| Babil Tezcur*
To all those fans of Aston Villa, Newcastle United, and other upwardly mobile football clubs across Europe who feel like their clubs are being unfairly prevented from rising to the top by the same means a previous slate of upwardly mobile clubs were able to do so, all I can say is: I feel your pain, since I had to take a Spanish II exam in 9th grade, while the class ahead of me did not. They could all get A’s on the basis of some fun project.
It might seem like a stretch to draw analogies between my life as a Phoenix high school student and the glamorous world of English Premier League clubs, but if you have been following the drama of Newcastle United having to sell its star player (Alexander Isak, who scored the second most goals in the league last season) to Liverpool (who already have the top scorer), you basically are seeing a similar injustice to what my Spanish II class endured. We couldn’t get easy A’s like those who’d gone before us, and ambitious clubs trying to break into the top ranks of European leagues can no longer do so by investing outside capital in their project like those who went before them did – especially Chelsea and Manchester City in England.
European football has always been mired in a level of inequality American sports fans would never tolerate, and in the last few years, there has been an emphasis across the major leagues to ensure their clubs’ sustainability and increase the competitiveness between them. Trouble is, there is often a tension between these two interests, as experienced with the imposition of measures like “profit and sustainability” rules (PSR) and squad cost limits.
The leaders of the top European leagues argue that their regulations, ensuring that clubs live within their means, have protected fans from the disastrous financial implosions of overextended clubs that used to be more common across the game. Fair enough. But by defining living within one’s means as spending no more than a club’s current revenues, as opposed to the club owner’s resources and ability to pay the bills, leagues run the risk of widening the gap between the biggest and smallest clubs, and freezing everyone into their current place. Smaller clubs are finding it harder to climb to the very top. These financial regulations protect the incumbents in their positions of dominance, from which they can massively outspend other clubs thanks to their greater revenues. And so, even Newcastle, owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, can’t hang on to its star player if one of the bigger clubs comes calling. The Saudis presumably have more money than any other owner in the Premier League, but they face a chicken-and-egg conundrum of not being able to spend heavily to raise the team’s competitiveness before they raise revenues organically, something that is hard to do without the brand-boosting effects of winning on the field, which in turn is hard to do without a major infusion of cash to attract and retain top talent. Saudi-owned Newcastle may not be the most sympathetic poster child for this problem, but the same dynamic has allowed the biggest clubs in England to also raid clubs like Crystal Palace and Brentford for their top players.
As an avid fan, I feel frustrated with these recent developments in the Premier League. The rich get richer and the strong get stronger. This is all a far cry from what happened after Chelsea and Manchester City were acquired by extremely wealthy owners (a Russian oligarch and an Emirati sheikh, respectively). In both cases, sluggish mid-table clubs were converted in no time at all, through aggressive spending on talent, into behemoths of the sport, alongside (and above, really) the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool. But now that barn door has been shut for others.
England’s PSR regulations state that clubs cannot have operating losses of £105 million pounds in a three-year rolling period. This may sound good in theory, but it jeopardizes the competitive ability of the underdog. It only makes it harder for smaller clubs to climb to the very top and win trophies, because a club cannot invest to grow its “business” and alter its trajectory, even if it has the means to do so beyond its operating cashflow.
So, in the meantime, millions of fans are left to watch this sport every single weekend in the hope that their “smaller club” kills off a big giant in a huge upset. The PSR system only helps lower the chances of this possibility.
Newcastle fans are understandably upset they can’t pull a Manchester City. That was a much smaller club, of small global stature, when Sheikh Mansour acquired it. They only got to the point in time they are at today because they were allowed to spend freely. They were allowed to invest great money with limited restrictions in order to raisetheir global profile and success. They are now one of the most recognizable clubs in the world.
After years of suffering and agony under the era of Mike Ashley, Newcastle fans felt they too were going to escape to something better. In the case of Aston Villa, after years of struggling, which included barely surviving the Premier League during the Covid years, they are now thriving with deep-pocketed owners eager to take the club to the next level. But with the PSR system in place, they are forced to comply with the strict financial regulations because they cannot raise their existing commercial revenue overnight.
Even if the existing regulations made sense for all clubs, regardless of their owners’ means, they have not affected all clubs, because some were able to already catapult themselves to the top of the league, so their strict enforcement now calls into question the basic fairness of these competitions.
All of which is to say, I should never have had to take that Spanish II test. ¿Cómo se dice “outraged” en español?
*Babil Tezcur is a high school junior at Desert Vista High School in the Phoenix area. He roots for Galatasaray and Liverpool, and hopes to run UEFA one day
to sort things out.