What Money Can and Cannot Buy

By: Thad | July 12th, 2009

In lieu of any genuine news on the transfer front, the papers have been filled with much worrisome talk about the impact of Manchester City’s financial muscle and seemingly brazen attempts to acquire not just solid players, but huge stars like Kaka (in January) and now John Terry. Rafa Benitez stated last week that Gareth Barry picked City over Liverpool because of money, and other writers have portrayed City as the upstart without manners who believes it can get who it wants by waving its wallet around.

Let’s be clear here. Benitez is probably right about Barry, at least in substantial measure. Sure, factors besides money might be in play. Barry might want a club with higher ambition and a guaranteed first-team place for himself in a year leading into a World Cup, rather than being in and out of the side as per Benitez’s squad rotation policy. Perhaps he wanted the challenge of leading an outside club into the Big Four. Perhaps he likes Mark Hughes more than Rafa. But at the end of the day, the higher wage packet City offered surely had a lot do with it.

Does that make Barry a soulless mercenary? No. From City’s point of view, I’m not worried if a key motive for joining City is the money. What I would be worried about is whether after six months or so, the player has found additional reason to be committed to the cause. Gareth Barry has an excellent professional reputation and there’s no reason to think he won’t give all for the club, as opposed to taking his check and dogging it or aiming for yet another move.

Would Samuel Eto’o have fallen in the same category? Who can say for sure, but the protracted nature of the negotiations certainly raised doubts, and if there were doubts then City were right to cancel the move. The ability to make wise judgments not so much about why a player wants to come to City—right now, for most of the very top players, money is certainly one of the top attractions—but how they are likely to act when they arrive will be crucial in ensuring City do not in fact turn into a club of soulless mercenaries.

How does the pursuit of John Terry fit into all this? I was extremely skeptical when the first stories on City’s audacious move came out, but it is now abundantly clear that City have succeeded in turning Terry’s head, with the player reportedly having “showdown” talks over the weekend with Chelsea’s ownership. Would Terry consider an incredible move if not for City’s huge wage offer? Probably not, though again to be fair it’s not just the money he would get that makes City plausible, but the promise of more investment in future players of the same caliber. And, he wouldn’t consider the move unless there were some issues at Chelsea—people tend to forget it hasn’t been smooth sailing at Stamford Bridge the last couple of years.

If Terry does do the unthinkable and submit a transfer request, he will be pilloried in the media. But that won’t make him a soulless mercenary. Rather, it would likely re-double his motivation to do well for City (where he likely would be made captain from day one, with Richard Dunne taking the exit door). City are interested in buying him not because he is the best available centre back but because of his professionalism and leadership.

I reckon it is still a long shot and that in the end Terry will indeed stay at Chelsea. City will probably be attacked for trying to distort the natural order of things. But that does not mean City are acting foolishly in pursuing these long-shot bids seriously, even if the probability of success seems low.

Why? Because it only takes one of these mega-deals to go through to seriously alter public perceptions of City, and to make it easier to recruit other top players. Barry, Santa Cruz, Bellamy, De Jong—those are all solid players, but not gamechangers. Robinho and (presumably) Tevez are in a different category, but both might be dismissed as one-offs—Robinho HAD to leave Madrid last August when City swooped for him, and Tevez’s interest in City appears to have as much to do with his daughter’s schooling as anything else (though I’m sure he won’t mind the money either).

But getting a John Terry to come to Manchester City would alter the landscape of English football in a much more dramatic way. That’s what City’s ownership are trying to pull off—not just solid, incremental change but a quantum leap in progress and a revolution in perceptions. So long as pursuit of the long-shot deals does not undercut pursuit of more “sensible” targets, it is reasonable, rational strategy.

But is it “right”? There is a view that City have not earned the right to be linked with Kaka and Terry. Maybe if City have a season where they finish 5th, 6th, maybe even sneak in at 4th, then they’d have the right to bid for the mega-stars, goes the thinking. Ability to get the best players should be a function not just of money power but proven success on the field.

It’s not an unreasonable point of view, but it smacks of hypocrisy when voiced by fans of the Big Four, who for years have benefitted from an inequitable structure in which clubs in the Champions League take in far more revenue than the rest of the Premier League—over 38 million pounds a year, according to a 2008 study–making it harder and harder for the rest to catch up by “normal,” “incremental” methods. Clubs outside the big four have three choices in response to that reality: 1) forget ambitions of ever making the Champions League; 2) hope to pull together a miracle season that is good enough for 4th place, and then hope against hope to be able to consolidate that position the succeeding year; or 3) do something like what City is doing—use financial muscle to try to overturn in the existing order.

City fans refuse to accept option 1. Option 2, experience has shown, is extremely difficult to pull off. That leaves option 3.

Now there is no question that there is room for a robust debate about whether the rules of the EPL and UEFA in general need to be re-structured so as to place some limits on the sheer power of money, whether through salary caps, transfer fee caps , some version of the NBA’s “luxury tax” for high-spending clubs, or some other idea. Maybe City’s spending spree will accelerate that debate—fine. But when the debate is held, everything must be on the table—including the long-standing inequality of a system that has reinforced the financial position of the biggest clubs relative to potential rivals, year after year.