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Football: universal language, beautiful game, cultural keystone. Football as an idea, a game and a community pillar will never die. If the unthinkable happened and the bubble burst, some blokes would pinch the goalposts out of their abandoned local stadium and start kicking footballs into them. But football as we know it could be said to be under threat in a number of ways, if one were so inclined.

The threats included here almost exclusively affect the top end of the game, which is why it’s darkly amusing that the people who run it do so with such reckless abandon while the grassroots will ultimately survive. They are also viewed from an English perspective; leagues around the world will have differing capabilities when it comes to riding out a genuine crisis in the sport, depending on how they interact with the wider game globally and domestically.

Finally, it is clear that these four threats all stem from the same genesis: money. This wasn’t a conscious effort to string four strands together into an anti-money theme, nor was it a surprising outcome. So excuse the over-dramatic post title (it should really have been “Four things about football that get on my nerves but will only be disastrous if they all come together and people actually start fighting back”) and let’s get stuck in to a good old-fashioned leftie moan.

FIFA

There’s no need for detailed allegations and running the risk of litigation here, because the very presence of rumour and whispering is enough to undermine trust in the guardians of the game.

FIFA’s reputation has rarely been worse than it is now. The FIFA President between 1974 and 1998, João Havelange, has had accusations levelled at him, notably by Andrew Jennings in his 2006 FIFA exposé FOUL! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-Rigging and Ticket Scandals. Two of Jennings’ prime targets, Havelange’s successor Sepp Blatter and Jack Warner, the President of CONCACAF and current FIFA Vice-President, have continued on their merry way despite the severity of the accusations within. For many, trust in FIFA is at an all-time low as a result.

Four years after Jennings’ book was published, the FIFA bandwagon rolled into South Africa, a nation where FIFA has some shameful history, and throughout the most heavily-branded World Cup ever found itself the subject of unprecedented scrutiny from the global masses. Perhaps most worryingly, such attention was on the World Cup that FIFA’s demands on the state slipped into the public consciousness. Is it right for the World Cup to earn billions and pay no tax in a country that should be benefiting from hosting the tournament? It wasn’t a popular idea.

But it’s 2018 that should be ringing the real alarm bells. On Thursday, FIFA suspended Nigeria’s Amos Adamu and Oceania President Reynald Temarii - thereby excluding them from the 2018 vote in two weeks’ time - following their alleged transgressions during a Sunday Times sting in which bribes were offered in exchange for World Cup votes. This turn of events suggests that not everybody within FIFA is squeaky clean. Quite frankly, they bloody well should be. FIFA’s action in punishing Adamu and Temarii should be welcomed, but would we even know about this if the newspaper’s approach had been genuine?

And while we’re at it, the fact that talk of England losing out on hosting the competition in 2018 because of the scrutiny under which FIFA would find itself doesn’t sound particularly far-fetched says a lot about FIFA’s reputation. There is no trust, and that should be enough of a problem in itself to instigate reform. In a recent survey in FourFourTwo, 17 percent of respondents named Blatter as the biggest threat to world football.

Football Finance

If you don’t think the almighty dollar is a threat, you could be in for a surprise. There are people out there who have a better grasp on football finance than mine - David Conn, Ian King, John Beech and our very own Gary Andrews for a start - but I can think of an almost endless list of ways in which money, rather than its many effects, could be set to do serious damage to the game.

Take leveraged buyouts for example. They’re legal, of course, but can’t possibly be considered acceptable in the light of two of the most high-profile Premier League takeovers. The situations at both Manchester United and Liverpool appear to have been resolved this season, with John Henry taking over from Tom Hicks and George Gillett at Anfield and the Glazers supposedly taking steps to remedy the finances at United. But it shouldn’t be ignored that we have witnessed two of our biggest clubs in potentially crippling debt because they were allowed to be dragged into it by new owners in order to fund their purchases.

