When the window closed on trading football players at midnight on Thursday, the English Premier League, on its own, accounted for £1.46 billion, around Rs 12100 crore.
One name missing from that turnover in human flesh was Filippe Coutinho. He was in another hemisphere, scoring in Brazil’s 2-0 World Cup qualifying win over Ecuador.
For Coutinho, it seemed like a Lazarus moment because for the whole buying window in Europe, the Brazilian was reportedly unable to set foot on grass due to a traumatic back injury.
The long flight and the switch to Brazil colours evidently rejuvenated his spirit and restored his fitness. Coutinho’s national team colleague Neymar did the talking.
“Unfortunately,” said Neymar, “instead of being a happy time for Filippe and his family, it’s a moment of anguish, disappointment and sadness. I like to see him happy because he is a teammate and a friend I’ve had a long time. He was rewarded with a goal today, for his and our joy.”
Neymar knows all about the joys and anguish of life atop the football transfer pyramid. He moved himself, from Barcelona to Paris St Germain, for a record 222 million euros (Rs 1,683 crore), and for a salary reported 865,000 euros a week for five years—after taxes.
You get the picture. For any man, of any religion, creed or colour wanted by a select few clubs across Europe, there are almost unbelievable riches thrown at his feet.
Neymar and Coutinho are a handful of talents sought by the wealthiest of clubs. During the window that is open from July 1 to September 1, a 20-year-old Ousmane Dembele was purchased by Barcelona for half the Neymar money, and an even younger protege, 18-year-old Kylian Mbappé, moved from Monaco to PSG.
Yes, the same team as Neymar. The Parisians have money to burn, billions of the stuff that its owner, the ruling sheikh of Qatar, can pay from his oil surplus.
That, and a gargantuan television deal, is driving this inhuman spiral of transfer fees. The accountants will tell you this is all proportional, that the EPL clubs are merely recycling the income from the current three-year global broadcasting income of £5.136 billion to their league of 20 teams.
Add on the full houses at stadiums, the hundreds of millions negotiated for shirt advertising and other sponsorships, and why should players not be entitled to salaries and sales prices that reflect this windfall? The Indian Premier League is built for cricket on similar lines.
That said, I cannot deny that I find what is happening to football as repulsive, and I fear, will eventually alienate the sport from its followers.
Granted that Neymar is a very quick, sublimely talented young man. And Coutinho is, without a doubt, one of the few players who might step into the shoes of Andres Iniesta, the little playmaker who will cease to be Barcelona’s orchestrator after this season.
Why begrudge them their fortunes? I am obviously not Indian, so I cannot begin to contemplate what it must feel like to take home less in a week than Neymar is getting (tax free) for every 10 seconds from Paris.
The players of PSG and similarly those at Manchester City have paymasters who have little background in the sport, or indeed in the countries where they are buying clubs.
The Qatari state money propelling Paris, and the Abu Dhabi sheikh funding Manchester City, are intent on buying the Champions League trophy. They might be in a race to get it done because sooner or later they breach UEFA’s supposed “financial fair play” rules that stipulate clubs must not spend beyond their football related income.
My darkest fear is that City or PSG will win this Arab race to “own” the prize. What then? What comes after winning the race? Where once the sheikhs raced falcons, they now get sport out of showing whose team is best in Europe.
There are not just two clubs in this. Most English Premier League teams are owned by foreigners, and they buy up so many players from abroad that the English national team struggles to find players in their own league.
Maybe we Brits are two-faced about this. We know we are blessed to see Coutinho on our soil, but we feel that he is only passing through. We should not blame him for dreaming of Barcelona, yet a contract is a contract—and at the start of this year Coutinho signed a new deal to stay at Liverpool for five years.
When he was not granted release to join Barcelona, he sulked. For weeks, the club told supporters that Coutinho’s sore back prevented him from doing his duty.
There must be a ceiling to all this, but no-one in the football business can see the bubble bursting anytime soon.