FOOTBALL: BILLIONAIRES ONSLAUGHT

Well, you know that the sign is very obvious when Robinho was signed at the very last minute in cash from the nose of Chelsea. For someone or some group of people to be able to achieve that, their wealth will be much more than Roman Abramovich. Abramovich has £13.2 billion to his wealth while the Abu Dhabi group has £500 billion. That's 37.8787878787878787878 times more than Abramovich's wealth. I like to put the many decimal points in the figure as it is extremely vulgar in Foochow pronounciation, Haha!

Any player who is rumoured to be transfered to Manchester City should not be taken lightly as mere rumours anymore. We are already hearing the next rumours of the transfer of Gianluigi Buffon for €70million and €110m for Kaka. Those are peanut figures to them and they can pay all in cash! Imagine in movies when they bring in leather briefcases loaded with notes. I bet also any player from now on going to Manchester City will be branded as money face and greedy for money. Very soon Manchester City will overtake Manchester United and Liverpool as the most successful English club in England and Europe.

Now, with that kind of wealth, the investment into Manchester City will be scary. They just need to pour in 1/500 to 3/500 of their wealth and it is enough to buy the world's best players. They can afford astonishing salary figures of all players with a mere lift of their finger tips. Scary shit! When Abramovich poured in his fortunes into Chelsea years ago, it managed to end Manchester United's dominance in the league. Abramovich changed the whole equilibrium of the football world and the only title he still fails to obtain till today is the Champions League.

The assurance to the other football clubs' fans is that Chelsea is a testament of money can't directly buy you titles. Well, not yet. What if that figure is to double or triple of what Abramovich poured into Chelsea? Well, this Abu Dhabi group consisted of owner Sheikh Mansour Zayed Al-Nahyan and his right-hand man Sulaiman Al-Fahim will be the next case study. How much money is enough to buy success? If Abramovich fails to bring the Champions League with his wealth, could a double or triple amount more than his be enough?

The scenario is scary. You can just imagine the lure of staggering and lucrative salary be enough for all the best players in the world to join them. Well, we just have to sit back and witness more rich people buying clubs like no tomorrow in the English Premier League. You don't have a choice. In order to win, you have to compete in terms of financial wealth. If not, you won't be able to get the good players because the rich clubs can afford higher fees. This will mean there will be high inflation. Only rich clubs can win titles. If this trend continues, the reality is near and clear that money=success. Simple.

There must be a mechanism in place to stop this and at least create a more fair playing field. You need to have rules and regulations like the maximum amount of transfer fees you can spend a season or the minimum national players you need in your own league or the amount of transfers allowed per seaon or the minimum and maximum contract period for a player to be in a club before allowed to transfer again. You need something to create more opportunities for everyone. If not, you end up having no balance and the competition becomes fake and vague.

If there is no form of control from FIFA or UEFA, probably a decade from now, the Premier League will be owned by billionaires and only Arsenal alone will be by themselves. I bet you can see Arsenal relegating to Division 1 if their current policies continue while the rest of the league is owned by billionaires paying fat salaries to all the top players in the world. The Serie A is already loaded with problems and will probably become a dying amateur league for old folks. The Spanish League will probably have just 2-3 clubs to be able to challenge the English Premier League clubs.

Let's face it. Football is no longer about loyalty. Even Arsenal as a case study failed to prove that bringing young players to become stars will not guarantee them to be there forever till retirement. Thierry Henry who kept on saying how much he owed Wenger for becoming who he is today also left. Loyalty is dead and money is everything. The only guarantee of players staying is a guarantee of winning titles every season (including the Champions League) or/and extremely lucrative salary. I won't be surprised that Zidane's world record breaking transfer fee will be broken very soon and possibly by an unknown player.

P/S: Kevin Keegan finally resigns as manager of Newcastle United. Poor Newcastle United, who's the next coach? Alan Shearer?