair play and fund more high-profile purchases. Liverpool also sold young talent at a hefty premium, with the sales of Jordan Ibe and Dominic Solanke to Bournemouth putting £44 million in the coffers. Norwich run the tightest ship in the Premier League, with a wage bill of just £54 million, but the loss of matchday revenue during football's suspension — and likely relegation — could mean selling the likes of Ben Godfrey, Max Aarons, Jamal Lewis or Todd Cantwell. The presence of former players Frank Lampard, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Mikel Arteta in managerial roles and the patience afford them by supporters is one factor in the proliferation of youngsters at their clubs. The dominance of Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool and Pep Guardiola's Manchester City also means there is little prospect of winning the title in the near future, so rearming for the future makes more sense. Reece James, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Billy Gilmour, Brandon Williams, Mason Greenwood, Matteo Guendouzi, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli all have the potential to be fixtures at Chelsea, United and Arsenal for seasons to come. One intriguing aspect of the coronavirus shutdown is how an extended period without matches or collective training will affect youngsters. These are supposed to be the formative months and years of their career, when they learn the requirements of top-level football and absorb information like sponges. Just how much potential will be lost? Unlike when a young player is out injured though, rival players at their own club and elsewhere are also out of action so they are not losing ground on the competition.

their headline is a lie (not your fault m8 at all) it is not £25m for Chilwell A potential £25million move to Juventus would mean Emerson is reunited with former Blues boss Maurizio Sarri, who remains a fan of the Brazil-born Italy international. Alonso may also depart Stamford Bridge as Lampard plans an overhaul of his options in that position, but the rtired midfielder may have to compete with Manchester City for Chilwell's services. A fee of around £50million is expected to be demanded by the Foxes to part with the academy graduate, who has made 118 appearances for the club since his debut in 2015.

we could have had 25 to 30m POUNDS at a minimum for him the last 2 or 3 fucking windows, but Marina kept jacking up the price on all the Italian teams. fucking numpty bint it all gives me a headache for years (our LB situ)

Is it time to talk seriously about cancelling the 2022 World Cup? https://theathletic.com/1730410/2020/04/08/fifa-world-cup-coronavirus-football-soccer-cancel/ Dana White looks more like a Bond villain’s henchman than he does the mastermind, with his gleaming dome the only vaguely Blofeldian thing about him. That isn’t to say there wasn’t any cackling (muahahaha!) as the UFC president revealed his hair-brained scheme to host their latest jamboree of physical punishment on a private island to avoid coronavirus social distancing restrictions. Will White succeed in his plan to fly in a bunch of angry, violent men to duke it out in front the cameras and palm trees? Who knows? Who cares? One of the things about sport that has been such a turn-off in this period has been those leagues and governing bodies that are hell-bent on crow-barring the doors open again as soon as the first microbe bites the dust. It’s not so much a fear that the ball stops rolling; more that the cashier’s tills stop ringing and curiously, it has been a league whose season is over — the NFL, fresh from this weekend’s announcement of their fully virtual draft in a fortnight’s time — who have ploughed on with the most flagrant disregard to the ongoing global situation. Once we eventually emerge from this cursed period, the clamour to be first to reopen the turnstiles to consumer cash is going to be chaotic. Every sport faces a different challenge and they all have to find their own solution but it seems there isn’t a league out there that hasn’t considered erecting a plastic screen and playing without fans if it’ll make them an extra buck or two. For sports like baseball and cricket, so dependent on the weather, it is increasingly difficult to see how the lost revenues of a partially-destroyed summer can possibly be recouped. Think also of the businesses that depend on their local ballpark to survive, those dozens of bars and restaurants and merchandise outlets around Wrigley Field in Chicago or Coors Field in Denver, which don’t even open in the winter. Their revenue stream was supposed to be a raging torrent right now. Instead it’s not even a babbling brook. Every sport is desperate to get back to normal but baseball appears to be the most keen to make up for lost time. Alert to the fragility of its ecosystem and already facing doubts over its future-proofing, America’s favourite pastime could even begin its 2020 season with all 30 teams playing in the desert according to a report by ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Monday. Major League Baseball didn’t deny the report, instead noting that they were “actively considering numerous contingency plans”. And with that tacit acknowledgement, the countdown to soulless bubble sports played out without fans began. There is almost no proposition less attractive than sterile games being put on under an anonymous baking sun without spectators. Even as a televisual product, it lacks any great appeal. But for football fans, that countdown timer has been ticking for some years without a second thought. We can, however, stop that clock. And it’s now probably time to think about it, at least. Those who were part of the Australia 2022 World Cup bid team still remember their reaction to being pipped to the honour of hosting the competition by the Qatari bid: “Christ! They really fucking did it!” Navigating their way through years of FIFA’s arduous, sleazy bid process, they had heard chatter when trying to schmooze the relevant executives that Qatar’s wealth of petrodollars were being used to buy votes but few believed a tournament in the Middle Eastern state — which had never even qualified for a major tournament in the sport — could ever actually happen. Nearly a decade later, we are still not that much closer to fully unearthing all the details of how Qatar — and Russia, in 2018 — secured the necessary votes to secure the right to host the World Cup. For the first time, though, the US Department of Justice has laid out allegations in black and white that got us a little closer, alleging Qatar’s bid team of bribed FIFA executive committee members for votes. It may have been buried beyond page 29 of the documents unsealed on Monday afternoon but once you get past the fresh indictments of some media executives at Fox TV and dig a little deeper, the DoJ makes an allegation, which Qatar denies, that the bid was won by corrupt means. None of which will be much of a surprise to those who have paid attention for the last 10 years or so. The ensuing circus of self-justification and hard-drive destruction has done little to restore faith in the game and as those absurdly-gilded South American executives enjoyed house arrest and favourable parole conditions with a Mai Tai in their hand, it was up to FIFA to contort itself into whatever shape possible to make sure that the $5 billion dollar (or £4.1 million) show must indeed go on. The result? A winter World Cup that would require three seasons of club football across the globe be realigned in order to accommodate it. So, a World Cup allegedly won by corrupt means taking place at a time that suits nobody in a country where workers die to finish the stadiums that still have a long way to go under weather conditions that are inhumane, though Qatar disputes that they are. Now add in the ongoing pandemic and ask: do we really need it? The football schedule was already at saturation point, with the mega-rich intent on getting even more mega-rich and FIFA’s precious World Cup necessitating the calendar be reworked. With the 2019-20 season awaiting a satisfactory conclusion, time needed for an adequate pre-season and then a new campaign, it is hard to see how domestic leagues can cram the amount of games needed into such a tight window along with domestic knockout and continental competitions. Perhaps this means we have two or three years of pretty much every club playing Saturday-Tuesday-Sunday-Wednesday on a loop like Manchester City, Liverpool and Real Madrid are already used to. It would at least bring back the gate receipts clubs are missing so dearly. Or we could erase Qatar 2022 from the schedule and allow everyone time to breathe. If you are like me, this absence of football has made you think a little harder about what it is you truly love about the game. Everyone has a very personal relationship with football and I realised that my connection to the sport is strongly experiential. I fell in love with playing the game as a kid, obviously, but the moment that I was truly hooked and wanted my life to revolve around football was when I went to my first game. It was the 1996 Third Division play-off final between Plymouth Argyle and Darlington at the old Wembley. An accident; a spare ticket that nobody wanted, except the football-mad nephew who didn’t live far from London. Not the most spectacular of fixtures, admittedly, but to a six-year-old boy, no place on earth could match it. Mainly, it was the chanting, the songs that everyone would sing at the same time, and wasn’t it clever that they knew the words and isn’t it funny when they all sing that the other team’s goalkeeper is shit? Obviously, the hot dogs and the balloons and the flags and being in the Plymouth end when they scored (they won, 1-0) all played their part but the atmosphere and the crowd are what first emotionally welded me to the game and it’s that I miss most. When football eventually returns, I can’t wait to experience that half-second silence between a ball hitting the back of the net, the crowd inhaling collectively, and a joyous wall of sound being unleashed. Missing that experience, that noise, has really clarified to me that I have a very emotional connection with football and never has that felt so strong as when covering a World Cup. The World Cup is so spectacular that it barely needs introduction. You grow up watching it in glorious technicolour but to be sat in Row L is to watch football history being etched on the page, and it provokes a reaction in you. At the first World Cup game I attended, Brazil took the lead and neighbourhoods around the stadium sent up fireworks. I cried a little, just so happy to be there. I welled up at Argentina vs Iceland, a fairly inconsequential group game at Russia 2018, because the two huge groups of travelling fans reminded me again why I love football. Then, during the knockout phase, I remember standing in the sweaty heat of Kazan ahead of France vs Argentina, looking out at the vivid green expanse and simply thinking “This is why we do it.” So, cancelling a World Cup is not a step that any part of me would want to take on a football fan level — but the benefits seem obvious. With nearly eight weeks returned to the global football calendar, cancelling 2022 would give the sport room to work its way back into its normal rhythm. While FIFA would lose an estimated $9 billion in revenue (Russia 2018, the last World Cup that will have a 32-team format, made just over $5 billion) it could potentially claw back some of the reputational damage from the flawed bid process for Russia and Qatar, where over half of the executive committee have now been accused of, or proven to have committed impropriety, including former president Sepp Blatter and former secretary general Jerome Valcke. It is fair to point out that such measures might be seen as a punishment for players. Imagine you are Gareth Bale or David Alaba — this could be your final chance at playing on international football’s biggest stage. That isn’t something to be sniffed at, and is a far more compelling counter-argument than lost revenues, even in a sport likely to feel the economic impact of COVID-19 for many years. Perhaps simply postponing until 2023 is the answer, giving the schedule-makers some room to manoeuvre and potentially moving the tournament to somewhere that isn’t facing allegations of multi-million-dollar bribes and human rights abuses. Of course, this is all just a thought exercise. FIFA are more likely to sign up to play a tournament on Dana White’s private island than they are to choose not to milk their most gushing of cash cows at a time of financial need, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask questions. At a time when the very essence of what sport means to us is coming into personal focus, it is my feeling that those pushing the idea of playing any sport in a bubble might be best served by stepping outside it.

