It’s funny the difference a few days can make.
Last weekend, while Real Madrid were easing past Real Betis and Barcelona were beating Levante without Lionel Messi, and while Tottenham was coming from behind to hand Manchester City a 3-1 defeat to set up Manchester United’s title-claiming win, things were as they had been the past few seasons.
Before a ball had been kicked in a much-anticipated pair of Champions League semifinal matches, Barcelona were still the best team in club football, and Real Madrid were not far off the mark. The Premier League, meanwhile, was the best division in the domestic game. Even if none of its teams had progressed to the final four of the continent’s most prestigious club competition, there was certainly enough money to ensure the drought wouldn’t enter a second year.
Then came Tuesday and Bayern Munich’s 4-0 shellacking of Barcelona at Allianz-Arena. A day later ,Borussia Dortmund ripped Real Madrid to shreds, their 4-1 victory giving the pair of German sides an 8-1 aggregate advantage in the penultimate round of the Champions League.
Suddenly the old certainties weren’t quite so certain, two midweek matches having shaken the European club establishment to its core.
Granted, German football had been on the radar for some time already, if not for its overall quality then surely because of its “cool factor.” This, after all, was the league of uber-trendy Borussia Dortmund and their unshaven, hair-tousled manager Jurgen Klopp, a sort of hipster pope. Then Pep Guardiola agreed to join Bayern Munich and those who weren’t starting to watch the Bundesliga every weekend were at least wearing skinny ties.
But trendy is one thing; trending is another, entirely. And when stadium attendance, revenues and sustainability were factored in, it became evident the German model of club football had been trending upward for some time.
In other words, there may have been a paradigm shift over the past few days, but the results of Tuesday and Wednesday were long in coming.
Fans come first
Earlier this month the Guardian’s annual Premier League financial report revealed the English top flight was spending more than two thirds of its revenues on player wages. Leading the way was 2011-12 champions Manchester City, who last season dedicated £202 million, or 87 per cent of turnover, to its payroll. Over the same period the division’s top-five clubs reported a combined loss of £78 million and their total debt load was £1.47 billion.
Elsewhere in Europe there was a players’ strike over unpaid wages in Spain, wage bills continued to grow out of proportion to revenues in France and stadiums in much of Italy sat half-filled, if that, on match-days.
The Bundesliga encountered no such problems, and for a very simple reason — in Germany, the fans come first.
It may sound naive, but the folks who govern the country’s club game are good business people, and they understand that happy, engaged customers are good for the bottom line. And nowhere in Europe is that engagement so all-encompassing than in Germany.
In many Bundesliga cities a match-day ticket doubles as a transportation voucher — the same ticket that cost as little as €15 to begin with. And once at the stadium the ticket-holder will support a club owned predominantly by fellow members. Private ownership in Germany’s top flight is limited to 49 per cent — a fact that, when combined with strict financial oversight to prevent recklessness, dissuades the type of investor who would otherwise plunge Portsmouth or Blackburn Rovers into financial turmoil.
The entire fan experience — from ticket prices to a share of ownership to generally being treated, and respected, as a stakeholder — promotes engagement, and when fans are engaged the stadiums are full (the Bundesliga outdrew the Premier League by more than 10,000 supporters per match last season), the television companies grovel and sponsors line up at the door.
It’s hardly a get-rich-quick scheme, but it’s one that trends toward sustainability. And as the rest of the continent prepares to tighten their belts, sustainability trumps the patron tycoon every day of the week.
Matter of time
It was only a matter of time before the German clubs began to flex their financial muscle. Consistently increasing revenues gave them the means to do it, and the spectre of Financial Fair Play (FFP) provided the occasion.
Under UEFA’s incoming FFP regulations, clubs will risk transfer or even competition bans if their losses exceed more than €40 million annually. There are still some legalities to be worked out, but the Premier League has taken the legislation seriously enough to implement its own financial measures. Starting next season EPL clubs will be prohibited from running losses in excess of £105 million over a three-year period (Manchester City operated at a loss of £197 million in 2010-11 alone) and stricter financial oversight will be enforced overall.
It’s a start, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to what German football has been doing for years. And because their own brand of austerity has so long been enforced, the Bundesliga clubs will find themselves in a much better position to conform to the FFP measures when they go into full effect.
Eleven months ago, when Chelsea and Bayern Munich squared off in the Champions League final, the Blues were about to record a loss of nearly £68 million. Bayern, on the other hand, were on their way to a €1.3 million profit.
Now Bayern are about to head back to European football’s centrepiece match while Chelsea contest the Europa League. It’s not an anomaly. It’s the new normal.
Jerrad Peters in a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter