Slipperduke
The Camden Cad
Fresh from capturing the signatures of Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka, Florentino Perez is now bent on global domination, according to reports in Spanish football newspaper, AS. It has been claimed that the Real Madrid President is rapidly drawing up plans to shift his club's kick-off times from evenings to afternoons in order to take on the English Premier League in the lucrative Asian market. Even by Perez's standards, this is a staggeringly bad idea.
La Liga matches are traditionally played in the evenings, primarily because Spain, in the middle of the afternoon, is roughly as hot as the surface of the sun. In fact, outside of the major cities, Spaniards are so averse to leaving the relative cool of their homes in the summer that entire towns close after lunch so that everyone can have an afternoon nap. Perez is reported to be interested in moving the spring games to 4pm and the winter fixtures to 3pm. Live prime time Spanish football might sound good, but effectively we're talking about very sweaty, very docile footballers playing keepball in deserted stadiums. Let's see how well that sells.
This avaricious quest for foreign revenues is well established in English football. The traditional 3pm kickoff has long since been usurped by the insanity of the lunchtime or the early evening start. No-one wants to get up and go to the football on a Saturday morning and that's when your team's lucky enough to be playing at home. An away game for a northern team in London can sometimes mean a 3am start for the travelling support. The evening kickoff isn't any better. It rips through your weekend like a dagger, wiping out your afternoon and reducing your Saturday night to a couple of hours at best. It's not the natural order of things and the fans here hate it.
Fortunately, there is a delicate balance that prevents it from doing anything more than infuriating the supporters. The television money in England is still shared on a relatively sensible basis. If other nations pay big bucks to watch Liverpool and Manchester United, Burnley and Stoke will also benefit. Not so in Spain. La Liga clubs organise their TV deals themselves, which is why even at their most chaotic and disorganised, Real Madrid would really have to work hard to ever drop out of the Champions League places. Because of their independent negotiating position, they always have more money than anyone else, barring Barcelona.
This season, there can be little doubt of what would sell best in the short-term. If you're a neutral fan, would you rather watch Manchester United against Birmingham or Real Madrid against Sporting Gijon? I know that I'm intrigued to find out how Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka get on, and I bet that non-Reds in Singapore will feel the same. But what about in the future? Perez believes that 800 million people watch Real Madrid every week at present and that he could boost the numbers to 1.8 billion if he gets his way. That's a lot more money pouring into the Bernabau coffers, so it won't take long for the gap between the rich and everyone else in Spain to be become unbreachable, if it isn't already. As Scottish football fans will tell you, once a football league loses competitivity, it loses credibility.
You can understand Perez's motives. He's just hocked the football club's future on the flimsy and rather groundless basis that 'the most expensive things are the cheapest' and he needs those returns quickly. But to do it by ripping the heart out of Spanish football culture and critically unbalancing La Liga is a price that just isn't worth paying.
La Liga matches are traditionally played in the evenings, primarily because Spain, in the middle of the afternoon, is roughly as hot as the surface of the sun. In fact, outside of the major cities, Spaniards are so averse to leaving the relative cool of their homes in the summer that entire towns close after lunch so that everyone can have an afternoon nap. Perez is reported to be interested in moving the spring games to 4pm and the winter fixtures to 3pm. Live prime time Spanish football might sound good, but effectively we're talking about very sweaty, very docile footballers playing keepball in deserted stadiums. Let's see how well that sells.
This avaricious quest for foreign revenues is well established in English football. The traditional 3pm kickoff has long since been usurped by the insanity of the lunchtime or the early evening start. No-one wants to get up and go to the football on a Saturday morning and that's when your team's lucky enough to be playing at home. An away game for a northern team in London can sometimes mean a 3am start for the travelling support. The evening kickoff isn't any better. It rips through your weekend like a dagger, wiping out your afternoon and reducing your Saturday night to a couple of hours at best. It's not the natural order of things and the fans here hate it.
Fortunately, there is a delicate balance that prevents it from doing anything more than infuriating the supporters. The television money in England is still shared on a relatively sensible basis. If other nations pay big bucks to watch Liverpool and Manchester United, Burnley and Stoke will also benefit. Not so in Spain. La Liga clubs organise their TV deals themselves, which is why even at their most chaotic and disorganised, Real Madrid would really have to work hard to ever drop out of the Champions League places. Because of their independent negotiating position, they always have more money than anyone else, barring Barcelona.
This season, there can be little doubt of what would sell best in the short-term. If you're a neutral fan, would you rather watch Manchester United against Birmingham or Real Madrid against Sporting Gijon? I know that I'm intrigued to find out how Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka get on, and I bet that non-Reds in Singapore will feel the same. But what about in the future? Perez believes that 800 million people watch Real Madrid every week at present and that he could boost the numbers to 1.8 billion if he gets his way. That's a lot more money pouring into the Bernabau coffers, so it won't take long for the gap between the rich and everyone else in Spain to be become unbreachable, if it isn't already. As Scottish football fans will tell you, once a football league loses competitivity, it loses credibility.
You can understand Perez's motives. He's just hocked the football club's future on the flimsy and rather groundless basis that 'the most expensive things are the cheapest' and he needs those returns quickly. But to do it by ripping the heart out of Spanish football culture and critically unbalancing La Liga is a price that just isn't worth paying.
