Liberal Vision

Ronnie’s £80m market failure

Being entirely obsessed with men kicking balls around a pitch, there is no way I can resist responding to Darrell Goodliffe’s blog post on the Cristiano Ronaldo move. He cites complaints made by Labour MP Gerry Sutcliffe and the allegedly pernicious effects of “the free market” that they both seem to believe Ronaldo’s transfer demonstrates.

I say “seems” as, bluntly, it’s in no way clear what they’re moaning about.

They issue concerns over “sustainability,” without really citing what is not sustainable. Real Madrid’s spending? Who cares?

Money, it is acknowledged, does not necessarily equate to success in football, yet we are then told “there remains an issue around clubs being priced out of being competitive.” Moreover, who is being priced out of being competitive against who and how is the Ronaldo transfer an example of this? Is the concern that ManUtd might struggle to compete when Real Madrid are spending this amount of money? I wouldn’t be surprised if such motivations come from Gerry Sutcliffe – born in Salford and a life-long Man United fan, it’s notable that Sutcliffe’s having a political moan to let off steam over his beloved team losing their best player.

Harsh? Then consider this part of Sutcliffe’s attempts to politically influence the FA:

“…there’s no one player bigger than the club – the club comes first. One thing you don’t do is underestimate Sir Alex Ferguson.”

Right ho, excellent policy analysis there, Gerry. No doubt another example of serving the public, “public sector ethos” and all that.

Yet back to the issues raised in the blog: it mentions “cultural identity washed away by market forces,” again without any context or explanation of how this is so, or how it relates to Real Madrid buying Ronaldo. “Season ticket prices are an issue,” we are told twice. And how does this relate to Real Madrid buying Ronaldo, or anything else? Again, there’s no explanation, just a series of unsubstantiated groans with a reactionary blame placed at the feet of “the free market.”

Yet these muddled anti-market claims are not the worst part of the blog. The worst part is the presumption, as always, that football is a free market, unaffected by interference.

In fact, football is strictly controlled by authorities, who inflict many interventions that impinge on the issues raised.

Let’s take the claim that Real Madrid’s excessive spending is the consequence of crazy speculation based around globalised merchandise sales. History does not back this up. Real Madrid, more than being “almost famous for making transfer decisions based … on how many replica kits they can sell,” rather have a reputation for being the State team, the King’s team (the Royal Madrid) and have consistently been aided by the state. A recent example of this came in 2001 when authorities purchased land from the club for a price considered to be extraordinarily above the market rate (over £200 million). This led to Perez signing the first wave of Galacticos – such as Zidane for £48m. The signing of Ronaldo (and Kaka) is the consequence of Perez’s re-election, after he promised to return to the Galacticos-era policy. Hence this whole affair stems from political and government intervention.

Secondly, let’s not pretend for a minute that Ronaldo moving from one big club to another affects “cultural identity” of the game in England. Sure, the sterilisation of football in recent times has taken something away; atmosphere at games is often not what it used to be. This, however, is largely the consequence of the enforcement of all-seater stadia – due to an extreme interpretation of the Taylor Report by a Tory government that had previously tried to impose ID cards on all football fans. As a consequence, we now have the crazy situation in which tens of thousands of people can legally stand packed into a third division game or a rock concert, but not a second or first division game. Meanwhile in Germany, a country with a near-equally rife culture of football hooliganism, standing areas are used safely in top flight games packed with 60,000+ supporters (see Schalke 04, for example).

Fortunately, our party is enlightened enough to be the only major party supporting the liberalisation of the rules imposed by the previous Conservative administration and propped up by Labour. This is the kind of good, liberal work we should be engaging in. Petulant complaints about Ronaldo’s move away from Manchester should be left to misguided Labour MPs.

Tags: cristiano ronaldo, darrell goodliffe, football, gerry sutcliffe mp, manchester united, real madrid