Why Mourinho was in the park with Ndombele https://theathletic.com/1731917/2020/04/08/mourinho-ndombele-park-coronavirus-sessegnon-sanchez/ Have you heard? Jose Mourinho has been training with Tanguy Ndombele in the park. At first, Tuesday’s news sounded like a joke concocted on social media, the sort of thing that is made up to inspire a series of memes. But no, it was actually happening — and there was a photo, taken by an Arsenal fan of course, to prove it. And soon the plot thickened, with a clip showing Tottenham team-mates Ryan Sessegnon and Davinson Sanchez running along the side of a road not observing the UK government’s social distancing measures. (Official advice is that all individuals should keep at least two metres apart at all times and outdoor exercise can only be undertaken with one other person from your own household. Sessegnon and Sanchez do not live together). Keen to get in on the act, Serge Aurier shared a video of himself on Instagram running closer to a friend than the allotted two metres. So what exactly happened, and how did this all come about? Let’s start with the first event — Mourinho and Ndombele’s one-on-one session. The pair currently live nearby to one another (Mourinho is temporarily housed with his core staff in accommodation close to the club’s training ground) and so he suggested meeting in Hadley Common in Barnet, north London. The session lasted around an hour and consisted of routine stretching, sprinting, and jogging. Given the uncertainty around when the season will resume and with therefore no specific timeframe to work towards, the priority for players is to maintain core fitness levels. There was nothing especially advanced in the session, hence Mourinho taking it himself rather than one of his dedicated fitness coaches. According to one source, because of the absence of a definitive return date, the session was “not about working obsessively over fitness. It was more a psychological strategy to make Ndombele feel important and part of the team.” All the players have a dedicated fitness programme, with slight deviations depending on the individual. Mourinho thought it would be helpful to the player to have some face time rather than another video session and since they would keep the requisite distance from one another throughout, misguidedly didn’t see it as being a major issue. Turning around the fortunes of Ndombele has been a big priority for Mourinho, even if some questioned whether his public shaming of the player after last month’s draw with Burnley was the best way of doing it. On this occasion, one could appreciate the desire to work individually with Ndombele but seriously condemn the inappropriateness of it, especially as face-to-face work is only being permitted if it is deemed essential. Ndombele lives in an apartment block, so it is natural he should want to exercise outside but across the country, players and coaches have been interacting on video link rather than in person. Later on in their session, Mourinho and Ndombele were joined by two members of the public, who are understood to have abided by the two-metre rule but the group then acted in breach of only exercising with members of one’s own household. At around the same time, Sessegnon and Sanchez were also involved in some outdoor exercise. They live in the same apartment block as Ndombele and so did some of their training on Hadley Common as well. The pair were not involved in Mourinho’s session with Ndombele but they did briefly meet with the head coach to receive instructions on their training, which mainly involved running exercises as part of their daily programmes. At that point, they were all said to be more than two metres apart but a video later showed Sessegnon and Sanchez running much closer than that along a road side. Aurier, meanwhile, was training elsewhere and did not meet with Mourinho. Once footage started to circulate and the various incidents were brought to the attention of the club, Mourinho and the players were reprimanded by senior officials. Spurs released a statement from a spokesperson that said: “All of our players have been reminded to respect social distancing when exercising outdoors. “We shall continue to reinforce this message.” Mourinho accepted the telling off, and on Wednesday said: “I accept that my actions were not in line with government protocol and we must only have contact with members of our own household. It is vital we all play our part and follow government advice in order to support our heroes in the NHS and save lives.” Earlier this month, the Tottenham manager appeared alongside other athletes and celebrities in a video to say thanks to the NHS for their work to combat the coronavirus pandemic and last month, he and his coaching staff hit the streets of Enfield to help Age UK and other charities pack and deliver goods to help the elderly. Back to Tuesday — and the incident gives an interesting insight into his way of thinking. From Mourinho’s perspective, seeing the players was a way of keeping them motivated and engaged. For Ndombele in particular, it was a chance to show that he is valued at the club and there is a commitment to making his time in England a success. The convenience of doing so and being able to briefly meet with Sessegnon and Sanchez made the whole thing seem erroneously like a good idea. Mourinho misses regular contact with his players and he has repeated often since he joined Spurs in November that he sees the training pitch as the place where he does his best work. In normal circumstances, he is tactile with the players and relishes the regular contact — he still messages them often but clearly, that is not the same. None of which of course is to in any way justify Tuesday’s actions — it is just to add context to what on the face of it appeared like a completely inexplicable decision. Many will still view it that way but some have pointed to the recent misdemeanours of Jack Grealish and Kyle Walker to argue that Mourinho and the players made a mistake, but not an especially heinous one. They were still in breach of government guidelines though, and speaking of context, given the nightmare week Spurs have had PR-wise following the furloughing of staff, it would surely have been prudent not to engage in any activity that could generate negative headlines. Mourinho wearing his Tottenham tracksuit was also ill-advised as it gave off the impression that this was a club-approved activity. As for the coming weeks, Mourinho will be more circumspect, though who knows how the situation will change in the medium or even short term. In the meantime, he’ll have to rely on awkward, stilted Zoom interactions like the rest of us.

Bayern press on with transfer plans as rivals fret over their future https://theathletic.com/1721627/2020/04/08/bayern-hansi-flick/ “We are trying to be good role models,” said Hansi Flick on Tuesday at his first press conference since signing a long-term-deal to stay at the club. The 55-year-old, who has extended his contract as coach until 2023, was specifically referencing the team’s return to training — in small, staggered groups, sans tackles and showers — but could have just easily been speaking about Bayern Munich’s transfer dealings. While the whole of the European elite appear shell-shocked and paralysed by the financial fall-out of COVID-19, the German champions feel secure enough to make important decisions in relation to their squad planning. So far, it’s only one done deal. Thomas Muller has agreed to renew until the same time as the coach but negotiations with David Alaba, Thiago and Manuel Neuer, all out of contract in 2021, are continuing. Flick emphasised his close relationship with Neuer — they worked together in the national team, when Flick was Joachim Low’s assistant — and stressed that “everybody at the club would be happy if Manu were to stay.” The 34-year-old goalkeeper reportedly wants to play on until 2025 but Bayern have only offered him the same termination date as Muller. Unprompted, Flick also expressed his hope that Alaba “outstanding” and Thiago “on a special, very high level” would stay. They were “both leading figures, performance-wise,” Flick added. It remains to be seen if agreements can be reached. The club certainly will take note of his wishes but will also be careful not to over-burden themselves. What they can offer, sizeable wages aside, is a generally sunny outlook — the team have hugely improved under Flick over the last five months since Niko Kovac’s exit — and stability. It’s unclear right now if the handful of sides who could reasonably afford the services of the aforementioned trio are in any position to offer the necessary salaries and transfer fees to facilitate such deals. The players may believably threaten to run down their contract and move as free-agents at the end of next season, when the situation in Europe may have improved. There’s therefore no guarantee that Alaba and Thiago will end up staying. Finding a compromise with Neuer over the length of his contract looks more straightforward right now, by comparison. Things are more complicated still when it comes to signing new recruits. The Manchester City and Germany winger Leroy Sane does remain a key target for 2020-21 but there are concerns over the 24-year-old’s commitment to the aborted move. An agreement had been found before his injury but the winger’s change of management this winter has set back negotiations considerably. While his knee surgery by an Austrian specialist is said to have gone well, there have also been persistent reports that sections of the Bayern hierarchy harbour doubts over the player’s mentality. In addition, Flick has been rumoured to favour Timo Werner, who is available for roughly €60 million thanks to a release clause. The RB Leipzig player can play on the wing but is perhaps better used as a deep-lying centre-forward. Asked by The Athletic whether a system with two strikers was feasible in principle, Flick replied that it was necessary for Bayern to “be more flexible next season — it’s important to have options, including playing with two strikers.” The answer may be understood as a tacit Werner endorsement but one should be careful not to read too much into a statement that was probably more general in nature. Earlier in his press conference, Flick had underlined the importance of bringing through youngsters such as Joshua Zirkzee, who has scored three goals, mostly from the bench. In the hour of need, the 18-year-old Dutch forward has sometimes been positioned as a second focal point in the box against deep defences, alongside Robert Lewandowski. Despite some of those misgivings and the considerable hurdle of agreeing a deal with Manchester City, Bayern’s preference for Sane still outweighs that for Werner, as was the case last summer. Flick’s appointment to a full-time job won’t change this equation. He had demanded a kind of “veto right” on transfers but was noticeably his humble self once more, explaining that this term might have sounded “very tough” but was meant to be seen as part of the normal way of doing business at a club of Bayern’s size: “We exchange views and then take decisions together. Coaches have a right to be consulted. That was the case for my predecessors as well.” That is true. But as his predecessors can attest, the club will always take a long view, rather than the coaches’ view, if the two are not closely aligned. It’s a simple fact of life that player contracts are worth hundreds of millions and tend to last longer than the stays of coaches in Munich, even the successful and well-liked ones. Just as Bayern didn’t think it wise to accommodate Kovac’s wish to buy Ante Rebic, Luca Jovic (both Eintracht Frankfurt) and Kevin Vogt (then at Hoffenheim), they won’t follow Flick’s lead unless they are convinced it is right for the club. That board-driven strategy does explain why head-strong managers tend to have a tough time at Sabener Strasse, but it’s also a one of the secrets of their financial success — and the reason why they can make big moves while others fear for their existence.

