The World Game?

It's the world. But it's TANGERINE. 

As a football content creator* it's not really a good position to be in to be sick of football. I am though. Sick to the back teeth of it. It's fucking everywhere. All the football all the fucking time. Even when there is no football. Especially when there is no football. It never stops, even when it stops. Like time itself, football is wearing me down. 

*sorry

I put on the radio the other day, hoping the voices from the wireless would drown the voices in my head. They spent 30 minutes discussing hypothetical right back options for Liverpool in the wake of Trent Alexander Who Gives A Fuck moving to Real Madrid. 30 minutes on fucking right backs. No one cares about right backs. I changed channels. It was some smug smooth voiced celebrity DJ talking about 'Glasters' as if we're all going with him and reading out texts from people who have SUVs and go glamping talking about 'healing fields' with no sense of irony at all. Hopefully the world will be obliterated from space by a superior race soon and then I don't have to make the choice between lifestyle wank and football wank because my radio will have been atomised and all that will remain is dust and solar radiation.  

At least Wimbledon hasn't started yet. Tennis is worse than alien armageddon. 

"C'mon Timmy!"

The end of this season has dragged on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Our season feels like it ended about 6 weeks ago but there's still zombie games being played.

It turns out Chelsea have won something (who knew?). I don't know what it is they've won. Chelsea have been shite for years, the only fun thing about them (after Ken Bates gave up the electric fence idea) was when they were a team of super villains and Jose was an overlord of darkness but that's ages ago. I get the feeling UEFA have just given them a trophy for spending money so that their owners don't give up and stop spending money. I imagine somewhere in Switzerland Aleksander Ceferin rooting about in a cupboard and finding an old trophy from some 1970s invitational tournament and thinking 'a bit of brasso and that'll be good as new' and them just handing it to Chelsea fo't sheer craic and telling a baffled Todd Boehly 'well done, keep it up'  

In the past, football was noble and all of the people involved were of the highest moral standing

Still, we've got the Trump International Invitational World Club Super Cup Casino Challenge to look forward to. Can't wait. (I don't actually know what it's called - I may or may not have got the name right but fuck me, I struggle to remember what the tinpot Johnstone Bristol Windscreens Trophy Shield Cup is called and we actually play in that, so how am I supposed to remember what this thing is?) Chelsea are in that too. For no apparent reason. It seems being shite but rich gets you places. Again, I imagine that dodgy as fuck Fifa guy whose name escapes me but who has massive sex pest vibes handing a baffled Todd Boehly a ticket for the plane to America and saying 'well done, keep it up' 

It's easy to mock new ideas with weary sarcasm and long practiced cynicism. We (English football teams) definitely don't need another set of games and another non-trophy to fight for over summer - but, strangely, I'm not sure this isn't actually the bones of a decent idea.

So, if I take what UEFA do... and then just basically copy it as a FIFA thing by getting a few teams from here and there....... I could get ... a lovely big bonus!.... Let's do it!!!!

It's not a new idea - there was a play off between the South America and European Champions for a long time - initially this was a two legged game decided in the event of a draw by a play off. This competition then morphed into the one of 'Toyota Cup' held on neutral ground and in turn, eventually became the World Club cup - a slightly larger affair involving a few more games - but the idea of a more full blown tournament is new. Or is it? 

Actually, no, it's not. In 1960, the International Soccer League was formed - an affiliate of the American Soccer League which essentially involved inviting teams from established football nations to take part for the notional idea of being world champions. British involvement in the tournament in year 1 included eventual runners up Kilmarnock, Burnley and Glentoran. West Ham actually won it a few years later - which given the fuss they made about winning the 'giving Chelsea a trinket Euro Shield' the other year, it's surprising we've not heard more about it. 

The ISL lasted only 6 years and since then, there haven't really been any large scale efforts to create a global tournament until now. If it was doomed to failure in the 1960s, will today be any different? Maybe... 

Why now? On one level, it's nakedly a case of FIFA looking at UEFA with their money spinning annual Champions League and going "hey, we want a slice of the lovely money that club football tournaments bring!"

