Re: Manchester United Supporters Thread.
Its not that. What I mean is that the timing of the whole issue was brought up just when the English were doing so well for themselves. And then all of a sudden, "the rug was pulled from under them" as the saying goes. From my point of view, it seems like FIFA might have originally thought "the English are crap anyway, so why bother making a case against them?" and then when we started succeeding, the damage was done. To me thats like letting a theif get away with robbing a bank and giving them a false sense of security, but then sending them to prison once he starts spending the money.
ok, mate, let's assume your feeling is right; that they're acting now coz they wanna disturb your progresses and interrupt or decrease your hegemony over the footballing world....
first question that comes into my mind is:
why??? why would they have such an intent?... what possible benefit could fifa get from hitting the epl?
that's your main problem guys.... u don't ask why (don't wanna sound pretentious here, but i don't know how to say that without sounding pretentious). u (i don't mean "all of u" of course) just buy everything the martin samuels or the lawrensons out there try to sell you without thinking "
does this make sense?" "
does fifa has a reason to disturb our hegemony?" "
isn't our hegemony bringing hundreds of millions to fifa?" "so whay should they feel threatened by this?" U just hear the media telling u "they hate us, they feel threatened by our success, they envy us. there's nothing wrong with us. it's the others who are just biased and jealous".... [as if we were talking about kids or silly football fans (who are actually effected by bias)... and not adults managers trying to make millions.
] and u buy it without second guessing anything.
look, i was born in italy, and, as any other italian, i have a natural, innate tendency to see conspiracies everywhere.... it's in my dna.... And everytime i get the feeling someone has an hidden agenda, the first thing i do is to look for a purpose.
if someone has a purpose, a reason to do something he shouldn't do (and that he doesn't seem to be doing) then it might be worth digging deeper on the matter, to see if there's something more behind the curtains.
if there's no reason, no possible benefit, no purpose, then there is no conspiracy. is that simple.
FIFA is a federation wich encompasses other regional (uefa, commebol, etc...) and national (FA, Federcalcio, etc..) federations; so it's a confederation (even though it looks much more like a company). this world-wide federation makes hundreds of millions every year...
but it doesn't make them on its own.... the national federations are the ones who make undreds of millions for fifa... without em, fifa would be nothing.... fifa has no "core assets"; their "core activity" is to spend and invest the money the national federations allow them to do.
so each league represent a valuable asset for fifa.... and the epl is by far the most important asset of the lot. it's the richest league (at least if we don't consider the overdrafts), the most followed, the one who generates more incomes, the one who has the highests growth margins. and it's also the easiest to export in many levels (the game is based on pace and phisyque rhater than tactics, so the rhythm has no breaks and the game is much more simple to read, wich means that it's naturally more entertaining for those who don't understand much about football; it is the most multicultural league in the world, as the 70% of the players come from other countries and almost every country is somehow represented; it comes with a "ready to export package" as the commentators, the tv shows and the related media are in english, wich is the 2nd most common language in the world, so u can export it anywhere around the globe without even creating a translation/dubbing crew).
the epl is fifa's golden goose. and the english federation is the one who makes most money for fifa..... so why for god's sake would they want to destroy their most profitable asset????
for some sort of an "anti-english attitude"? for bias? don't be that naive. this is business, there's no room for bias.... u think managers at fifa give a damn about rivalries or preconceptions or those other nationalist bullishits? do u think they even care about england? or italy or spain?
the only thing they care about is to keep the organization running. wich means avoid any sort of international or domestic controversy inside the national federations, so they can keep organizing their competitions, signing richest contracts with sponsors and tv broadcasters and make millions.
every domestic issue turns into a problem for fifa and uefa, so their aim is to avoid issues, to hide em under the carpet. they certainly don't wanna "pull that rug from under u", because that would damage them aswell.... they too stand on that rug.
when the calciopoli scandal blew in italy, fifa lost dozens of millions, precisely because of serie a's loss of appeal. our tragedy became soon their tragedy..... lucky them, with an amazing timing, some other leagues were gettting better each and every year (epl most of all) so they eventually didn't suffer the consequences of italy's fall that much....
and now u think they would do something to hurt their golden goose? no way. quite the opposite actually.
they'll do everything to hide epl's issues as long as they can. that's what they're doing with your financial issues, that's what they're doing with your lack of an FA associated-clubs-auditor.... and that's what they wanted to do with the "kids stealing issue".... but in this case other media, clubs and federations in europe were putting pressure on fifa to react to those dirty tricks.
