Half an hour after Arsenal completed their 3-0 dismantling of Manchester United on Oct. 4, Liverpool announced the sacking of manager Brendan Rodgers. It was tempting to consider how different things might have been for Rodgers had Liverpool been able to sign Alexis Sanchez in the summer of 2014.
Sanchez, scorer of two goals that blew away United before the international break, might perhaps have been capable of replicating the relentlessness of Luis Suarez, cashed in for £75 million to Barcelona, who part-funded that deal by selling the Chilean to Arsenal for £35m in the same summer.
Speaking this August to the Liverpool Echo newspaper, Liverpool chairman Tom Werner discussed the difficulties of the transfer market. "Without mentioning any names, we were very focused on a player last year," he said. "We felt that we had an understanding, but his wife wanted to live in London."
It required little decoding to discover that the nameless player was Sanchez. Up in Liverpool, an increased magnetism of the capital has become a bugbear. Steven Gerrard's recent autobiography reveals the former captain's role as ersatz SMS transfer negotiator, as he sent targets text messages to persuade them to choose Anfield.
"It was a game of texting ping-pong that only had small differences each time," Gerrard writes, having detailed failed flirtations with Sanchez, Willian and Toni Kroos. "Occasionally a player would say that his wife or girlfriend preferred the idea of living in London, Madrid or Paris than Liverpool. I knew then that the deal was dead."
Such sentiments were echoed in Gary Neville's Telegraph column last month. Gerrard's former England colleague, in penning a rather apocalyptic vision of the slide of football in the North, noted, "The surge in economic influence [within the UK] towards London might now be reflected in football. Clubs in the south-east who can claim to be within an hour of London seem to be developing a massive advantage. They will certainly be more attractive to players."
In the eyes of two leading men, English football's ever-growing reliance on foreign talent has shifted the balance of Premier League power to London. Gerrard and Neville, both local lads who made the grade, grew up in an era where English players still dominated the landscape, but these days, 65 percent of Premier League players are foreign, and those with a choice of destination, such as Sanchez, are likely to be attracted to London life.
London is a cosmopolitan city that can cater for people from just about any country in the world, where even a world-class footballer can make himself inconspicuous, as opposed to the goldfish-bowl existences that Gerrard himself writes were problematic in his home city of Liverpool. Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham, peers of Liverpool, can offer a lifestyle of opportunity in a place where football is not the be all and end all.
Now that talent scouting is a global rather than local business, London's status as a desirable location, and the growing concentration of economic power on England's capital in recent times, has pushed it ahead of traditional heartlands such as Merseyside, the North East and Yorkshire, with England's largest county now without a Premier League club. Only Manchester, containing two clubs of hefty financial might with a Cheshire stockbroker belt to its south, can meet the demands of players, WAGs and their families while blocking the talent drain to the "Big Smoke" and keeping the north's end up.
Helping City and United's cause is success on the field, and the promise of Champions League football, which Gerrard's book bemoans an inability to guarantee to those he sent texts to. High-grade competition, silverware and a setup perhaps more coherent than Gerrard was able to offer Sanchez at Anfield will continue to attract top players, as will paying high wages.
When Sanchez was being courted, Liverpool were a Champions League club, having finished second in the Premier League the previous season, and Rodgers might now regret his bosses not offering beyond the £130,000 a week that Arsenal are reported to pay Sanchez. Any London factor might well have been washed away by hard cash, but Liverpool clearly baulked at the cost of buying that off. Instead, Werner and Rodgers could use Sanchez's London leanings as a somewhat convenient excuse.
It is below the Premier League elite that London's growth has become more striking. Beyond traditional powers Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham, lesser London clubs are becoming upwardly mobile.
When it became clear that Yohan Cabaye was surplus to requirements at PSG in the summer, Crystal Palace, a club with two seasons of struggle in the Premier League behind them, were able to attract the midfielder who had been one of English football's best when at Newcastle. Though a close relationship with manager Alan Pardew, his boss at St James' Park, certainly helped, London played its part in Cabaye signing an admittedly lucrative contract.
Watford, who Sanchez's Arsenal faced on Saturday evening, are a club lent Neville's "massive advantage" by being on the outer reaches of London in Hertfordshire, where footballers from Arsenal or Tottenham have called home for decades. A formerly provincial concern is now embracing the globalisation of football and using its geographical location to grow as a business.
Vicarage Road is a haven of united nations, where Englishman Troy Deeney captains players of 21 different nationalities in Spanish manager Quique Sanchez Flores' squad. "I speak five languages so it is easy for me at Watford," Swiss midfielder Valon Behrami told The Independent. "I can jump in every discussion. I speak Italian, German, French, English and Albanian."
The Pozzo family, which owns Watford, come from Udine, Italy, and have owned Udinese in Italy's Serie A since 1986, as well as Granada, who they have established as a Primera Liga club since buying it in 2009. Now promoted to the Premier League, Watford, acquired in 2012, has become top priority, with Gino Pozzo, son of patriarch Giampaolo, choosing London as his home as the family operation chases down the riches on offer in English football.
Sanchez is one of the Pozzo family's greatest successes. They signed him at Udinese as a 17-year-old for £1.7m in 2006 and sold him for £20m to Barca five years later. Saturday saw star and former employers reunited on the fringe of the city threatening to take over English football.
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét