The Arabeautiful Game

Football is no longer the beautiful game, but a financial one. It lost its natural beauty a long time ago, selling its soul for eternal life, supported by a seemingly endless flow of Russian and Middle Eastern oil money.

You can imagine the sons of Qatari tycoons sitting playing Playstation, in their Gucci fanelas and golden khofs (shebshebs to you and I):

“Baba, Baba abgha eshteri fareeg bremiership! Kol asahaby andohom!”

“Hader, habibi,” the sheikh will reply and before you know it, mock shemagh sales will have rocketed in working-class England, as droves of disillusioned nine-to-fivers look to their clubs for some Hollywood-esque escapism, thinking a tanned fella with a Mohawk and flash shoes, who makes more in a day than they do in their lifetimes, will relieve them of their daily woes. Not that he ever gets to see his new demi-god roll about the pitch in real life… the tickets are too expensive.

What’s happening with the British football leagues now is somewhat reminiscent of what happened in the late 80s and early 90s in Colombia, but instead of cocaine their money comes from oil. When drug lord Pablo Escobar financed Atletico Nacional to league success in 1989, it sparked gaggle of rival drug barons to finance other clubs in competition;  football transfers, by the way, are perfect for money laundering. The money that financed its growth into one of the strongest leagues in the world was based on dodgy deals and get-rich-quick schemes that led to the collapse of Colombian football by the early 90s when Escobar, along with many of his illegal trade compatriots, was incarcerated.

It’s the same greedy ethos that led to the financial collapse in the US in 2008, as Wall Street went to town with derivates and subprime loans, allowing the country to believe they were in the midst of national affluences, when it was all based on thin air, much to the delight of the private bankers, lobbyists and credit raters who got very rich, very quick before the recession hit.