The Beautiful Game Belongs to the Accountants Now
Football fans need to brush up on their financial knowledge to keep tabs on their clubs.
Simpler times.
Photographer: Dennis Oulds/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
“Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win,” the former England striker Gary Lineker once observed, in a rueful comment on Teutonic supremacy in the 1990s. An updated version might read: Football is a very complicated game, and at the end the accountants win.
Chelsea FC midfielder Conor Gallagher was the focus of widespread media speculation in the run-up to Thursday’s Premier League transfer-window deadline, with multiple reports suggesting the club was willing to sell. In purely sporting terms, it would have been a perplexing transaction. Gallagher has excelled this season, and was named the side’s captain by manager Mauricio Pochettino. He is also only 23 years old and already an England international, with most of his prime playing years ahead of him — exactly the type of player that a big club like Chelsea, with aspirations to challenge for major trophies and qualify for European competition, might be expected to hang on to.