italian football media and the serie a organization don't give a damn if some english clubs are running towards a potential deadly financial crack.... but they do care about them stealing italian youngsters of course....
so, after years of pressure, fifa eventually took care of the situation..... that's why they're reacting so late. not cos they wanted to build a case against u, but because they were hoping u guys would have eventualy stopped using this tricks, so they didn't have to interfere and disturb their golden goose.
and that's not trying to picture something (as english media usually does). u don't have to "believe" to what i said.... because it's logic. u just have to think about it, to ask youselves why, and u'll realise everything i wrote is pretty much undeyable.
u don't have to "trust me", just think. ask yourselves if that makes sense.... and ask yourselves if the anti england conspiracy theories make sense.
beachryan said:
@ Lo Zio - Very interesting, thanks for the inisghts!
My question, which no one has really seemed to address - I agree that it's the UK clubs taking advantage of EU labour laws to land some of these youngsters, but why isn't this a global thing? Time and time again French and Spanish club poach (almost) infants from South America and Africa but these seem not to be highlighted at all. It all seems to be between relatively large (compared to the above) European clubs being pissed about having UK clubs offer contracts at a younger age.
I think it's a fad, hopefully FIFA will just implement a rule that you can't be traded until you're 18, and that'll be that.
you're wellcome mate
as for your question, it doesn't really goes like that. u see french clubs do a lot of scouting work in africa, and french, italian and spanish do it in south america.
but they do some
real scouting activity. they look for talents in the football schools not in the club's academies... and even when they go looking for youth clubs and academies players (wich is more easy as those are talented kids who already got a football education by their hom clubs), they always reach an agreement with the home club. look at what milan did with pato and thiago silva for instance. they reached an agreeement with the club when they were 17 (even though they still didn't have a professional contract, as u can't sign a professional contract until u're 18 in brazil), they payed em serious money (pato came for about 20 millions euros) and then they waited until they were 18 to offer them a professional contract (wich is why both pato and thiago silva didn't play a single match for their first 6 months at milano. they couldn't sign a pro contract yet).
udinese did the same with sanchez, the chilean huge talent they bought a few years ago. they bought him in 2006 (when he was 16) but they payed him (they didn't grab him for free, they reached an agreement with the home club) and they left him in south america for 2 years, to let him grow at home.
however it doesn't happen very often that italian, spanish and french clubs look for academy players. academy players are already "discovered talents", who already got a football education..
so they usually do some real scouting activity, wich means go looking for talents no one noticed yet.
example: there's a great football school in palermo. actually it's not even a school as u don't even pay for it, however they teach u to play football.... and they must be pretty good at that as many promising youngsters come out of that kids school. well, there are always scouts from roma, lazio, sevilla, udinese wandering around that school, looking for some interesting kid. those kids aren't "discovered" yet. no other club already got em, no other club already gave em a football education in their own academies... no other club already invested money on them. this is scouting.
what we are talking about here instead is different from what spanish, french and italian clubs do. what we are talking about here is "
scouting a la wenger". why wasting time, money and energies looking for talents in football schools. let's just head for other clubs academies. there u'll find plenty of talented 15/16/17 years old guys who already got 5\6\7 years of football education from those clubs academies. and they're all free and ready to get as they can't be bounded by a contract to those academies. we bring them in england, in our youth clubs and then 1, 2, 3 years after, we act as we raised em... as if they are products of our own academy.
as u can see, there's a big difference.
)... while lots of people in italy and france thinks fifa has been way too soft on england in the last few years.
Serie A is unfortnately had their spell of FIFA attacks rightly so their nowhere around the list. My point if there was one that was valid is football brings in too much money.In a time like this, where even the government`s new tax laws are taxing foriegn players should be the talk . Where`s fifa in that? FIFA is the United Nations bunch of muppets
How is he really being used at Inter Wenger a genuis w/ a young fire cracker like balotelli. Wenger already tip him to be the best. When I saw Macheda I was amazed how well he looked he was reading the game anticipating the ball before striking. I credit that to his new surroundings and Italy will benefit from that soon.Just out of curiosity how do you know that Wenger try to bypass Inter you are either a paparazzi or just well informed(j*k3) You never know it could`ve been a swap for Robin Van persie 
. I`m sure he knew Mourinho doesn`t play a youthful side Sinclair at any other top club w`d have gotten a few games, well more than Chels gave.