On an another more interesting level, it will potentially move money around the global football world in a way that hasn't really happened before - The qualifiers from, I dunno, Ghana and New Zealand and Bhutan (or wherever it is the teams actually come from) don't have a Champions League style revenue stream or a cushy domestic TV deal of their own and thus by default can't compete in a global market for players. It is just possible a well remunerated world competition might allow some of the home grown players from outside of the few mega rich European leagues to stay a bit longer in their own domestic systems which can't be bad. It's shit watching a club where any flash of talent and ability sees the player in question whisked away to a 'bigger' club - it must be even worse living in a nation where a player can play a few games (or maybe even just look quite good at the age of 14) and then be beamed to an entirely different continent as if your domestic system doesn't exist. 

Games played in Argentinian domestic system = 0

It does feel as if the future of the game may lie in this sort of competition. The struggles of promoted teams even to compete (let alone survive) in the Premier League seems to be becoming a trend as the spending and buying power of clubs is now largely dictated by their profile on the global stage. If the clubs promoted to the Premier League struggle, then imagine how most of the football world who don't have the money from the Premier League actually do? 

What I'm saying in a roundabout way is - whilst it's ridiculous to see English and Spanish clubs playing this and we treat it like a glorified pre-season tournament to be mocked and dismissed and the prize and participation money is chicken feed compared to bigger more established tournaments - for quite a few of the sides from outside of the existing 'elite' - the money is a serious prospect and thus it may feel elsewhere like a serious competition. 

Football 'eritage

We're quick (we have all the history, tradition and TV deals that any country could ever want) to wave this aside with an aloof shake of the head and declare it a pointless addendum - and in many ways, from a European powerhouse perspective, it is... but... what if it's actually any good? What if teams from across the globe compete hard, what if it throws up some new players, some good stories, some decent games? What if the thing grows? It's a really attractive idea at its heart - a 'club world cup' because there's a simple beauty to it - just as we can establish 'the champions of England and the champions of Europe' being able to establish the 'champions of the World' should be interesting surely? Wouldn't it be exciting to have some more clubs with increased financial means to compete against that very small group that have the means right now. 

In athletics, being the fastest runner in your county gets you a chance to compete to be the fastest runner in the country, continent and eventually the world, in golf, major tournaments are notable because they bring different players from across different tours, in tennis, similar (and so on) - Football is strange in respect of at club level, establishing a 'world champion' hasn't ever been taken particularly seriously. It does feel as if there's a layer of competition missing. 

It existed...

That's very probably because in comparison to the riches of the domestic and European trophies, the efforts to create a World competition have never been particularly incentivised - there has been no need for the domestic and continental bodies to back such a thing because their income by default doesn't come from global tournaments.

How seriously teams take a competition all depends on the money behind it and if FIFA can whip up enough cash to incentivise a global competition then unthinkable as it might seem now, domestic football or continental football could drop down the priority order for teams, much like the FA Cup and League Cup have over the last few decades, basically because it's worth less money to win those competitions compared to focussing on league position. 

There's clearly big, big money in football now - Virtually every team you can think of is owned by big money interests who have little stake in the identity or geography of the clubs themselves. The Premier League was itself formed by a cabal of owners who wanted more and we're foolish to imagine the same thing couldn't happen again but on a global scale. Money cares about one thing only. There's only so many spaces in Spain, England, Italy etc to squeeze into.

Even within the green bit, there's a lot of untapped potential...

It can't be long before the 'football industry' spreads its wings in search of new markets. We've seen several attempts over the years to set up money driven leagues in 'new markets' (from NASL to the Saudi Pro League) and none of them entirely convince - what we've never seen is a true attempt at club football on 'the world stage' - it seems such a simple equation as well - the World Cup is beloved, club tournaments like the Copa Libertadores and Champions League are beloved - so why not combine the two ideas into one heady melting pot of global branding opportunities replete with official airlines and official tour package partners and all of that. All of the lovely money, all of the time - it's like what's gone before but just BIGGER AND BETTER. 

I'm not sure that would even be a bad thing - for all we hear about football being the global game, the wealth is concentrated heavily in a few European leagues and a bit of the Middle East. It's surely time that South American football, African football, Eastern European football (and so on) got a chance to be more than a pipeline of talent for the small number of countries that have the lushest TV deals and to compete against the rest of the world on an equal footing. It sounds fanciful, but the success of Bournemouth and Brentford shows that with good structures and decision making allied with some good financial backing and you can compete in a league where the majority of the income comes from outwith the club itself.

The point I'm making here is, whilst neither of the aboves clubs are in and of themselves, a financial powerhouse like say, Spurs or Manchester United, capable of raising significant commercial revenues from their brand and facilities alone, the fact the Premier League doles out a huge chunk of money to its members every year has allowed those teams to compete. The gap that would exist based on old style finances (gate money = income) would prevent them from being able to enter the global market and the TV money gives them something to play with which if used well over a number of seasons can lay foundations. Who is to say that couldn't be the case for some sides around the world if a global club tournament could provide regular access to finance? 

Tokyo - a mere 37.4 million people in a single city (for scale, that's roughly 75 times as big as the actual city of Manchester, 12 times as big as Greater Manchester or about 25 times greater than the entire population of Merseyside) 

Football is indisputably the world game - it has a presence just about everywhere - but for it to thrive as a participatory sport (both in terms of attending and playing) then opportunities need to exist watch and play with quality players. 

As a challenge, I'd like you to think of the last non-European player who you'd consider genuinely world class who hasn't played a large portion of his career in Europe? I've got to admit - I'm struggling on this one. 

Juan Veron - 510 games in total - 263 of them (just over half) in South America is my best guess... Was he 'world class' - not sure...

To take a slightly more scientific approach we can look at the current World Cup holders' latest squad. We can see that only 3 of the 31 players name in their most recent squad were based in Argentina (and all of them had zero previous caps) - the only other non European based player called up was Messi, who of course, played the majority of his career in Europe. To put it simply, every single Argentina squad player who'd played international football prior to this call up had also spent a significant amount of time in Europe. 

Brazil would be the other South American powerhouse you'd look to and their squad has a slightly better ration, with 7 of the 31 being based in Brazil - however, of the 4 you couldn't characterise as 'youthful players' then 3 of those had played in Europe for considerable spells in their careers. Again, we could say quite confidently that 27 of the 31 had played a lot or most of their football in Europe. 

When we consider the passion and scale of football in South America (and that it has provided in Maradona, Pele and Messi, possibly the 3 greatest players of all time) it's remarkable that it seems largely to serve a function as a feeder system for European clubs. This wasn't always the case - Pele played 18 years for Santos, Jairzinho 14 years for Botafogo, Garrincha had a short spell in Colombia but played his whole career otherwise in his home nation - even Maradona's career wasn't wholly European - whilst his peak years were indisputably spent in Europe, he played 241 games in Argentina and 250 at various European clubs. 

They're quite into it over there...

We can take the point further by looking at the various 'World Player of the Year' awards that have been doled out under different guises by FIFA. Going from 1991 through to the most recent award, the only time a player playing for a non-European side has EVER been in the top 3 is Lionel Messi in the season he signed for Inter Miami. 32 years of club football and aside from the anomaly of Messi's win, no club from outside of the big five European Leagues has played host to any of the 'world's best players' 

The point here isn't to patronise or preach redistribution for the sake of redistribution - the point is, across the world, there are countries and clubs within them who produce an incredible amount of talent - that talent is siphoned into the academy structures of a few clubs in a few European countries and by default, that allows a very small amount of countries to compete for the de facto title of 'best league in the world' 

In the 1980s the idea of English football, (mud, disasters, low crowds, social stigma and very short shorts) becoming a multicultural global phenomena would have seemed exceedingly far fetched. In the late 80s there's a strong case for suggesting that not only the likes of Italy and Spain but even Scotland probably outranked England in terms of the quality of top clubs and the quality of player at the best teams. Certainly, for a period Rangers were able to take some of the better players away from the English league and attract a quality of European star rare in the English game at the time. 

'The money up here is great!' 

Lets not get bogged down in a 'then versus now' debate. The Premier League has solved problems and it has caused problems - it has been good for some and bad for others. The point is that it shows that 'the natural order of things' can be disrupted and that a well marketed and well broadcast 'product' can bring in a huge amount of money and that money can have a massive influence on the shape of the game on a global scale. The point is that from its position as 'a slum sport watched by slum people in slum stadiums' in the mid 80s, the idea of the English League being one of the worlds dominant and monied leagues within little more than a decade or so was as ridiculous as the idea of establishing some kind of global competition seems now. 

Foreign ownership dominates football - in the 2024/25 season, 17 of the 20 Premier League clubs had significant or complete foriegn ownership - Only Tottenham, Brighton and Brentford were owned wholly domestically. The Championship isn't a much different picture - only 8 of 24 teams were majority English owned. Even in League 1, less than half the division were English owned (11/24) 

English Football's first foreign owner... Bruce Osternan at (*checks notes*) Tranmere Rovers?

The Premier league is more dominated by foreign ownership than anywhere else - but not by a huge margin - The French top flight has only 5 of its 18 clubs who  have exclusively French ownership and more than half the teams owned entirely abroad. Serie A is 50% non-Italian ownership, I struggled to find definitive facts on Spanish ownership (the model in Spain is more complex accounting for some clubs being 'socios' (member-owned)) though foreign investment in the likes of Girona is definitely a thing and one source (Football Benchmark) suggested 6 of the 18 clubs are under majority foreign control. Germany is a well known exception and only the anomalous 50+1 rule dodging RB Leipzig would count. 

I'm not here to pass judgement on foreign ownership. In England, we have chosen to put football in the position we have in relation to markets and finance and it's inevitable therefore that what has become a global export commodity will attract interest from outside these shores. 

The purpose of my digression into ownership is thus:  football is a very desirable market but the opportunities to buy into that market are now becoming limited. The vast majority of England's top divisions are taken, most of the attractive French teams are gone, many of the Italian giants likewise and given the structures of Spain and Germany, opportunities are limited there too. 

Oaktree Global Opportunities - the cuddly US owners of Inter Milan (they're sadly unlikely to appoint Frank Worthington as player manager as Bruce Osterman did at Tranmere)

  
What then, does finance do? The market such as it, is reaching saturation point. When this happens, the theory of capitalism would suggest, new markets open up if demand dictates they should exist. There has never been greater demand for football in terms of global capital - and it seems a little naive to suggest that just because we gave the world football and then led the way in selling it out to television that things will stay the way they are forever out of deference to English and European football's predominance at this point in time. 

Here's a fun fact - (courtesy of Bloomberg) - As of 2023 (so we would presume it to have risen now) an amazing 17% of available shares in the big 5 European leagues were controlled by investment fund businesses. That's the coldest form of ownership available to anyone because its main intent is to yield a return on the investment. 

'At the end of the day Brian, it's all about results'

The shape of global finance is such that it ISN'T dominated by the same countries that dominate football. We only need to cast an eye down the list of owners to see that. We only need to cast a cursory glance at the post and pre-season tours of the big clubs to see that there is a huge appetite for top level football in Asia, the Middle East and North America. 

England has a remarkable number of professional football clubs and fanaticism matched in few places in the world. England's population is tiny compared to other nations. In fact, the combined population of 'the big five European nations (where all the best players end up) is a mere 286 million - that's smaller than the United States by about 40 milion but 1.15 BILLION smaller than China (and similarly India.) To put this in some kind of scale - these European nations represent less than* 1.29% of the world's available landmass - that means in physical terms, 98.71% of Earth is denied access by football economics to the opportunity to watch and play with and against top level footballs. 

*I could only find the globall landmass % of the UK as a whole and not 'England' thus the real figure would be smaller

I could go on all day citing population statistics but the main thrust of the argument is this: Football has done an astonishing job in popularising itself globally. It hasn't done a very good job in spreading the resources of the game proportionally and thus the opportunity and wealth resides overwhelmingly in a small fraction of the football world. 

