- Rioting in the streets after a world cup game: I don’t want to pick up the bill
- What wrong with football; what’s wrong with Declan
By Tony Attwood
One of the interesting things about this World Cup compared with many that have gone before is that the debate about corruption has been much more open.
Now we are used to discussions about corruption in football, since we hear them most days through the regular football season, with allegations made against Arsenal in particular, suggesting rather oddly that referees are allowing Arsenal to get away with something or other that the rulebook doesn’t allow.
So it is interesting to have heard quite a bit about corruption in the World Cup, with people like the Egypt coach Hossam Hassan spelling out the accusations in case anyone was in doubt – in his case in terms of the defeat of Egypt to Argentina where his most polite comment was that Egypt “suffered an injustice”.
He went on to note that, as the cause of the corruption, “They want Messi to stay in the tournament.”
Now the point about this comment is that there was a reason why this injustice was wanted – because audiences rise when Messi is playing. You may not believe that is a good enough reason for corruption among the officials, but at least it is a reason, and that makes it a different accusation from the ones we heard last season about Arsenal getting away with foul play. There was no explanation as to why this corruption had taken place – unless the accusation was that Arsenal bribed the whole of PGMO to get decisions in their favour. That seems a trifle unlikely.
The point about the World Cup allegations, however, is that the organisers are seeking to ensure that certain countries get to the quarter- and semi-finals in order to maximise the TV audience which in turn maximises the Fifa income. Thus, when Egypt protested about their treatment, we could understand why – few people beyond Egypt tune in to watch them play, so it is said, few decisions run in their favour.
The alternative explanation, of course, is that Egypt were subject to the normal refereeing inconsistencies, combined with the inconsistencies in the way the game is refereed which exist between countries. Indeed, if you ever go to watch a match in one of the lower leagues in England and compare the refereeing with the way the game is handled in the Premier League, you will see at once that there is no general consistency in terms of how a game is overseen.
But of course with this World Cup we have another layer, in that the Donald Trump crisis changes perceptions, for as the Independent also said, “if the Trump farrago happened, what else could? Any borderline decisions that go a certain way, especially to the big names, are going to be viewed through a certain perspective, as if this is like cinema in another way: scripted.”
Now having put forward this point, the Independent then called it “absurd” but noted that “many others don’t”. and notes that the Premier League has faced precisely the same problem.”
And the point here is that although we can have a lot of talk about bias and corruption, that doesn’t really matter until a lot of people start believing that matches are indeed fixed as a routine. At the same time, the paper claims that “Morocco are meanwhile a new force because their national game has become a state mega-project, akin to Viktor Orban in Hungary.” So now we have two issues: football as a state propaganda project, and the wholesale manipulation of referees, probably by organisations related to gambling.
Of course Fifa is not utterly evil. It still has the wealth redistribution programme, which is part of Arsene Wenger’s work to improve world standards in football .
But the problem is that this is not the only problem. Because increasingly football clubs are becoming closely linked with TV networks – and the reason for this is that it is rather difficult for football clubs – even successful clubs like Arsenal – to make a profit. Arsenal, for example, lost £1.4 million on a club-record revenue of £691 million for the 2024/25 financial year.
Now, in football terms, that doesn’t sound too bad, but remember that was in a good season – second in the league, semi-finals in the Champions League with revenue rising as before. And of course, having won the league last season, things should look even better.
But the problem is that if coming second three years running still makes a club a loss, just think of the losses of the majority of clubs in the league. Think of the losses of Chelsea and Tottenham, and the rest of them.
Arsenal are thus getting it right – not just in the men’s game but in the women’s game too – but most of the clubs are not, because even at Arsenal wages went up by almost £20m last season, which ate up the profit on selling players. So 20245 season showed financial results moving positively once again. But Arsenal are the exception.
The big problem in football is that the vast majority of clubs lose money no matter what they do, and the only way to beat this problem, it seems, is to use the ManC system, which resulted in 110+ breaches of the financial rules, and we have no indication when this will happen. If the League has secretly told ManC that there will be no punishment, there is every chance that they, or other clubs, will repeat the exercise, meaning that money will buy league victories. Or maybe the League said “no punishment as long as you don’t do it again.” We just don’t know.
We do know how much Tottenham are spending to catch us up, having finished 17th in each of the last two seasons. We know that ManU, ManC and Liverpool expect and their supporters demand to be right there at the top. And the way they will try and do it is by spending more money, even though they are already generally making a loss.
And we also know how Fifa is trying to change football. The suspension of the USA’s red card after Trump’s intervention recently has shown what Infantino is trying to turn the sport into: scripted entertainment.
So what are ManC and other clubs going to do?
- Spend money on players – as Arsenal are doing – but with a worry that ManC and others might well simply outspend anything Arsenal do, and get away with it (given that ManC have had no punishment for the 110+ breaches of the regs).
- Look for other ways to generate more money – a difficult proposition since the ground is already full and Arsenal are playing in the most lucrative tournaments. But the idea of an extra 10,000 seats looks interesting.
- Carry on as before, on the basis that the authorities will do nothing.
Tottenham’s approach of buying existing star players from elsewhere is very much a hit-and-miss approach aimed at instant success based on the belief that the authorities will not touch them. But Arsenal’s nurturing of the youth team seems to be working better, and is much cheaper. The question therefore is, will the league let the likes of Tottenham get away with huge losses in future years, just as they have let ManC get away with their 110+ breaches? In short, guilty, but no punishment. That seems to be the way we are going.
