Ce que le football est devenu: Trois décennies de révolution libérale

by Jerome Latta

Chacun, qu'il l'aime ou non, croit savoir ce qui est arrivé au football depuis le tournant des années 1990 : une expansion économique spectaculaire qui a conduit à de nombreuses « dérives ». Pourtant, cette métamorphose n'a jamais été vraiment racontée – ces dynamiques inégalitaires qui ont conduit à l'enrichissement des clubs les plus riches, à la formation d'une oligarchie accaparant les ressources et les meilleurs joueurs, et au lien de plus en plus étroit entre puissance financière et résultats sportifs.Cet ouvrage propose une lecture politique inédite de ces trois décennies de révolution libérale et élitiste, montrant à quel point ce qui se passe aujourd'hui sur les terrains est le résultat de ce qui s'est passé en dehors.

200 pages, Paperback

Published October 6, 2023

Reviews

[samsam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce sont les meilleures équipes
Sie sind die allerbesten Mannschaften
These are the champions
-- UEFA Champions League Anthem

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."
-- Bill Shankly (misquoted)

Three decades after the creation of the Champions League (in 1992), what has become of the beautiful game? We see nowadays more and more games available to watch per week, on more and more different channels. Derbies and clashes between major teams abound. Stars have millions of followers on social media, are paid crazy amounts of money, and the transfer prices seem to be out of this world.

But this situation is only the view from the top. With the progressive professionalisation of football, and its eventual surrender to the laws of the market, we see disparities between continents, leagues, teams, grow wider and wider: the rich get richer, so much richer than the others. The money distributed to the 5 major European leagues is counted in billions, and some of the major teams' budgets would cover the budget of multiple small leagues taken together.

In this book, a well written essay by football journalist Jérôme Latta, we follow the quasi-inconditional surrender of the different bodies of control of association football to the desires of the richer clubs and their even richer owners: leagues verging on the "closed" concept, a bit like the leagues in the US, but with barely any control on the exponential amount of money poured into the game, and the transformation it has on the teams, which become global brands looking for earnings, and their link with their local base, which becomes less and less relevant for the major teams and their continuously more international audience.

The author does a well-researched and documented study of the progressive capitalisation/liberalisation of football. Money is the sinews of war, and unfortunately it is not used to develop the game in itself, as much as it is used to line some particular pockets.
It is here that I could address one critic to the book: the author focused 100% on football, mostly the European one as it is the leading proponent of legitimising the loosening of regulations in order to gain continuously more money, at the expense of drowning the spectators with continusouly more "shows". Jérôme Latta could have benefitted from drawing a parallel between the current evolution of the football's Champion's League, and what happened in European basketball with the birth of the Euroleague, a quasi-closed league with the top tier European teams competing against each other - and dominating their local championship on the side. The league appeared in the early 00s, at a time when the discussion of a closed league in European football was also starting to gain traction.

All in all, the book is very well written, and is an excellent read. It does mostly come to the conclusion that the evolution is due to the cupidity of the different stakeholders in football, but offers very few solutions. Still, it offers an insight into the business of football, trying to analyse from a politico-economical standpoint why it is still so popular. Another recommended read!

[Martin Hadley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent livre, très accessible, qui décrit avec clarté et précision la manière dont le football a évolué, sous l'emprise notamment des plus gros clubs et de leurs efforts de comm' à bien des niveaux pour donner à penser que l'évolution toujours plus élitiste et inégalitaire était inéluctable.

Comme le livre s'intéresse beaucoup plus aux mécanismes à l'oeuvre et aux tendances sur la durée (faire pression via le spectre d'une ligue fermée, par exemple) qu'aux individus et à leurs personnalités, le livre permet également de partir du football pour réfléchir à des évolutions plus générales de nos sociétés capitalistes.

[Tom Bellenguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lire, qu’on aime le football ou non.

[Graciela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic book!!! I learned so much about the business of football, from players, to clubs, to politics getting involved. There is so much knowledge in thsi book. Written very well.

[cjtoine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it. Our beautiful game is ruined though