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why big money soccer is failing everyone.

Unable to watch the Brazil v Korea game on Murdoch digital earlier this week, I went off on something of a rant about the Digger’s attitudes to life. I watched the game instead on dear old steam-driven French analogue – a supposedly outdated format that is nevertheless immune to weather conditions.

The Brazilians destroyed Korea effortlessly, but in truth it wasn’t a great game – and the Brazilian team this time around isn’t a patch on previous elevens. I’ve decided in fact that no national team is up to its predecessors. The Italians lack flair, the French are too old, and of course England are as wooden and ordinary as ever. Even the Korean team of 1966 was far better than the side which caved in to Brazil the other night.

This isn’t Old Bloke Nostalgia Syndrome, it’s a fact – and the reason (as always) is commercial risk aversion. The game once called beautiful has become bountiful: players are rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice, gate receipts are enormous, shirt-sales gigantic – and media sponsorship all-embracing. But this last in particular has become the python’s embrace of death, throttling most genius and a good degree of the entertainment.

Media sponsorship is provided by the likes of that fine soccer philanthropist Silvio Berlusconi – but the vast majority emanates from Murdoch’s Newscorp empire….the very same source whose broadcasts are switched off by most forms of low atmospheric pressure.

Soccer has been a business for well over a century, but while the sums involved in defeat have stultified player creativity, the ‘sugar-Daddy’ owner business model hasn’t. One thing has changed, however….and herein lies the future catastrophe which awaits soccer down the road apiece: publicly quoted soccer clubs. If ever a successor to the Dutch Tulip Bubble was alive and well in 2010, global soccer is it – and nowhere more so than in the English Premiership.

The majority of club and national sides today are built around one genius: Messe for Barcelona, Rooney for England, Drogba for Chelsea and Ronaldo for Portugal. The days when Spurs could boast Greaves, Blanchflower and McKay – or Man United Law, Best and Charlton – are long gone. Just as European sides learned the slow south American game in the 1970s, so south Americans learned the exciting speed of the best European sides after that pivotal World Cup year. Both continents are worse off from the learning experience.

The bottom line is that genius has become too expensive, excitement too risky, and thus top-flight soccer more boring. If any coaches on the planet imagine that spectators enjoy the spectacle of midfield players passing the ball to and fro while ‘looking for an opportunity’, then those coaches need to rethink the ‘business’ they’re in. Soccer is not in the winning business, it is in the entertainment business. Trophies may win sponsorship, but if won via boring tactics they do not attract fans.

Having endured rather than enjoyed the last three World Cups, I have one observation to make. Considering its relatively recent entry into the world-class game, the USA has delivered more than its fair share of excitement and dash. It does so via a naive enthusiasm, but in real soccer there is nothing wrong with naive. Coaches try to iron this out – but highly skilled and honed player naivety becomes boundless ambition. It produced Pele, Jairzhino, Eusebio, Mardonna and Rooney.

If the Americans have any sense, they will channel the enthusiasm, build on the skills, and tell coaches that the one thing guaranteeing spectator enjoyment of the Beautiful Game is players enjoying playing it. Set out to play beautifully, and the winning money will come: it doesn’t work the other way round.