Dominance of a few teams and glaring inequality put the boot into soccer around the world

Daily Maverick

2 days ago

It's not a good thing that only a handful of teams, often the richest ones, are winning the major leagues throughout the soccer-playing world.
Club soccer is a genuinely uncompetitive sport across the globe. Almost everywhere, the richest clubs are getting stronger and the poorer ones are increasingly marginalised.
In England, Liverpool have broken Manchester City's record-breaking four-season monopoly of the Premier League, but the Reds are scarcely disruptors – the two clubs have now shared the past eight titles between them. London's The Times recently did a Gini coefficient calculation which demonstrated that the Premier League had become relentlessly less equal since 1990.
Here at home in the Premier Soccer League (PSL) it's the same, only worse. Mamelodi Sundowns have cruised to their eighth consecutive crown, once again without breaking a sweat or generating any great excitement from anyone except the residents of Atteridgeville in Pretoria.
Most of Europe's big leagues all have serious problems in this regard – Bayern Munich have taken 12 of the past 13 Bundesliga titles, and PSG 11 out of the past 13 French titles. Spain is a Barca-Real duopoly with very occasional Atletico Madrid interludes; only twice since the founding of the Portuguese league in 1934 has anyone other than the triopoly of Benfica, Sporting and Porto taken the title; ditto the Netherlands, where Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord utterly dominate.
Italy's Serie A is a standout at the moment, with Napoli disrupting the grip held by Juventus and Inter Milan. Still, between them, these two have won 16 out of the last 20 Scudettos.
And in the undergrowth it's even worse – Celtic won 12 out of 14 titles in Scotland and it's been 40 years since anyone other than Celtic or Rangers won it; Ludogorets Razgrad have won 14 straight in Bulgaria; Qarabag 10 of 11 in Azerbaijan – and there are more examples from Moldova, Belarus, Greece and elsewhere.
It wasn't always like this. My formative football years were the Sixties and Seventies when 13 different teams – including Derby Country, Burnley, Notts Forest and Spurs – were English league champions in 20 years. The likes of Bologna, Fiorentina, Cagliari and Lazio won Serie A, and Borussia Mönchengladbach, Stuttgart, Köln and Hamburg all triumphed in Germany.
Our PSL, when it was founded in 1994, had five different champions in its first five years (who now even remembers Manning Rangers, the inaugural winners under Gordon Igesund?)
The problem is obvious: money. Owners, especially sovereign wealth funds and Patrice Motsepe-like billionaires, are often unconstrained by genuine soccer economics and pile cash into their pet projects, and then reap even more financial rewards in terms of television rights, sponsorships and prize money. A topical example is Sundowns, who reportedly will bank a minimum of R170-million from Gianni Infantino's vainglorious 32-team Fifa World Club Cup in the US in July. The rest of the PSL gets zilch.
Hoarding talent
The divide then deepens with the hoarding of overpaid reserve talent. Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger famously described this as 'financial doping'. And, should the relatively benign financial regulations ever produce any sanctions from a league, highly paid pack-dog lawyers are let loose by the offending club to challenge the rulings on the 'oh so ironic' grounds that the authorities are being anticompetitive. (Manchester City are the prime example.)
The outlier in all this numbing, repetitive supremacy is the US, where Major League Soccer has produced seven different winners in the past eight years. And this is not by accident.
All major North American pro sports are deliberately rigged against dominance. They don't do league titles in the traditional sense – everyone playing each other home and away. They have regional conferences with unbalanced schedules which produce line-ups for a series of playoffs that, in effect, allow lower-ranked teams a knockout shot at glory. And there is no relegation, which ensures a secure base for investment in every franchise.
For such an overtly capitalist economy, US sports have surprisingly sheltered workshop or socialist structures. Tight salary caps, equal spreads of revenue and the worst teams getting the best new players in drafts are all used to level the playing fields.
The various regulations are complex and full of wrinkles and workarounds – manna for lawyers – but they undeniably are effective in terms of diverse winners at the moment. In basketball, by the end of the current finals series, six different teams will have won the past six NBA championships.
In Major League Baseball, the World Series has produced nine different winners in 11 years. Ice hockey's Stanley Cup has had seven different winners in eight years, and the National Football League's Superbowl has had 12 different winners in 16 years.
US threat?
Not that I am championing this system for global soccer. I don't like the playoff concept. And relegation or promotion is a key spice of soccer life. A straight-up tier of leagues is the best measure of the best.
But beware – 10 out of 20 clubs in the English Premier League have majority American owners now. If they align, they can shape the league as they see fit and none of them likes the idea of their massive investments being relegated into a year of fixtures against Preston North End or Hull. They will want security and guaranteed showcase fixtures (such as playoffs, an expanded Champions League or a Super League).
In light of this, soccer needs to keep its traditional structure but double down on its fiscal checks and balances, and spread the jam better. And, a personal peeve, ban the loaning of players. If they're on your overloaded books, use them or lose them.
The good news is that there are some encouraging signs, like profligate Man City going empty handed while Crystal Palace, Newcastle and Spurs all won long-awaited trophies. And Chelsea's billions are producing next to nothing.
Elsewhere, Pirates and Chiefs elbowed Sundowns out of the two major local cups, Aberdeen won the Scottish Cup last weekend and Stuttgart took Germany's equivalent by beating a plucky third-division side.
There is some hope that the days of dull dominance are coming to an end. DM