On a sporting level, that's a bit unsatisfactory but more importantly for the argument I'm making, it limits the opportunities for global finance to invest in it effectively because for the vast majority of the world, the platform for investment (teams with a platform that generates global exposure and significant returns) simply doesn't exist. The monopoly on footballing power held by a tiny number of European countries is great for the Europeans and great for the spectacle of European football but it is limiting in a market context. 

Given the increasing prevalence of cold financial logic in the boardrooms of football it can't be long before that state of affairs is challenged because it seems illogical for it not to be. 

Lets take a few more facts. Think for a moment about some of the clubs we've mentioned, Brentford, Bournemouth. Add a few more, say, Burnley, West Brom etc. Are these really the greatest opportunities in terms of developing a return on investment? At this point in time, yes, they probably are - but if the rules of the game change and some kind of global competition were to exist then the rules of the game might change... 

East Lancashire - ideal investment zone and playpark for global elites?

Of the world's largest cities, none of the top 30 are in the 'big 5' European countries. Only Moscow (sanctions aside) and Istanbul host teams who can play in the most lucrative of competitions that currently exists. If I stop for a moment and pretend I'm an investor with my billions at the ready to plunge into football, it seems incredible to me to have no real platform to throw money at China, Mexico, Japan, Brazil etc etc. It seems a no brainer that somewhere like Rio, Lagos or Mexico City could become a global footballing power, such is the existing enthusiasm for the game and that the sheer weight of numbers in 'newer' footballing countries could create a very attractive investment opportunity... if only the platform existed... It's lovely to think of spending my money in a Wrexham or a Burnley, but come now, do I want to throw it at a decaying post industrial English (or Welsh) town or a giant , ever growing, ever sprawling metropolis whose population rivals the entire population of England?

The purists (like me (I'm back as me now, not as the cold hearted financier)) hate the Champions league format, yearning for the old knockout days and the simplicity of the competition as was. It's important to reflect on a few things though. The 'good old days' of the European Cup started with the tournament treated with outright suspicion from the English authorities. What we now see as a glorious part of football tradition started with sides (such as the ill-fated Manchester United side) facing considerable disapproval and threats of censure for merely taking part. 

It was only the insistence of Matt Busby and the backing of the FA's Stanley Rous against the Football League that allowed Manchester United to compete in 1956-7 

What I hate about the Champions League is what has become its strength - what I like or don't like isn't necessarily in step with what the average consumer of football wants  - Lets go back to the top of the article and revisit that endless Trent/Real Madrid talk. On more than one occasion, during the playing out of that boring saga, I read or heard Liverpool supporters upbraiding Alexander-Arnold for leaving to 'join a rival' - whilst this idea sticks in my craw because Liverpool's rivals are Everton and Manchester United in my uber traditional red brick terraced house flat cap and mild view of the world, for a different generation of supporters, weaned on seasonal forays into European group stages it seems entirely natural that those enmities should be pan-European... 

...and why not? Initially the English football league, whilst notionally national was a game of the industrial North-West and Midlands - Sunderland were prevented from joining the league for 3 years on the grounds that it was 'too far away' and it was a full 5 years before a London club pitched up. For around a century, if you wanted to watch games you had to travel to them and rivalries were based in physical experience because travel was initially extremely difficult (and even today, it's not easy to follow a team up and down the country.) Proximity therefore meant a big representation of away fans, a big atmosphere, a special game.

Awaydays - 1888 style

These days, if you're a Liverpool fan you don't have to go to games - you can watch pretty much every kick of every ball (first team, reserves, the lot) from the comfort of your own laptop or 80 inch flat screen and the geographical location of your rivalries don't really matter so much. It makes sense as well - In a real sense, Everton haven't particularly challenged Liverpool for anything for about 30 years. Madrid on the other hand have been involved in some sensational games against them and directly fought them for trophies in a way that Everton haven't. The truth is - for many Liverpool fans, the proximity to Everton is next to meaningless because, as a global product, their consumer base (how yer cold hearted finance types see 'fans') is also global. Most of the audience for any given game don't see proximity as a factor because there's infinitely more people not there than there. In that context, why shouldn't Madrid be rivals to Liverpool - as absurd as that might seem to some of us who follow the game in a more traditional way. 

