English
leagues
awash with
$1 Billion
in transfer
money!

Yet again, increased broadcasting revenues were the accelerant for Spanish football's high transfer spending, with both top teams inking new TV deals that will bring each of them an incredible $200million per season from 2008-09. Twice as much as the English premiership giants will receive. According to the Sports Business Group of Deloitte & Touche, Spanish football has had the highest revenues in world football since the 2005-06 season.

Who is paying for all this, where [and to whom] are the Spanish teams selling their TV rights? Well, here in New York the Mexican daily El Diario's sports pages are constantly filled with stories of Ronadinho, Madrid and the battle between the Catalans and the Castilan Spanish teams. As are the sports pages of the New York edition of Italy's La Repubblica newspaper. And this despite the baseball season coming to its culmination here. Most Latin Americans I know - from Chile, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico watch the European and Latin American leagues, they play in soccer leagues here in the city. Go to the Red Hook Ball Fields, [across the water from Manhattan, in Brooklyn] any weekend to watch local league action. It's almost like being back home - except these are predominantly latino players. They're good too.

So where will it all end? Are we going to look back wistfully in another 45 years and remember how small the transfer fees were in those bygone days of 2007? Smiling fondly at the tiny fees paid for Fernando Torres or Carlos Tevez. The probability is, we are... or at least that's the way it's heading.

Is football any better, can we get to see more games? Well, the uncomfortable truth is I believe, a qualified yes and we can certainly get to see many more games.

If I choose, I can tune in to Fox Soccer Channel or ESPN2 and watch almost any league from almost anywhere in the world. I was watching a recent game in Argentina's Apertura league last week or I can tune in to a game from the Mexican Apertura, or MLS here in the US. Of course all the premiership games are available, as are games from the major leagues around Europe.

But does it make it better I hear you ask? In a global sense, it will do good, as exposure to the greats of the football world will enthuse all these American kids of the potential beauty of the game. Tours by European teams such as Inter Milan, Chelsea, Manchester United, Juventus and Celtic over here in recent years can only be viewed in the positive. Particularly as the Giants Stadium in New Jersey - the venue for many of the touring exhibition games from European teams - was filled to its 75,000 capacity on both occasions I got tickets.

American players are starting to come through the ranks of the MLS - still an admittedly lower level league than anything in Europe or South America. Witness Brad Friedel, Tim Howard (at Everton), Marcus Hahnemann and Bobby Convey (at Reading), Carlos Bocanegra and Brian McBride (at Fulham), Jay DeMerit (Watford), Cory Gibbs (Charlton), Jonathan Spector (West Ham United); Claudio Reyna and DaMarcus Beasley (at Manchester City); Giuseppe Rossi (now at Villareal) and Johann Smith (at Bolton).

Is it better then? Debatable. Is its potential better? Yes, absolutely. I for one would love to watch Cristiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres, or Dimitar Berbatov every week. And you just know there's going to be some American kid, probably quite soon who's going to thrill us just as much. Can't wait.

by Charlie Fellowes, NewYorkBrits

Sadly, I'm JUST old enough to remember my dad excitedly telling me about the shockingly high transfer of Denis Law to Manchester United from Torino. Being a little kid I had no idea of its significance. Denis is still one of my all-time favourite players despite having little chance to watch him play except on TV. His career started at Huddersfield Town and after four years he was transferred to Manchester City for a record £55,000, where he spent just one year before Torino bought him for £110,000, this time setting a new record fee for a transfer between an English and an Italian club. Law played well in Italy, but didn't settle there and was lured back to England by Matt Busby and signed for Manchester United in 1962, setting yet another British record transfer fee of £115,000. 

Those tiny amounts seems so far away and long ago now - an almost idyllic innocent time. Except of course they weren't particularly innocent, nor were they idyllic. With transfer fees nowadays often in excess of $60million, it's no wonder gate prices keep going up and up for the average football fan too. For the 2007-08 season, Premier League clubs will receive around £300million [$600million] of extra broadcast payments. As a result the increase in transfer spending doesn't come as too much of a surprise to me. It seems that on a net transfer basis, Premier League clubs spent around £140million more in 2007 than 2006, and for those of you who can do maths, is well below the increase in broadcast payments they will receive this season.

So who spent the money this year? Whilst Manchester United nosed ahead of Liverpool in the outlay side - United spent $102million against the scousers $100million, Tottenham spent $80million and even newly-promoted Sunderland spent $70million. On the credit side, Man United recouped officially undisclosed sums selling Gabriel Heinze to Real Madrid [unofficially: $20million], Alan Smith to Newcastle [unofficially: $12million] and Guiseppe Rossi to Villareal [unofficially: $9million] for a healthy $41million, bringing their outlay down to around $60million mark.

However, European-wide, Real Madrid were the biggest spenders - again - [they obviously didn't learn from their last galacticos fiasco], with an outlay on new players this year of a whopping $160million. Whilst the other Spanish giants, Barçelona, spent as high as the premiership leaders when they splashed out $100million on fresh legs for Camp Nou.

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