Crisis highlights lack of unity, solidarity and trust in English football bubble https://theathletic.com/1727007/2020/04/07/crisis-premier-league-coronavirus-pfa/ By Oliver Kay On Monday afternoon, as players from Germany’s Bundesliga were keeping a safe distance from each other on their return to light training, a leading virologist spelt out the difficulty in forecasting a resumption of normal service. “The problem is solvable, virologically speaking,” Professor Alexander Kekule told German broadcaster ZDF when asked about the possibility of the clubs returning to competitive action over the weeks ahead. “But only if one achieves a sort of special bubble for the players.” A bubble, you say, Professor? English football exists in one of those. Or rather a whole load of them. It excels at splendid isolation. Some say Premier League players live in a bubble but surely they are just a product of their environment. Many clubs are isolated from their fanbases, from each other and, as such, from any concept of a common good. Since March 13, when the coronavirus epidemic caused the football season to be suspended until further notice, English football has been looking for ways to try to combat the looming threat of financial crisis. Matches behind closed doors and a loss of match-day revenue? The cost of a curtailed Premier League season has been estimated at £762 million in broadcast revenue alone if television rights contacts cannot be fulfilled. Little wonder that, with the turnstiles closed and cashflow at a near-standstill, Premier League clubs are proposing an initial 10 per cent pay cut for a players, along with a 20 per cent deferral in case broadcast revenue is lost. Within six days of the Bundesliga’s suspension last month, Borussia Monchengladbach announced that their players, coaches and directors had agreed a wage reduction for as long as the season is suspended. “The goal is for Borussia Monchengladbach to survive this crisis without having to give notice of termination to anyone,” Stephan Schippers, their managing director, said. “In order to achieve this, we will all have to work hard together.” Union Berlin, Werder Bremen and Schalke were quick to announce similar initiatives. Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, whose revenue streams are much greater, said their players had accepted a temporary 20 per cent wage cut. Bayer Leverkusen outlined their plan upon their return to light — and socially-distanced — training on Monday. Bayern, Dortmund, Leverkusen and RB Leipzig, this season’s four Champions League entrants, have pledged a total of €20 million (£17.7 million) towards a solidarity fund to help ease the financial crisis faced by poorer clubs. For a moment on Friday afternoon, it sounded as if English football had developed that same sense of solidarity in a time of crisis. A Premier League statement declared that 20 clubs had “unanimously agreed to consult their players regarding a combination of conditional reductions and deferrals amounting to 30 per cent of total annual remuneration”. But they had jumped the gun. A conference call held by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) the next day, involving player representatives from all top-flight teams, only widened the disagreement between the players and their clubs. None of it is helped by politicians pointing the finger at footballers; how predictable that Matt Hancock, the health secretary, would seize the invitation to urge those rich young men, most of them from working-class backgrounds, to “take a pay cut and play their part” rather than extend that principle to high earners across the board, or indeed to the various billionaires, a few football club owners and major political donors among them, whose wealth is invested offshore. As has been highlighted many times over the past weeks, there is no shortage of players playing their part. To list but three examples among many, Wilfried Zaha has made his various rental properties across London available to NHS staff, Marcus Rashford has helped the charity FareShare to raise huge sums to distribute food for children who usually rely on school meals and Toby Alderweireld has donated a large number of tablet devices to hospitals and nurse homes. Jordan Henderson has led talks among senior Premier League players about setting up a charitable fund with a view to making a multi-million-pound donation to the NHS – separate from the clubs’ plan to donate £20 million, which was announced on Friday. These are just a handful of the stories we know about. So many other players have long-term relationships with charities or with their own foundations: some well-publicised, others low-key. Some of the attempts to paint footballers as an angelic breed can be rather cloying – there are certainly some who know the price of everything and the value of nothing – but footballers, as a collective, do not need to be shamed into playing their part. Football club owners? With some of them, that might be a different conversation. For the clubs and players to be locked in an unedifying dispute over salary reductions and deferrals, though, is not a good look at a time like this. The players are perfectly entitled to question their clubs about the financial imperative and, in particular, to seek guarantees about the job security of non-playing staff, but it is now 26 days since the football season was suspended and this process is still at an early stage. A collective agreement now looks further away than it did before Friday’s Premier League meeting. The PFA statement on Saturday made a number of important points, not least when it came to pointing out that the Premier League clubs had merely agreed to an advance of future broadcast revenue to clubs below the top flight, rather than an additional sum. “Football needs to find a way to increase funding to the EFL and non-league clubs in the long term,” the PFA said. (Too bloody right, it does.) What this whole situation has underlined, though, is the vast number of competing interests in English football — so many different ownership models, many of them sharing nothing other than a ravenous hunger for that next tranche of broadcast revenue. Unlike in Germany, there is little or no tradition of collectivism in modern English football. Indeed, with a few notable exceptions, there is little sense of the whole-club ethos — directors, staff, players and fans as one — that genuinely means something at many Bundesliga clubs. It would be nice to think that the English game might finally come together in a time like this but, listening to the briefings that have followed various meetings, it feels as if there is even less common ground than might have been imagined previously. Where collective action was called for, among Germany’s four Champions League clubs, consensus was swiftly reached. But when it came to the salary issue, clubs were quick to reach their own individual agreements with their players and staff. There is not the instinctive distrust that exists throughout English football — between clubs, within clubs, between leagues, within leagues. It was recognised as a complex issue rather than one that called for a one-size-fits-all approach but still there was a sense of accord rather than division. There is an increasing divergence in ownership models in Germany, along with calls to move on from the “50+1” clause that has often been held up as a panacea but there remains, at most clubs, a sense of unity from boardroom to dressing room to the terraces. That sense of unity and trust barely seems to exist in English football these days. When Mike Ashley and Daniel Levy decided that Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur would take advantage of the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme, placing non-playing staff on furlough, it was only natural for fans (and players) to react with suspicion or, in many cases, vehement disapproval. Whether those clubs end up doing as Liverpool have done, reversing their decision after being unsettled by an initial backlash, is another question entirely. Ashley, in particular, is not so easily shamed. For all the negative perceptions that surround footballers, most of us, I suspect, would trust the typical Premier League footballer far more than we would the typical Premier League owner when it came to setting the right example and doing the right thing. But this crisis has put players in a difficult position. The clubs’ attempts to force a collective agreement on wage cuts and deferrals, via Friday’s public statement, put pressure on the players to establish and then clarify their position with a statement of their own. Some clubs are understood to have approached their players directly, attempting to bypass the PFA. Gordon Taylor, rubbing his hands as he prepares for one final battle as the union’s chief executive, says there will be no such unilateral agreements. “Of course some clubs would prefer that,” he told The Times. “Why do you think we have a union?” Taylor made a number of reasonable points — “Players are saying, ‘We want to help non-playing staff, youngsters and community schemes’ but it’s the players and the PFA who are being painted as the villains” — but there is, without question, something disconcerting about the idea of a dispute rumbling on and on at a time like this. One hesitates to give too much credence to politicians when it comes to football matters but Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, was right when he wrote in the Daily Telegraph yesterday that “clubs, players and owners should be thinking very carefully about their next step. It’s important that a disagreement over wages doesn’t undermine all the good work that sport — including football— is doing to help the government’s efforts to tackle coronavirus” It is. The players’ commitment to launching that new charitable fund, initially focusing on donations to the NHS, should serve as a reminder of that good work. But football, as an industry, needs to be seen to be making the right decisions — and, beyond that, for the right reasons. Far bigger, far more profitable companies have already taken advantage of the government’s furlough scheme — and for many clubs outside of the Premier League’s elite, it is understandably being seized like a lifeline — but then again, not many sectors are as intent on trying to cultivate a cuddly, fan-friendly image as the football industry. It really isn’t a good look for Tottenham, for example, when their financial accounts revealed just a few days ago that Levy was paid a £3 million bonus last year on top of his £4 million salary and when their wage bill, relative to turnover, is the lowest in the Premier League. There has been an abundance of strong, powerful, meaningful gestures from individual players, managers and clubs over the past three and a half weeks but there is also a danger that, as Dowden suggested, the good work would be undermined, or rather overshadowed, by an ongoing wrangle over pay. The public are watching. And judging — particularly after Hancock’s intervention last week. It is, as the FA chairman Greg Clarke put it on Tuesday, time for English football’s stakeholders to rally together towards a common cause — or indeed several common causes, which include saving jobs, providing security for those lower-league clubs whose existence is under threat and, yes, contributing to good causes. But it is hardly surprising if, after all these years of self-interest, there is suspicion towards Premier League owners and chairmen suddenly preaching about collectivism, or indeed towards players who find themselves leaning on the experience and negotiating powers of Taylor, whose regime at the PFA seemed to have run its course after almost 40 years. Taylor has emphasised the importance of taking the time to “get it right” but why was it so much easier for so many German players, even with a less-influential union, to arrive at agreements with their clubs? It comes down to questions of unity, solidarity and trust: virtues that the English football industry has not exactly been famous for over the past couple of decades. English football has spent too long in its own bubble, rarely stopping to think what might happen if that bubble bursts. Nobody could have foreseen a crisis of this nature but a greater culture of togetherness — from the top to the bottom of every club, from the top to the bottom of every division, from the top to the bottom of the whole English pyramid — would have seen this nightmare scenario confronted in a very different spirit. If there is one thing English football can learn from this situation, it is that it can draw strength from unity, even at a time of crisis. It has been suggested that the challenges of lockdown will bring some families together and tear others apart. English football’s vast, dysfunctional family, so rarely given to introspection, would do well to bear that in mind.

Rebooted: When Wise was sent off four times in a season — and accused of biting! https://theathletic.com/1729629/2020/04/08/dennis-wise-chelsea-biting-red-card-sent-off/ “I honestly don’t think I am what you would call a dirty player. I am hard but I am fair. I won’t let anyone take liberties with me, though. If someone does something to me, then I will get my own back. That is the way it was when I was growing up and that is the way it is now. And, no, I don’t care how big they are.” In an illuminating autobiography first published in 1999, Dennis Wise makes no apologies for the footballer he had become – the cheeky, spiky provocateur idolised by Chelsea supporters and reviled by opponents. You suspect his insistence that he wasn’t a dirty player prompted more than a few eye-rolls throughout the English game. Not least from Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who famously said Wise “could start a row in an empty house”. But the impassioned self-defence Wise mounts in writing is all the more remarkable because of its timing; in the 1998-99 season, he had produced an incredible disciplinary tour de force that consisted of four red cards, 11 yellows and no fewer than 14 matches missed through suspension across all competitions. Even as Gianluca Vialli’s spectacularly entertaining side produced their most consistent stretch of winning football in the Premier League, eventually finishing just four points shy of treble-winning champions Manchester United, they often had to do so without their captain. “I was injured for three months of that season and I’m not sure if I played more games than Dennis!” former team-mate Gus Poyet tells The Athletic. He was making a joke, but a look back at the numbers reveals it to be true: Poyet made 38 appearances in all competitions to Wise’s 37. The most disrupted season of Wise’s career at Chelsea was the result of a perfect storm of bad judgement and bad luck. His first red card actually arrived in pre-season, during a friendly against Atletico Madrid in the Gelderland Tournament in the Netherlands. He clashed with full-back Carlos Aguilera and both were sent off, with the referee sending reports to the Spanish Federation and Football Association. Aguilera escaped further punishment but the FA saw fit to hand Wise a three-match ban. “I thought it was bizarre, embarrassing to a point,” Poyet says. “I understand they thought we were representing England abroad, but football is worldwide, not one country. There were rules for every country and England was punishing one of its players for something that anywhere else in the world wouldn’t be punished.” “I remember there being uproar about it,” adds Graeme Le Saux. “The FA now are a much fairer organisation in that sense. They understand far better the consequences for players and I think they’re harsher on players who do things that are way over the line but they’re much more reasonable for things like red cards in pre-season matches.” Wise was annoyed by what he perceived as a lack of consistency and made what became, in hindsight, an optimistic vow: “I’m fed up with being banned. I won’t be getting sent off again.” The disruption caused by the suspension was compounded by Wise getting injured against Blackburn in his first game back, and it wasn’t until late October that he made his third league appearance of the season. With an eye on building his fitness, Vialli then picked his captain in a largely second-string side to face Aston Villa in the League Cup three days later, only for the red mist to descend again. Chelsea were leading 4-1 in the final minutes at Stamford Bridge, and had just brought on a 17-year-old John Terry for his senior debut at right-back, when Wise went in high, late and two-footed on striker Darren Byfield. The punishment from referee Graham Barber was swift, and a furious Vialli became embroiled in a row with the opposition bench. “It was a bad tackle,” said Vialli’s assistant Graham Rix, who attended the press conference. “He deserved to go. He is devastated. There was no reason to make the tackle. It’s all about split-second decisions and he made the wrong one.” This time, Wise would miss four English matches rather than three, for what was classed as his second dismissal of the season. The motive for the tackle, late in a game long since over, was unclear. “There’s something about a lot of players of that generation and background,” Le Saux adds. “It’s like a code. I don’t know whether you’d call it a street code, but if you wronged them, they felt totally justified in at any point, no matter how long it took, getting retribution. “It was like the black book. You’d go in it and it might be the next game, it might be six months or it might be six years. ‘But I’m never going to forget that and I owe you one’. If you’re part of that code, you accept that, but the problem is he put himself into situations where he put that before his own responsibilities as captain or the context of a particular game.” Wise played just twice in November and only once in the league, a 1-1 draw away to West Ham. Red card number three arrived in his next game in the competition, against Everton at Goodison Park. A fourth-minute booking for a foul on Danny Cadamarteri was compounded by an off-the-ball clash with Marco Materazzi, and Chelsea lost their captain before half-time. Vialli sarcastically applauded referee Gary Willard and even Everton manager Walter Smith described Wise’s dismissal as “a bit iffy”. “I played at Everton, I made two tackles and I was off… and they weren’t malicious tackles, they were just… tackles,” Wise later said in an interview with The Guardian. The standard one-match ban became another three games, because of his prior misdemeanours. That trip to Everton perhaps highlighted most clearly the adjustment that Wise, along with many of English football’s other traditional ‘hard men’, faced as Premier League refereeing changed near the turn of the millennium; IFAB had outlawed the tackle from behind in 1998 and the trickle-down effect transformed many of English football’s previously passable challenges into yellow cards, and those that once merited a booking into straight reds. “They were implementing new rules, and most of those rules were more difficult to change in England for the players,” Poyet says. “A 50/50 committed tackle between two players in England was regarded as proper football, and then it became how in control of your body you were, or whether you were off the ground. All those new definitions of a tackle became difficult for us, because they changed almost from one day to the next.” “You look at the sorts of challenges that were going in during the 1980s and early 90s, the way football was played, you had to look after yourself – and you had to put your foot in,” Le Saux adds. “Sometimes you had to go in and look after yourself. Dennis was at the epicentre of that in his early Wimbledon days, because they were literally punching above their weight. “You’re conditioned to behave like that, so it’s hard to unlearn that stuff, especially in such an intense, instinctive environment as football. You’re not having a punch-up around the photocopier. You can’t compare an office environment to a football environment and I think those deep-seated learned behaviours come out very easily in that environment.” After returning from suspension, Wise finally managed to gain some rhythm as a regular starter in January – only to be derailed by his most senseless red card yet. Having been booked for handball in the first half of an FA Cup fourth round replay against Oxford United that Chelsea were leading, he dived to his left and parried away a Dean Windass shot that was flying wide. With the score 4-1. A second yellow followed, together with another four games on the sidelines. “I will be lenient with Dennis,” Vialli said. “I don’t think the first hand-ball was deliberate, though the second was.” Not everyone at Chelsea was quite so forgiving. “I could not believe Dennis did it,” team-mate Dan Petrescu told reporters after the game. “Even if the ball was going in, it didn’t really matter as we were already 4-1 up with 15 minutes to go. All the lads were disappointed afterwards, even though we had won the game. “We need more people on the pitch because with Gustavo Poyet and Tore Andre Flo missing through injury, we are short already. But now Dennis will be out for a long time again. He has already missed a lot games this season and he really should not have handled the ball. There was no need – it was unbelievable. He let himself down more than us.” But despite clear frustration with Wise’s indiscipline, Le Saux doesn’t remember any big dressing-room inquests. “When it’s such a fundamental part of somebody’s character, it’s hard to really confront them with it,” he says. “You knew how he would react, and I don’t think he’d have taken it well if we’d really got stuck into him.” The Oxford game saw Wise score his first goal in almost 11 months, but that was scant consolation for a suspension that ruled him out of another chunk of what was shaping up to be a potentially historic Chelsea season. In the end, they could not use his disciplinary issues as an excuse for falling agonisingly short of realising their title dreams; a costly April run of three draws in a row against Middlesbrough, Leicester and Sheffield Wednesday happened when Wise was back in the side. But there was another brush with the authorities to come in their Cup Winners’ Cup trophy defence. Wise was accused of biting Real Mallorca’s Marcelino in the semi-final first leg at Stamford Bridge, only for UEFA to drop the charge after receiving his explanation. “Television and the papers made a big thing out of me appearing to bite their defender Marcelino,” he later wrote in his book. “I never did; I just gestured to bite him after he had run his fingernails up my neck. He didn’t complain, the referee saw nothing and Real Mallorca said nothing.” The incident overshadowed the tie, and Wise was greeted with kids barking at him like dogs as Chelsea warmed up at the Son Moix stadium ahead of the second leg two weeks later. He hoped to have the last word in typically provocative fashion: “We had a great celebration planned if I scored, and in the last minute I thought I was going to do just that when I went to meet Franco Zola’s cross,” he wrote. “But I headed it too deliberately and wide. “Shame – because if it had gone in, I was going to run to the corner in front of the Mallorca fans, go down on all fours like a dog, lift one leg and pretend to pee on the corner flag!” Chelsea lost 1-0 that night and the tie 2-1 on aggregate, and so ended a season which had promised so much with only the UEFA Super Cup, won with a 1-0 victory over European champions Real Madrid, to show for it. There were widespread suggestions that Wise, who turned 32 in the December, had outlived his usefulness to the team and after a season in which his indiscipline regularly undermined his inspirational leadership, the criticism appeared fair. Wise responded in 1999-00 by producing his finest football in a Chelsea shirt, acting as the driving force in the club’s wild first Champions League adventure and scoring a memorable late equaliser to draw with AC Milan in the San Siro. “He kept being himself and enjoyed himself in the next few seasons,” adds Poyet. “You couldn’t be Dennis without his way of understanding football – the 50/50s, the aggression and the leadership.” Wise was sent off just once in the final two years of his Chelsea career, against United at Old Trafford. When considered next to all the trophies he won and victories he helped inspire, that remarkable flurry of red cards in 1998-99 now stands as a monument to the uncompromising personality that underpinned both the best and the worst moments of his career. “I know I will never be regarded as a footballer for the purists,” he subsequently admitted in his autobiography. “I accept that. I also know that I have made perhaps more than the occasional mistake in my career. But with me, I would like to think that what you see is what you get. I have been lucky, but on many occasions I have made my own luck. “If I had to use one word to describe myself, it would be a fighter. I have had to fight for everything I have ever won in football and I see no need to apologise for that. I work hard, bloody hard. I always have done and always will do. That is the type of person I am.”

Revealed and explained: the ‘terrible’ state of Premier League clubs’ finances https://theathletic.com/1729003/2020/04/08/premier-league-finances-accounts/ Famed investor Warren Buffett once said it was “only when the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked” and the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic has dragged football’s tide way out beyond the pier, forcing lots of embarrassed bathers to scurry back to their beach huts. Since the Premier League was suspended, the news cycle has been dominated by talk of bail-outs, pay-cuts and potential lawsuits, as the professional game has struggled with the greatest financial threat it has faced in peacetime. Football is far from alone in this regard: construction, retail, travel… any sector that depends on people being able to go out, congregate and spend freely is in a fight for survival. Getting through this will depend on a combination of luck, nimble management and what state you were in when it started. To paraphrase former British prime minister David Cameron’s favourite criticism of his predecessor, did you fix the roof while the sun was shining? The Athletic has analysed all the Premier League club accounts filed at Companies House over the last few months and the answer for the majority of them would appear to be there has been very little DIY done ahead of this storm. “The accounts are awful,” says John Purcell, the co-founder of financial analysis firm Vysyble. “The numbers had fallen off a cliff for some of the clubs long before this crisis.” While Dr Dan Plumley, a sports finance expert at Sheffield Hallam University, says the financial shock of COVID-19 has “brought to light just how stretched the industry is and how many clubs live from hand to mouth”. Crystal Palace and Newcastle United have taken advantage of an emergency measure that gives businesses three extra months to publish their year-end figures, so we do not yet know for sure what impact the 2018-19 season had on their books. But we do know what happened at the other 18 clubs and it is the stuff of accountants’ nightmares. If we use the 2017-18 figures for Palace and Newcastle, the league’s total income last season was £4.8 billion, with most clubs reporting rises, albeit mainly small ones, in all three revenue streams: broadcast, commercial and matchday. Unfortunately, as that other great business sage and former Tottenham owner Alan Sugar memorably pointed out, this money goes through clubs like prune juice. Of the 18 teams for which we have up-to-date numbers, only Watford reduced their wage bill year-on-year. If we include the old figures for Palace and Newcastle, which are almost certainly lower than last season’s, the league’s overall staff costs topped £3 billion. This means they spent 64 per cent of their income on wages. But that is the average. Bournemouth, Everton and Leicester all spent more than 80 per cent of their turnover on staff. In fact, exactly half the league spent more than 70 per cent of their income on wages, a level that automatically raises red flags for European football’s governing body UEFA. According to Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance last May, the wage/turnover ratio was rising across Europe’s “big five” leagues — England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — with the Premier League’s figure rising from 55 per cent in 2016-17 to 59 per cent 12 months later. The wage/turnover figures for three promoted teams, Aston Villa, Norwich City and Sheffield United, are even worse at 175 per cent, 161 per cent and 195 per cent, respectively, but that is par for the course in the Championship, which is a disaster zone for those who like balanced books and tidy profits. Just to underline what those figures mean, Sheffield United spend £1.95p on wages for every £1 that came in. Travel costs, utility bills, repairs, insurance, paper clips…they all add up and pretty soon they started nibbling into the overdraft. The cumulative pre-tax loss for the 18 clubs to have filed their accounts is nearly £300 million. “Lots of the clubs are in a terrible state,” says Purcell. “I’m not picking on them but I was not surprised to see reports this week that West Ham are looking for extra financing of £30 million. It’s so predictable.” The use of averages and totals also irons out perhaps the most obvious point to make about the state of the industry before the pandemic struck: the Premier League is not a collection of equals. The six richest clubs account for nearly £3 billion, or 61 per cent, of that total turnover. Arsenal, who have slid in recent seasons to sixth in the big-six mini-league, earned £367.5 million in 2017-18 — £176.8 million more than West Ham’s best-of-the-rest total of £190.7 million. That deficit is about the same as Bournemouth and Aston Villa brought in between them, as you can see below. Manchester United, the league’s biggest earner, turns over more than three times as much as West Ham and exactly four times as much as Crystal Palace and Southampton. Manchester City and Liverpool, second and third in the money list and as competitive off the pitch as they were on the pitch that season, earn four times the amount Bournemouth bring in. The only way the clubs further down the economic ladder can even hope to compete with the big-earners on the pitch is to spend a higher percentage of their income on salaries and ask their owners to keep topping up the shortfalls. These clubs also tend to be more reliant on the league’s main source of income: broadcast rights. If there was one economic marker that tells the story of English football’s rise from the ignominy and tragedy of the Bradford City fire and Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989, it would be the incredible amounts companies around the world have been willing to pay to televise it. When the Premier League split from the English Football League in 1992, the top flight’s domestic rights were worth less than £40 million a season. Nobody even noticed what the international rights were worth. This season, the clubs will share about £2.5 billion in broadcasting rights between them, with the rest going in parachute and solidarity payments to the EFL, assorted good causes and central costs. These rights deals have been negotiated centrally, usually on a three-year basis, and distributed more evenly than any other big league in Europe. The best clubs still get more than the worst but the margin is tighter than in France, Germany, Italy or Spain, creating the idea the Premier League is more competitive. The key landmarks are the back-to-back increases of 70 per cent the Premier League managed to persuade domestic rivals BT and Sky Sports to cough up in 2012 and 2015. The two broadcasters declared a truce before the 2018 rights auction, resulting in a slightly reduced return for the league, but nobody really minded as the appetite for English football abroad means the international rights are now nearly as valuable as the domestic ones. With a 30 per cent increase from overseas deals, the overall 2019-22 broadcast pot is eight per cent up on 2016-19. Before the current crisis, Deloitte estimated that Premier League clubs would earn £5.25 billion this season, £2 billion clear of the totals in the Bundesliga and La Liga. But English clubs spend twice as much on wages as German clubs do and 50 per cent more than Spanish sides. Kieran Maguire teaches the Football Industries MBA at the University of Liverpool and is the man behind the popular “Price of Football” blog and podcast. He sees an industry that did not believe the cheques would ever stop arriving. “Broadcast income accounts for about 60 per cent of Premier League clubs’ turnover but if you are that reliant on a single income source and don’t have contingency plans, you will always be at risk,” he explains. “Football is a part of the entertainment industry and like all other businesses in this sector it will be hit hard by a lockdown. The difference is football has higher fixed costs than most and these are the wages and transfer installments. “As of last June, the clubs owed £1.6 billion in installments and had £700 million coming in. Some of this money is circulating within the division and some will be flowing downwards to the EFL, but there is a £900 million deficit. The concern is that financial problems in one league could spread throughout the industry just like the pandemic.” The fees clubs pay for players are actually spread across the length of those players’ contracts in their annual accounts, a process known as amortisation. Maguire points out that if you take amortisation and staff costs together, they amount to 86 per cent of Premier League turnover. “That does not leave much over for anything else and the number will be much worse for the Championship, where this crisis will cause havoc,” he adds. A good example of how these fixed costs can cause an explosion of red ink at even the richest of clubs can be seen in Chelsea’s accounts for 2018-19. A high wage bill, a net transfer spend and a season outside the Champions League left them with a £101.8 million pre-tax loss. They at least can point to the Europa League trophy in their cabinet and return of Champions League cash to their accounts this season. Everton, on the other hand, only have an eighth-place finish in the league to show for their record £107 million loss, as you can see below. And for proof of Maguire’s point about the reliance on broadcast money, you need look no further than the response of every major league and governing body to the suspension of play: every possible avenue must be explored for completing season and honouring the various contracts associated with this season. The Premier League has already spelled this out to its clubs, saying their broadcast partners could ask for £762 million back if the remaining games they have paid to broadcast are not played. And if that sounded too theoretical when that message was delivered two weeks ago, streaming service DAZN, which has the live rights in Brazil, Canada, Japan and Spain, has since confirmed it will not be sending any more money until the action resumes. BeIN Sports and Canal+ have made similar moves in France. The good news for the Premier League, however, is the final year of a three-year broadcast cycle usually results in losses, and most clubs return to profit when the cycle starts again. “We’ve been tracking the data since 2009 and you can see these three-year cycles in the accounts are tied to the new TV deals,” says Purcell. “So, in 2014 and 2017, there are these walls of money that arrive in year one but by year three, most of them are losing lots of money again.” The bad news is that there has been a deterioration over time. “This set of accounts is a real shocker,” explains Purcell. “The tail-off over the previous two cycles wasn’t as bad as this time.” Unlike most other analysts, Purcell’s firm uses a measure called economic profit, which is all the usual things analysts measure plus the cost of equity or, in other words, the cost of investing in this particular business as opposed to any other. “We think it is a better reflection of how much money the owners are putting into these clubs every year to keep them afloat,” he says. “If we look at the previous three-year cycle, from 2013-14 to 2015-16, there was a league-wide deficit of £380 million. But with 18 of the 20 accounts now in, the deficit from 2016-17 to 2018-19 is £624 million. We’ve never seen anything like that before. “Of the 18, only five have posted an economic profit. Since 2009, we believe the Premier League has made an economic loss of £2.74 billion.” Sheffield Hallam’s Plumley also ties the league’s cost-control issues to the revolving door of bumper broadcast deals and the players’ demands for their fair share of that booty. “Costs have been the issue for football for more than 20 years: you can trace it right back to the start of the Premier League era,” he says. “Whenever a new broadcast deal has been announced, most of the clubs have immediately pushed the envelope in terms of what they can afford.” Ramon Vega enjoyed a 13-year career as a professional footballer in his native Switzerland, Italy, England, Scotland and France, playing for sides such as Celtic, Spurs and Watford, before retiring in 2003 and becoming an asset manager and sports business consultant. “Ten years ago many of the Premier League clubs were bankrupt from a balance sheet point of view but then they got those two big TV deals in a row and it lifted them all out of the red,” says Vega. “Those huge increases really saved them. OK, nearly all of that money has gone to the players but, as an ex-player myself, I don’t blame them at all. If you’re offered it, you take it. You’d do it, too, that’s human nature. But as a businessman, I’d worry about the wage to turnover ratio. Were the clubs prepared for this crisis? No. Was any other industry? No. “The strange thing is most of these guys are very good businessmen away from football but very few of them run their clubs like their other businesses. I think Mike Ashley at Newcastle is the exception but even he does haven’t lots of money in reserve.” Purcell agrees. “Who signs these contracts on behalf of the clubs? It’s not the players or their agents. It’s the owners,” he says. “You’ll never find a bricklayer who refuses a wage because it’s morally reprehensible. This isn’t the players’ fault. Good luck to them. This about the ambitions and agendas of the owners. “Of course, nobody predicted this particular crisis but good businesses can and do predict a crisis. Football should have been able to model some kind of shock to the system that would have an impact on broadcast income because they’re all on such a fine tightrope. Any shock would see some of them tip off that tightrope.” Dr Dan Parnell is a senior lecturer in sports business at the University of Liverpool’s Management School and the chief executive of the Association of Sporting Directors. For him, football’s cost-control problems could be sorted out at a stroke if the big calls were left to the experts. “There are lots of good, well-intentioned people in the game who desperately want to make good decisions for their clubs but all too often those people are either not making the final decisions or those intentions go out of the window when the owners get involved,” Parnell explains. “You can see it in the Sunderland ‘Til I Die documentary (on Netflix), where you have the manager and head of recruitment saying, ‘don’t pay any more than this for that player’ but then go ahead and do it anyway. It’s like they’re playing with a new toy. “This is where a really good sporting director can help. Look at Stuart Webber at Norwich. OK, it looks like they’re going down but nobody can say they are not in better shape as a club than when he started. “He’s overseen the new training ground, he’s changed the way they recruit and develop players and he’s got them on a secure footing financially. Any player he will have signed this season will have been signed with the thought that they might go down and his contract will have to work in the Championship. It’s a more honest and sensible approach than lots of other clubs.” Maguire, Parnell, Plumley and Purcell all told The Athletic they hope the Premier League will learn something from the current crisis, either bringing in a salary cap, increasing the amount it shares with the EFL or simply persuading the owners to let their staff get on with it. But Vega is not so sure this will be the “enormous wake-up call” the industry needs. “I don’t think football people ever learn,” he says. “The game is so geared up around today. Nobody thinks about tomorrow. “That’s why they’re panicking now. You can see that they’re not thinking straight with these decisions to furlough non-playing staff. How much money is that really saving them? But with no Champions League income, no matchday, maybe they have to repay some of the broadcast money…they’re thinking, ‘shit, what do I do?'” Not everyone is quite so sure football has arrived at this point in such terrible shape. Not compared to any business sector, anyway. Dr Stefan Szymanski teaches sports management at the University of Michigan and is the author of the best-seller Soccernomics. In an exchange with The Athletic this week, he said: “The problem is that all this analysis is in a vacuum. If you’re going to say that everything that ever goes wrong is due to incompetence without considering any other benchmarks or comparators, then there’s no defence. “The Premier League is not perfect. But why are they held to a standard of perfection? Who else are we holding to that standard? Is there any business not in a state of panic right now? What other sport is faring better in this crisis than the Premier League? “This is one of the most successful organisations in the world, measured by year-on-year growth over 30 years. They deliver an outstanding product for consumers. Who cares if they can’t control their costs?” Szymanski is right. The Premier League has been giving people around the world what they want for nearly 30 years. But now, for reasons beyond its control, it cannot. And because it has perhaps been a little too generous with its players (and their representatives), it is not in as robust a position as a business of its stature should be. You do not need to be an accountant to know that Bournemouth, who get 88 per cent of their revenue from broadcasters and spend almost all of that on wages, are in a tough spot. Even frugal Burnley, with their balanced books, lean very heavily on the league’s biggest backers. Getting football back on fans’ screens is of paramount importance to them. But nobody is immune. Manchester City, perhaps, with the almost limitless wealth of Abu Dhabi behind them, will emerge relatively unscathed and Manchester United’s many mattress and noodles partners do not look so stupid now everyone is looking for other sources of income. But they, and the other big clubs, need the exposure the Premier League and Champions League give them to make their numbers add up.

Who is Chelsea’s most important player? https://theathletic.com/1728977/2020/04/09/chelsea-kante-abraham-mount-azpilicueta/ While Eden Hazard was around, any debate about who was Chelsea’s best player seemed to be a waste of time. During his seven-year tenure, most supporters regarded him as the club’s greatest asset, the one the team couldn’t do without. Naturally there were other candidates, but the Belgian’s artistry and skill won universal acclaim — the club’s fans voted him Chelsea’s Player of the Year a record four times. His popularity also extended outside the confines of Stamford Bridge. However, ask the same question about who stands out among the current group now and the situation isn’t as clear cut. By the time football resumes again, coach Frank Lampard will surely have a fully fit squad to choose from for the first time. All the injuries and ailments which have hindered some of his men throughout the campaign before the break last month, should be fully healed. If this is the case, which individual shines above all the rest, which is the one fans dread not being on the teamsheet? The assumption following Hazard’s departure to Real Madrid last summer was that N’Golo Kante would inherit the throne. Kante was probably Hazard’s main competition over the previous three seasons. After all, the France international beat his team-mate to the PFA Players’ Player of the Year and the FWA Footballer of the Year award in 2017. The fact Chelsea made Kante their highest paid player on £290,000 a week in November 2018 is a strong indication of the high esteem the hierarchy hold him in. Kante is clearly one of the best players in the game at what he does, but 2019-20 has not been kind. The knock-on effects of a knee injury, which was first sustained ahead of the Europa League Final last May, has had a seriously negative impact. The former Leicester midfielder has started less than half of Chelsea’s games (20 out of 42) and his influence in many of those was not what one has grown accustomed to. Play as he did in the first two meetings with Liverpool in the UEFA Super Cup and Premier League and Kante will always be the first name on the teamsheet. For example, in the league encounter, he not only scored a stunning individual goal but led the way by gaining possession for Chelsea 11 times and completed 81.6 per cent of his passes. Yet some TV pundits still argue that, like Maurizio Sarri before him, Lampard has not been getting the best out of Kante by often playing him to the right of Jorginho in a three-man midfield rather than centrally, in front of the back four. Judging by this season’s form alone, it would be hard to make a case for the 29-year-old to be Chelsea’s MVP. But the past means he is undoubtedly going to still factor heavily in the conversation and rightly so. So who else comes into contention? A current front runner in the poll for Chelsea’s most influential footballer this season is Mateo Kovacic, who has performed at a much higher level than his first year at the club. As a profile piece highlighted earlier this week, the Croatian’s individual’s statistics are on the rise. For example, after attempting an average of 3.2 attempted dribbles per 90 minutes last season at a success rate of 68 per cent, he currently averages 4.7 attempted dribbles per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season with a 79.3 per cent success rate. Conversely, for a man who has played 36 times, a return of just two goals and three assists is a little underwhelming and has to feature in any case for the prosecution. If Lampard’s selection policy is regarded as a key factor, then Mason Mount instantly becomes a front-runner because no-one has played more in a Chelsea shirt. Despite being his first season as a senior Chelsea player, Mount is the only one to have featured in all 29 of Chelsea’s Premier League games. His versatility has been a major asset for Lampard too as he’s been employed as a central midfielder, out wide, as a No 10 and pushed up close behind the striker. He is also Chelsea’s second-highest scorer in the top division with six goals and yet the level of criticism aimed in his direction on social media suggests Mount’s popularity is by no means universal. The same could be said for another academy graduate in Tammy Abraham. The striker leads the way with 15 goals in all competitions, but only two of those were added in the last 11 appearances. Still, one wonders, where would Chelsea be in the league table had Abraham not led the line with such aplomb during the first four months? His displays only began to dip once fatigue from playing on a regular basis and various fitness issues began to take its toll. Lampard’s consistent selection of Willian means the Brazilian has to be a contender — his display in the 2-0 win at Tottenham in December was perhaps the best by any individual in a blue shirt. But again, his list of admirers appear to be matched by detractors. The same could be said for Jorginho. After a slow start, captain Cesar Azpilicueta raised his level back to the normal standard. The ability to play at right-back, left-back and in a three-man backline makes him crucial to the cause. And yet, Chelsea’s disappointing record of keeping just nine clean sheets across all competitions has to be factored against him, even though he is obviously not solely to blame. There is of course a possibility some will regard those who have played far less due to various ailments as Chelsea’s key man. What of Christian Pulisic, scorer of six goals in 23 appearances? The USA international posed a real threat when fully fit. Callum Hudson-Odoi was just starting to show glimpses of his best form following a serious achilles injury when he picked up a hamstring strain two months ago. And who can forget Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who has not kicked a ball for the first team since last May due to an achilles problem of his own? It is perhaps a reflection of Chelsea’s standing in the game right now — they trail Liverpool in the Premier League by 34 points and were comfortably beaten 3-0 by Bayern Munich in the first leg of their last 16 Champions League tie — that there are negatives and pluses by everyone’s name. Past achievements dictates my choice of Kante still being No 1, but only just. Who’s yours? absolutely disagree for me it is Kovacic, we often so struggle when he does not play (especially before Gilmour blew up in the past few games) and when Kante plays we struggle usually, minus a few decent games from him

Lawsuits galore!

Bingo! This is my fear.

Chelsea's Mason Mount labelled 'best young player' in the Premier League https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/chelseas-mason-mount-labelled-best-21819021 Chelsea star Mason Mount has been labelled the best young player in the Premier League. That is the verdict from Everton legend Tim Cahill, who also revealed he is a big fan of Frank Lampard. The Blues have operated in a way never seen before in the Roman Abramovich era. With a transfer ban overhead, the west London outfit have turned to their academy for players this campaign. It has seen the likes of Mount, Tammy Abraham and Reece James become key players while Callum Hudson-Odoi, Billy Gilmour and Fikayo Tomori have also impressed. And though it has been far from perfect, the signs are promising for Lampard's young team. They sit fourth in the Premier League and made it to the knockout stage of the Champions League, all in the Englishman's first year in the competition as a manager. Previously, Lampard had just one year of managerial experience at Derby - where he coached Mount on loan from the Blues. And ex-Australia star Cahill reckons the England international is a star in the making. “I like the look of Mason Mount,” Cahill told Sky Sports when asked to name the best young player in the league. “I think he’s a top goalscorer and he’s got a massive career ahead of him. “One of the reasons why I like him a lot is because of his coach (Frank Lampard) and the way that he’s trying to mould a player similar to himself. “He can lead him and show him the right ways. snip erm, Trent Alexander-Arnold is only 3 months older and already the best fullback on the planet lolol then there is Declan Rice (4 days younger) Pulisic (3 and half months older) Soon maybe Gilmour I would swap Mount for Mason Greenwood in a heartbeat

The Abramovich Takeover Story This week, host Matt Davies-Adams and our resident Chelsea trio of Liam Twomey, Simon Johnson & Dom Fifield, reflect on the most significant moment in Chelsea's recent history: When Roman Abramovich bought the club back in 2003. Mark Taylor, corporate lawyer and one of the key players involved in the deal, reveals his first impressions of Roman, how Ken Bates really felt about the sale, how close Abramovich came to actually buying Spurs and the importance of *that* game against Liverpool... Unsurprisingly, Jesper Grønkjær is also revealed as this week's Cult Hero! https://theathletic.com/podcast/139-straight-outta-cobham/?episode=21

Inside Liverpool’s U-turn: a ‘leak’, a toxic backlash and real money worries https://theathletic.com/1721466/2020/04/07/liverpool-furlough-leak-u-turn/ Liverpool had not planned to make an announcement on Saturday afternoon regarding their controversial decision to utilise the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. “Our hand was forced,” one senior club source told The Athletic. The Anfield hierarchy believe details were leaked by another Premier League club after what Liverpool understood to be confidential discussions involving top-flight sides about how they intended to handle the effects of the pandemic. Liverpool’s plan was to wait until Monday to release their statement to ensure that every impacted employee was made aware by the club directly via letter before any public announcement was made. Little did owners Fenway Sports Group know that the publication of a hastily constructed statement on the club website confirming that some non-playing staff had been placed on furlough would trigger a furious backlash that culminated 48 hours later in a dramatic U-turn and public apology. In an open letter to supporters on Monday, chief executive Peter Moore said the club was “truly sorry” for coming to the “wrong conclusion” after initially deciding to furlough about 200 employees. Liverpool will no longer seek taxpayers’ money to cover 80 per cent of the wages of staff who are currently unable to work with no matches going on. They would have been claiming about £500,000 per month. The Athletic understands principal owner John W Henry, chairman Tom Werner (both pictured top) and FSG president Mike Gordon were “shocked” by the torrent of criticism and stung by what they regard as unfair accusations of greed. During a series of conference calls on Monday, they were in full agreement that back-tracking was the best solution to limiting the damage caused by the fallout. Gordon, who is FSG’s second biggest shareholder after Henry, runs Liverpool on a day-to-day basis and is a popular figure at both Melwod and in the club’s Chapel Street offices. The Milwaukee-born businessman, who divides his time between Merseyside and FSG’s home in Boston, has the final word on everything from sanctioning transfer deals to making senior executive appointments. Managing director Billy Hogan and Moore answer to him and the trio spoke extensively before the initial decision to furlough was taken last week. From a business perspective, they all felt it was crucial to help ease the current cash-flow issues. All revenue streams have dried up in the current crisis but overheads remain huge and even for a club the size of Liverpool that’s a major headache. As well as an annual wage bill of £310 million, there are payments on previous transfers due in the coming months. There’s uncertainty over whether TV money will need to be repaid and if the next instalments from global sponsors will be forthcoming given that with no games being played Liverpool are currently unable to fulfil their side of the bargain. The Athletic has reported there are significant fears that Premier League sides may yet need to repay £762 million to broadcasters should the 2019-20 season not be completed, while the determination to finish the campaign even led to one idea of taking games to China. The collective commitment to find a way to complete the Premier League season when it’s safe to do so is good news for Liverpool, with Jurgen Klopp’s side on the brink of sealing the title. However, just when football will return remains unclear. Mid-to-late June, with matches initially played behind closed doors, is currently regarded as the most optimistic scenario. Meanwhile, the financial toll will keep growing. Liverpool’s latest accounts may have shown a pre-tax profit of £42 million but FSG insists those figures are almost a year old and all money generated is reinvested into the club as it constantly looks to balance the books. There has been no public announcement but The Athletic understands more than a dozen executive staff, including Hogan, Moore and chief operating officer Andy Hughes, voluntarily took a 25 per cent pay cut last week. It was kept quiet as they didn’t want to place the players in a difficult situation as their own discussions over wage reductions continue. As a major UK taxpayer and one of the biggest employers in the city with a staff of around 800, FSG felt it was entitled to utilise the coronavirus fund to help safeguard jobs. Bigger companies than Liverpool FC have turned to the government for help and they currently have hundreds of operational, hospitality and catering staff who have no work to do in the continued absence of Premier League football. Liverpool had already promised to cover the wages of casual Anfield match-day staff for the postponed games in April, which will cost them about £250,000 per match. The club hierarchy believed criticism of their furlough decision would be mitigated by the fact that, unlike Tottenham Hotspur, they would be topping up the 80 per cent coming from the government with the remaining 20 per cent to ensure that no employee would be left out of pocket. They were wrong. And the backlash over the weekend was so toxic that The Athletic understands a number of other Premier League clubs who had intended to announce the furloughing of staff have since decided to shelve those plans. “That kind of thing was almost expected of Daniel Levy and Mike Ashley but you don’t expect Liverpool to go down that same route,” one Liverpool staff member, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Athletic. “We’re always told we’re part of a family here and that working for Liverpool is different. ‘This means more’ is the marketing slogan. Surely part of that is looking after your own rather than taking government money which would be better spent elsewhere with so many businesses struggling?” Former Liverpool players including Jamie Carragher and Stan Collymore led the fierce criticism on social media and as one FSG executive in Boston admitted “the bullets really started flying”. The fact that it became national headline news with government ministers wading into the debate as Liverpool took a battering led to a series of urgent trans-Atlantic calls and a swift rethink. It had been a decision driven by data but the emotion it triggered hadn’t been properly considered. Influential supporters’ union Spirit Of Shankly (SOS) submitted an open letter to Moore via email on Sunday afternoon demanding a full explanation and expressing concern for “the damage this is causing to our club’s reputation and values”. On Monday, Moore and Tony Barrett, Liverpool’s head of club and supporter engagement, conducted a series of phone discussions with respected figures in the community. Feedback was collated and then presented to Gordon. There were three separate conversations with Joe Blott, the chair of SOS. “It wasn’t clear at that stage that the decision would be reversed but I genuinely felt they were listening,” Blott tells The Athletic. “They wanted to gauge where the fanbase was on this. We told them it went right to the heart of the values of the club. I’m thankful we got to this position in the end but it all could have been avoided if supporters had been involved from an early stage.” Moore also rang the Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson and the region’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram as well as local MPs Ian Byrne and Dan Carden. Byrne, a lifelong Liverpool fan, tells The Athletic: “Peter asked me what I thought and I told him that I’m in favour of using furlough if it means retaining jobs, as the overriding priority has to be that staff members get paid. “Everyone was delighted when British Airways went into furlough as it saved jobs but the reality is that football gets judged by a different set of rules. With football clubs, there is a moral side to this. “If Liverpool were saying, ‘We’re going to furlough for three months, we’re going to get X amount from the government and then we’re going to pay it back further down the line’ — that’s a different argument. The shame for me was that this decision has overshadowed a lot of the great work the club is doing in the local community at this difficult time. “Football is an easy target for the government and some people are always looking for a reason to give Liverpool a knock. The club gave them an open goal on this one. It’s caused some damage but they’ve done the right thing in the end.” Manchester City and Manchester United subsequently announced they would not be furloughing staff. Having assessed all the feedback from Merseyside and done plenty of soul-searching, Gordon sanctioned the U-turn on Monday afternoon as he concluded there had been “a misjudgment” which needed to be reversed. He fed back to Henry and Werner. It was decided that Moore would write an open letter to fans. There are parallels with February 2016, when FSG scrapped plans to increase ticket prices after 10,000 supporters walked out of Anfield in protest during a game against Sunderland. On Monday, Moore wrote that Liverpool would find “alternative means” to cover wages rather than furlough during this “unprecedented period”. In the short-term that means dipping into cash reserves but concerns within the club about the impact of this crisis going forward are genuine and growing. A glaring mistake has been rectified and the damage done has been reduced if not erased. It’s a fine line between running Liverpool FC as a business and embracing the principles and values that the club’s supporters hold dear. After a torrid 48 hours, FSG acknowledged they fell on the wrong side of it. Liverpool furlough u-turn - The Reaction The Athletic's Simon Hughes reacts to Liverpool reserving their controversial decision to furlough non-playing staff. Steve Hothersall and James Pearce are also on the show to discuss the managerial career of club legend Robbie Fowler https://theathletic.com/podcast/140-the-red-agenda/?episode=21

Adored by Dyche, loved by his team-mates — do not label Chris Wood https://theathletic.com/1724299/2020/04/06/chris-wood-burnley/ It is too easy to stereotype a player like Chris Wood when you don’t watch Burnley week in, week out. A physical frame, plenty of height — he was already six-feet tall when he was 14 — and Burnley’s long-passing approach makes the label of “target man” seem obvious. But how do you define a target man? According to the Cambridge Dictionary it is thus: “In games such as football, an attacking player in a central position to whom other players kick long passes. His job as a target man is to hold up the ball long enough to bring his team-mates into play.” Wood, now 6ft 3in at age 28, arrived in August 2017 from Leeds United as the club’s record signing for a fee believed to be around £15 million, and has achieved double figures in the Premier League every season since. He netted his 11th goal of the current campaign against Tottenham Hotspur in the final game before play was put on hold due to the coronavirus. But there have been doubters, particularly those on the outside looking in. The New Zealand international has won over his critics in the Turf Moor crowd too — but you won’t find many within the dressing room questioning his value, including manager Sean Dyche. “He has a lot more to offer than being a target man,” former team-mate and striker partner Sam Vokes tells The Athletic. “He is good with his feet, runs in behind, is very good in the air and a threat in the box. “There is a stereotype of players of a similar ilk and Chris would tell you that there is a lot of work rate that goes into playing with two up-front. It means there is extra work because you have to make up for that extra man in midfield not being in there.” Wood’s arrival provided further competition for Vokes and Ashley Barnes, but he was welcomed with open arms by his new team-mates. “It is an easy dressing room to blend in with,” says Vokes, who left for Stoke City in January 2019. The pair were part of a car share to get to training and still have stakes in the racehorse-owning syndicate involving a number of the Burnley players. “His banter was… questionable,” laughs Vokes. “No, he’s a typical lad at Burnley. He’s honest, down to earth, has a good family behind him. He’s a good guy around the place and brought a lot to the dressing room — and he was a good addition to the car school.” Vokes enjoyed playing alongside Wood, who is a good communicator on the pitch. Understandings and connections are developed on the training ground. As well as doing shooting drills together, the strikers are taken as a group to work away from the rest of the team. It allowed partnerships like Wood and Vokes to grow and that has been evident since the turn of the year, with Wood and Jay Rodriguez forming an effective pairing, then the latter linking up well with Matej Vydra. Wood, who signed a contract extension in November taking him up until 2023, made the ideal start to his Burnley career by scoring on his league debut — a 92nd-minute equaliser at Wembley to earn a 1-1 draw with Tottenham. It instantly showed that he had more to offer than being that stereotypical target man, with his ability to run off the shoulder of defenders. “I had seen him in the Championship, and he had a great season with Leeds (scoring 30 goals) before he joined us,” says Vokes. “He hit the ground running coming on as a substitute and scoring the goal against Tottenham. As a striker I know what it is like joining a new club, so it is always good to get off the mark.” That was an early example of the threat that Wood poses, showing his burst of speed but also his ability to stretch the play. As Burnley counter-attacked against Tottenham (below), he timed his run to get beyond the defence, receiving a pass from Robbie Brady and finishing coolly. Frustrations and grumbles can be heard on occasion when Wood is flagged offside. He leads the league with 31 — seven more than second-placed Bournemouth counterpart Callum Wilson. That comes with the territory of playing on the shoulder of the last defender. When you are not blessed with lightning speed, the timing of your run is everything. It is important not to totally dismiss Wood’s speed, though. Former Burnley player Paul Weller, who now co-commentates on their games for BBC Radio Lancashire, has closely watched Wood’s adaptation to the Premier League. “He will have his critics because he can be offside quite a bit, but not a lot of teams go long and look to break the offside trap,” says Weller. “It only takes that right timing and he is in. For a big lad, he can move. He has got a change of pace and when he runs in behind, he can open up his legs. “He’s under-appreciated by some because he does a lot of the donkey work. He is the main striker at Burnley: he plays on the shoulder and stretches the play. It is important because if everybody comes short then the pitch condenses, and it becomes easier to mark.” The example above shows Wood’s awareness of a situation but also the understanding he has developed with his team-mates. Instead of dropping short, he realises the opportunity is there to get behind the West Ham defence. He then shows his pace to reach the through ball from Ashley Westwood, forcing Roberto into a reaction save from his powerful drive. As well as being the one to provide the running behind the opposition defence, Wood plays a big part in the pressing game which has been a very important factor in Burnley’s ongoing seven-game unbeaten run. Alongside Rodriguez, he has led the way as the team pushed high to try to force turnovers. Grant Holt went through the process of having to adapt to the Premier League after earning promotion with Norwich in 2011. He scored 23 goals in two top-flight seasons at Carrow Road and was similar to Wood and Vokes in style. Holt refers to a selection of “target man” strikers, such as himself, Glenn Murray, Peter Crouch and Rickie Lambert. All of those mentioned improved when they were older than a striker’s traditional mid-twenties peak, adapting their style and bringing in different elements. “The biggest thing is you learn as you go. Wood has done that,” says Holt. “He’s learned his game: his touch has improved, he makes more intelligent runs, he uses his body better than he ever has before. “You can’t just be someone who stands in front and takes the ball in and links play all the time, it is too predictable. You’ve got to have a threat in behind as well and you learn that you possibly make the run a little bit earlier. “That’s when you tend to naturally find yourself offside a little bit more, like he is, because you’ve got to get on the move to get past them to give yourself that little bit of edge. Being able to do both gives you the ability to play mind games with the centre-back. Yes, he can run in behind, but you can go in to feet or aerially.” Wood’s ability to drop into areas and link play has continued to develop. Playing those mind games with defenders means they are constantly thinking about what his next move will be. As well as stretching the line of defence with runs towards the goal, he can drop off the line to receive the ball (in areas such as the one against Spurs below) and lay it off, helping advance Burnley up the pitch. The risk for defenders is if they get too tight, Wood can spin to run behind them. Wood has been able to showcase the different parts to his game throughout the campaign. He still ranks sixth among forwards who have competed in the most aerial battles. It is clear to see a common trend with Sebastien Haller, Troy Deeney, Joelinton, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Oli McBurnie ranking above him. All are big, physical players. Wood’s movement means he is consistently putting himself in positions to score goals. He is second among Premier League strikers for most big chances this season with 26 — only Leicester’s Jamie Vardy (29) has more. While that shows his ability to lose his marker, he has also missed the joint third-most big chances with 17 alongside Chelsea’s Tammy Abraham. Only Roberto Firmino of Liverpool and Manchester City’s Gabriel Jesus have missed more. A key to strikers settling into new surroundings is becoming comfortable with their team-mates. Before he suffered injury against Southampton in February, The Athletic highlighted Wood’s relationship with Rodriguez. Equally, in 2019, his relationship with Barnes proved fruitful, with the pair scoring a combined 30 Premier League goals (15 each) in the calendar year. Wood is comfortable with those around him. By playing two strikers, Burnley make the jobs of their full-backs and wingers fairly simple. As Vokes explains, one striker will run to the front post and the other to the back. That’s only part of the job. Movement in the penalty area is also important. Many strikers have a natural instinct to move into the correct area, but for bigger strikers who may not have the quick drop of the shoulder of smaller or nippier players, anticipation is key — the same principle as Holt’s explanation about movement outside the box. Wood has scored all but one of his 31 Premier League goals for Burnley inside the box, highlighting his predatory instincts. “He is in a team that suits him — they play to his strengths: they get the ball in to him and he has fantastic movement in the box,” says Holt. “It’s not a fluke. He isn’t just big guy who gets on the end of crosses. He makes good runs. He’s got good timing and moves well in the box and that’s the difference. “People think target men just score goals because they are big. No, it is because they learn how to move in the box. They learn how to move their body, because when the ball comes into the box, the opposition know who the biggest threat is, so it is harder to get away from your marker.” Wood’s goal in the 2-0 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford in January (below) impressed Vokes. The movement that Holt talks about is in evidence. Wood is much more alert than marker Harry Maguire and makes his movement before Ben Mee has headed it, anticipating a knockdown and reaping the rewards. His movement is not just about set-pieces and he has shown a number of times this season that it is not always about dropping a shoulder or losing a marker, but timing and knowledge of where a team-mate is going to put a cross — the example below is his goal against Norwich. It is similar to his movement against United but it is all about timing. His partnership with Dwight McNeil is arguably Burnley’s most important, with the winger providing three assists for Wood’s goals this season. This time, Wood is the only striker in the box so darts to the front post, positioning himself in the blind spot of Grant Hanley. Wood makes his run, Hanley can’t react and he finishes emphatically. Headed goals are Wood’s bread and butter though — he has scored the most headed goals of any Premier League player since the beginning of the 2018-19 season (11) and also leads the league this time with five. “His movement isn’t like an Andy Payton (the former Burnley striker who was smaller and speedier) who will drop the shoulder and twist and turn. But when the ball is coming, he knows his angles,” says Weller. “He is so good in the air that he can win headers when other defenders are challenging with him. We had Gareth Taylor and he was a back-stick player, we knew where he was going to be, and he used to win everything at the back post. That is what Wood is like.” Wood’s goal in the January loss to Aston Villa was a perfect example of this. From the image below we can see he is alert and has managed to take up a position on the shoulder of centre-back Ezri Konsa. He then uses his strength and positional advantage to hold Konsa off, while leaping high to head past former Burnley captain Tom Heaton. “Movement is important, especially when crosses are coming into the box. I knew, and I’m sure Woody is the same, that when you know one of your strengths is in the air, you have the movement to get away from the defender when the cross is good. Woody has done that a few times this year,” says Vokes. A target man by label, yes. A target man by definition, no. Wood brings so much to this Burnley team and that appreciation of his game continues to grow.

Barcelona: the richest club in the world struggling to make ends meet https://theathletic.com/1725827/2020/04/07/barcelona-messi-bartomeu-xavi-iniesta-neymar-barca/ “Barca is the top sporting brand in the world,” Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu proudly told a group of distinguished Catalan politicians and businessmen on February 12. “We’ve had our difficult moments. But this year our revenues will pass the €1 billion mark. Great work has been done by all.” Six weeks later, on March 26, the world’s wealthiest sporting institution humbly applied to use a Spanish government scheme for enforcing emergency pay-cuts and lay-offs, after all sporting and business activities ceased due to the coronavirus pandemic. This shocked the club’s roughly 1,500 “ordinary” employees, from youth coaches, scouts and physios, through to staff at the club’s museum, restaurants and retail outlets. But few expected the angriest reaction to come from Barca’s best-paid staff member, with first-team captain Lionel Messi issuing an angry statement via his own Instagram account criticising not the measure itself, but the way it had been sold through the local media. Upset that Catalan sports papers had been claiming Barca’s “captains” had been selfishly rejecting any pay-cuts, Messi voiced his “surprise that inside the club there would be people who want to pressure us into doing something we were always clear we wanted to do”. The kicker was that Messi said he and his team-mates were going to dip into their own pockets to ensure “that all the club’s employees can earn 100% of their salaries for as long as this situation lasts”. That effectively reversed the board’s decision to enforce pay-cuts and removed control of the club’s policies from Bartomeu and his board in this most difficult moment. So how did the richest team in football get to the point where its own players were bailing out the directors? Answering that question requires a trip back through the often complex finances and relationship between the Camp Nou’s boardroom and dressing room. Back in summer 2008, around the time Messi was just beginning to establish himself as world class, Barca was a very different club. A fourth contract renewal in three years saw the forward replace departing team-mate Ronaldinho as the team’s best-paid member, a few weeks after his 21st birthday. Annual club revenues totalled £279 million, with player wages totalling £160 million, far healthier than the 70% ratio used by many within the game as a yardstick for sustainability. Two years later, Messi was world football’s biggest earner on £9.2 million a year, before bonuses, while bumper contracts also persuaded peers including Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta to stay at home as Pep Guardiola’s team swept all before them, including an historic treble of Champions League, La Liga and Copa del Rey trophies. Barca had been spending outside their means, however, and when Joan Laporta left as president in 2010, the club’s net debts were revealed as £379 million. Successor Sandro Rosell loudly made sorting out the finances a key objective. New economic vice-president Javier Faus, a very successful private equity investor by trade, led an “austerity” project. One cost-cutting measure was banning colour photocopying at all Camp Nou offices. As you can see below, revenues rose sharply, helped by innovations such as the controversial sponsorship agreement with Qatar. Total expenditure levelled off for a couple of years, as did spending on player salaries, even after new high-earner Neymar arrived from Santos in 2013. “When we took control, the president mandated that we professionalise the club,” Faus said in October 2013. New measures included adding a club statute (Article 67) mandating that the leadership must resign if debts were twice EBITDA (earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortisation) in two successive years. Words like “austerity” and “sustainability” impressed readers of the annual club accounts. But the players began to chafe against what they saw as unfair restraints on their pay. A petty legal case taken by Rosell and then vice-president Bartomeu against their previous colleague Laporta also damaged their relationships with Guardiola, Xavi and Messi, who had remained close to their former boss. A storm was coming and it broke in December 2013. Amid familiar local media stories of Jorge Messi requesting another significant pay-bump for his son, Faus complained in a radio interview that there was no need to offer pay-rises to their No 10 “every six months”. Messi did not often speak in public at that point, but he responded almost immediately: “Mister Faus knows nothing about football and wants to run Barca like a business, which it is not. Barca is the best team in the world and deserves the best directors.” Faus’ faux-pas signalled his end at the club and, the following June, Messi agreed a new deal roughly doubling his wages to £39.5 million gross per season. Messi surely felt he was worth the money, especially as nemesis Cristiano Ronaldo was earning something similar at Real Madrid. And the Argentine’s fame and exploits also clearly helped Barca’s revenues rise dramatically year after year. A problem, though, was that his rocketing annual wage provided an elevated ceiling up to which everyone else could negotiate. Summer 2014 also saw Luis Suarez join Messi and Neymar in attack. The next season saw the team win another treble. That year’s accounts included payments to players and staff rising by over £88 million and the club’s debts increasing for the first time since Laporta left. “The money is out on the pitch,” Faus’ replacement Susana Monje explained at the club’s AGM in October 2015. When Monje left citing personal reasons the following year, Bartomeu took on the economic VP’s duties as well. The trope “Bartomeu takes the reins” became a favourite of local headline writers, especially for stories around new contracts or transfers. Some saw this as strong leadership from the top, others as the players being allowed to bypass the club’s various levels of negotiating expertise. A rotating door of different sporting and technical directors, especially after Andoni Zubizarreta was fired in January 2015, also cleared a direct path from the dressing room to the president’s door. Sergio Busquets spent much of 2016 hinting publicly that he might join Guardiola at City if Bartomeu broke a promise to significantly raise his salary. “I hope the president keeps his word,” Busquets said that February. Talks dragged on before the midfielder eventually signed a new deal that September, worth a reported £12.3 million a year. Contract talks with Iniesta, now coming towards the end of his career, dragged through 2017. In June, the midfielder, usually exceedingly polite, emphatically denied a claim by Bartomeu that an agreement had already been reached. That October he did sign a new deal, but senior players had learned that publicly confronting Bartomeu could secure a salary “update”, and Gerard Pique and Jordi Alba were among others to follow suit. It also became public knowledge that the players had jokingly nicknamed the president “Nobita”, after a bespectacled 10-year-old character in Japanese children’s show “Doraemon”. Bartomeu took it in good humour, telling Barca TV that “I suppose I look rather like him”. The president also added, “At Barca, we have a Doraemon in Messi, who can resolve all our difficult situations. And if there’s a Doraemon, there must be a Nobita, too.” Amid all the fun and games, Barca’s 2017-18 accounts saw football salaries rise from £342 million to £457 million. The announcement came just as Messi leveraged new apparent interest from Guardiola’s City into a deal worth more than £70 million per year, helping him become the world’s best-paid athlete. All this saw Barca also become the highest-paying team in any global sport, with each player making an average of over £10.4 million per season, per Sporting Intelligence’s 2018 Global Sports Salaries Survey. They still have that No 1 ranking, although the average amount dipped slightly last year to £9,827,644, with Madrid second on £8.9m, Juventus third, followed mostly by NBA teams until the first Premier League side — Manchester City (13th, at £7 million). Many Barca fans and pundits thought this just made sense as they had the world’s best player in their squad. Bartomeu and his fellow directors were unruffled as the club’s revenues continued to rocket, too. Net debts were also slowly falling, even after the 2018 confirmation of a £572 million remodelling of the Camp Nou. Last January, the club’s website happily headlined a story “Barca tops Deloitte’s Football Money League for the first time”. Soon afterwards, Bartomeu boasted of the €1 billion turnover to the Catalan industrialists. That seems a long time ago now. Last week, Bartomeu had to deny that Barca would have been in danger of declaring bankruptcy within three months if the emergency pay-cuts had not been implemented. “Up to February we had a faster pace of income than expected, the fastest in history,” he told Radio Catalunya. “Now it has all just stopped, which is why we are making these cuts. If we had done nothing before June, we would not have gone bankrupt. But there would have been losses.” The tone was much more sober than before, understandably. Some sympathy is possible as nobody could have foreseen all football and most of society shutting down so abruptly. Also, while Barca were the first La Liga club to publicly announce pay-cuts, on Friday the league itself asked all Spain’s professional teams to follow suit. But it is not as if there were no previous signs of financial stresses at the Camp Nou. While revenues and costs have raced each other towards the historic billion mark, the board have been scrambling each season to make ends meet. Last summer they had to borrow the entire £105 million to pay Antoine Griezmann’s release clause, while failed attempts to offload high earners like Ivan Rakitic further ruffled dressing-room feathers. Barca’s 2019-20 budget needs £109 million income from player trading to balance the books. Should this summer’s transfer window not open as planned, there will be a huge hole in this year’s accounts. Which brings back Faus’ famous Article 67, and the threat of the entire board having to resign should debts mount too far. Meanwhile the current crisis hit just after Messi’s Instagram dressing-down of sporting director Eric Abidal, who had publicly blamed the players for January’s decision to fire Ernesto Valverde as coach. A phrase from that post — “I think everyone has to take responsibility for their own duties and the decisions they take” — was clearly not just aimed at Abidal. All this has led to a situation where the club has little money and its players have lots. Bartomeu and his fellow directors have lost control. Messi is now all-powerful at the Camp Nou. Even the kitman and security guards directly count on his generosity for their monthly pay-cheques. We are also approaching the usual time when Messi’s contract needs an “update”. And everyone at the Camp Nou knows that his current deal includes a clause allowing him to unilaterally leave this June, when he turns 33. This has led to fears, not just among fans, that he could really move on, considering how sour everything has turned through recent months. However, it is impossible to imagine that Messi, having taken the whole club on his shoulders, could now just up and leave. More likely is that Barca’s senior players try to use their current leverage to bring about deep structural changes in how the club is run. Which brings us back to that famous 2013 argument. Faus’ view of Barca as a business which must follow the usual accounting rules has not survived these current extraordinary circumstances. Messi’s response that Barca deserves the best directors remains truer than ever.