The reason I'm making this particular point is that the Champions League illustrates what could be. It shows that new history can be formed and new competitions can become deeply established. It shows that rivalries and narratives can develop far beyond national boundaries and it therefore illustrates the potential of some kind of global competition which could potentially open up vast swathes of the world for investment from the financial interests which are yearning to shovel money into the boiler room of sport. In turn, it offers the 'brand partners' of football direct access to new markets and associations with a much wider range of locations, nationalities and identities than football does currently. If Liverpool can be rivals with Madrid or Manchester City develop an enmity with PSG then why not with a team in Sao Paulo or Shanghai and therefore why couldn't an expanded and regular World Club Trophy become a valued part of the football world? 

None of this is necessarily what I want - but for me, much of what I see as problems in English football stems from its position as a surrogate for a 'World League' - a disproportionate amount of income and attention is poured on one small island and football is like some kind of hothouse experiment where plants grow into bloated and grotesque versions of themselves fed on a rich slurry of exotic banknotes and the glare of TV lights.

I'm more than a bit tired of it if I'm honest. The grandiose pomposity of the presentation, the hangers on analysing every microscopic second of it, the ever inflating wages, the complete detachment of clubs from place and local economy- the scale of the thing dwarfs me, it becomes something I can't fathom, I can't feel it, I can't work it out - it seems as if one day it must outgrow itself, must spread across borders and break out of the confines it is restricted to now. The sheer amount of hype and noise around football seems too big for the stage it is currently on. 

Football is the ultimate meritocracy and a truly sensational participatory sport - it's easy to understand and offers a place for all sorts of different skill sets. That's what makes it a global sport. To have the ability to produce teams of top quality confined to a tiny subset of nations seems instinctively limiting to me. The structures we have in place now are a creation - a creation designed to maximise the wealth and income of the particular power holders in the game at the point of creation - the balance of power is shifting, the type and scale and source of money in the game is different - we'd be vastly naive not to assume that just because the structure of the game and the ways its competitions were run and TV money doled out was essentially defined in the 1990s that those structures can't be shifted again. 

Time doesn't stop just because you want it to

I've no real idea what format or structure an evolved and serious World Competition would, could or should take and where it would sit against domestic and continental interests but the fact is, with an increasing amount of (incredible) wealth coming from beyond the traditional seats of footballing power, the idea that money will necessarily respect those established interests seems unlikely. To me, the battle against such tournaments seems at best futile and at worst, a limiting and conservative protectionism.

The actual challenge is to define how you create such a thing and build it upon genuine sporting grounds and ensure that it serves a purpose of pushing the money around different parts of the football world. There's a vision of an invitational tournament held in air conditioned domes in oil states every year being won by the reserve teams of the big 5 European sides that is chillingly and cynically dystopian and a competing vision of an annual global tournament bringing together club sides in a dazzling and exotic festival of football that is doubtless naively utopian but actually pretty enticing. 

"and I said, ok, if this is the best football game in the world, where is Madine? You know him? Gary Lee Madine - big guy, crazy big guy. He's got a history y'know but don't we all... He can head the ball like a mile or a kilometre if you're in Europe I guess, but a long way you know anyway, what a guy and I'm like why are you all passing it around to the goaltender! you need Gary and they're like 'he's not playing Mr President because Hartlepool let him go' and I'm like 'what?!' so I'm saying someone sign the guy up for christ's sake"

Of course, it all could fall flat on its arse, barely anyone watches it and it ends with the Donald and that weird fella from FIFA (Gianni Infantino! I've remembered his name) presenting a confused looking Todd Boehly with a rubbish oversized trophy that looks a bit plasticy and telling him 'Well done - keep it up' and everyone forgets about it like the International Soccer League and everything carries on just as before forever and ever and ever... 

Onward

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