Elsewhere, wage-to-turnover ratio is increasingly being exposed by the media. In a nutshell, it’s where overspending occurs specifically regarding the players, and it tends to be a characteristic of clubs who are chasing the dream, as they say. There have been plenty of examples but one that came perilously close to putting a Premier League club out of business occurred at Portsmouth, who stabilised in the Premier League, won the FA Cup and nearly spent themselves into oblivion. Importantly, HMRC no longer seems content to let clubs give it the runaround, so if there’s no money to pay the tax bill then trouble this way comes.

At the other end of the spectrum, some clubs can spend huge amounts of money and will be able to circumvent and resist any restrictions intended to rein in that power. The contradictory argument says that the richest clubs have always been able to bring in the best players and that money driving success is nothing new. I don’t buy it. For me, the current situation (and I suppose I’m talking about Manchester City here, if I’m honest) is different for two reasons. Firstly, growing into a huge financial superpower is one thing and becoming one overnight is quite another. Secondly, if you think paying £1m for Trevor Francis somehow relates to a club in 14th place in its domestic league apparently offering a nine-figure sum to one of Europe’s biggest clubs for one of the best players in the world then I want some of what you’re smoking.

But I don’t mean this as a targeted slight at City, because they just happen to have been taken over by owners with the weight to make such moves. The wider issue is again one of scale. Once upon a time, local millionaires would own football clubs and take differing levels of interest, making differing levels of financial commitment. Now, top-level football clubs in England are becoming the playthings of the super-rich. They don’t need to be genuinely interested in their clubs, and that carries with it a whole raft of potential problems.

Video and Goal-Line Technology

FIFA does two things exceptionally well: it consistently blocks video and goal-line technology and it does an amazing job of sticking its logo in every nook and cranny. Trouble is, in each case there is a caveat. Isn’t it really quite inappropriate for the governing body to be branding the game? Is it ours, or is it theirs? And does FIFA resist technology because it’s right to do so, or because the longer they hold out, the more someone will pay for it?

Blatter’s primary argument is one that I wholeheartedly share: football is universal and must remain so. The Laws of the Game, flawed and confusing though they are, should be applicable in exactly the same way from Sunday football all the way to the World Cup final. Financially, this means that video and goal-line technology cannot get the green light. Furthermore, so many obviously wrong decisions now trigger calls for technology that it becomes a ridiculous argument. Did you need a replay to see that Frank Lampard’s shot against Germany had clearly crossed the line? Equally, too many incidents remain unclear after replays.

But it’s not just the technology that is a threat to football as we know it; it’s the pro-technology lobby. The debate is outrageously one-sided, driven, as you would expect, by television companies and then peddled by gullible, half-brained pundits desperate to appear angry about something and keen on change for the sake of change. Opponents and traditionalists rarely get their say in mainstream media so the idea that “everyone wants it but FIFA” is allowed to grow. Not me, and the fact that the debate is so obviously being controlled by media with a vested interest is cause for concern.

Ticket Prices

Finally, it’s an old chestnut. As much as mardy old traditionalists like me bang on about terracing, smoking, drinking and so on, it’s actually quite difficult to argue that the Taylor Report and the post-Italia ’90 boom in the game haven’t improved it overall, at least in some aspects. Unfortunately, much of that has been driven by Sky and the Premier League and all is not well. As all-seater stadiums have been introduced, top class players brought in and middle class demand increased, ticket prices have gone up. And up. And up.

Countless dyed-in-the-wool supporters simply cannot afford to support their team anymore. Season ticket prices at many clubs are obscene. Has it helped to drive a good percentage of the hooligan element away? Probably. But it’s taken the noisy, rowdy, mental supporters with it.

For those supporters it’s a tragedy, but it affects those of us fortunate enough to be able to scrape enough coins together to keep going to matches too. The wealthier the crowd gets, the more the atmosphere, earthiness and gritty reality of football as we know it diminishes. This isn’t the working man’s game anymore, at least not at the top level.

What do you think are the biggest threats to football? Is the bubble going to burst?

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Tags: FIFA, Technology, Ticket Prices