BARCELONA’S new chief has admitted the club have had to take on a £125million loan to ease debts and cash-flow problems.

Nou Camp president Sandro Rosell, who replaced Joan Laporta last week, revealed the extent of the financial woes and admitted players’ wages for last month have not been paid.

He also told how they were forced to sell Dmitro Chygrynskiy to former side Shakhtar Donetsk for £12.5million.

Rosell said: “We found a club in debt, with liquidity problems. At this point we have to take a loan to pay the wages of the players.

“The squad were supposed to be paid at the end of last month and still haven’t been.

“We’ll fix a loan of 150m euros (£125m). The banks know we have a business plan that will allow them to recover the money. The club is not bankrupt because it generates income.”

It may get worse for Barcelona; they’re heavily reliant on a massive $1.5 billion television contract with Spanish company MediaPro, currently seeking bankruptcy protection.

The point is this: if a club as massively successful as Barcelona are scraping for loose change just to pay their players, it’s just one more reminder of the dubious long-term economic set-up in place in European leagues.

What this does, though, is validate the concern of UEFA about the debt level taken on by European clubs, with their new regulations aimed to restrict such debt to come into place in the coming seasons.

One other possibility to restrict overspending would be a salary cap solution. The Irish league recently became reported to be the first top-tier European league to introduce a salary cap, with a 60% limit on spending per club on salaries as a proportion of turnover — yet it also seems Ireland tried this before in 2008 with a 65% limit in place, a system that broke down to be replaced by the new cap.

This kind of “soft” salary cap is of course much more palatable to clubs that want to spend more than others (especially big clubs that generate large revenues, of course) than a “hard” salary cap, like that in MLS, restricting each club to spending the same set amount of money on salaries league-wide. This is probably why then-Barcelona President Joan Laporta made the following comment last summer: “Maybe we have to establish some parameters for revenues and players’ salaries but maybe not as strict as in MLS.”

The 60% number adopted by the Irish League is the same as that adopted by Leagues One and Two in England, and so seems to have some general acceptance as a “reasonable” limit to place on wage-spending.

If we look at the spending from this fairly recent table in the biggest leagues, each of the big five leagues except for Germany has exceeded that 60% figure on average this past decade (which means some clubs would have been way over that number, and Italy hitting an absurd 99% level in ’01-’02):

Interestingly, Barcelona would not have been impacted by a 60% spending limit on wages; according to this outstanding analysis of Barcelona’s economics a couple of months ago by Swiss Rambler, their wages accounted for a reasonable 55% of their turnover last year. However, Barcelona’s success has in part led to their current predicament, as they offered their players massive bonuses that were suddenly all realised at once when they won everything under the sun last year. Their costs rose hugely last year due to higher wages and bonuses, from €166m to €211m. All the same, though, it seems a soft salary cap would have done nothing to prevent their present problems paying wages, as their revenue has continued to grow too.

Moreover, the obstacles to implementing a salary cap are obviously considerable philosophically and logistically for European clubs; at the very least, such a system in the top European leagues would (like UEFA’s debt regulations have secured) need the support of the European Club Association, representing a 100-odd of Europe’s elite clubs continent-wide. At the very least, you would think, the biggest four or five leagues might be needed to collectively agree to implementing a salary cap before any one of them does, for fear of losing competitiveness for their clubs in the Champions League (unless a league-wide economic implosion appears imminent anyway).

And to go back to Ireland again, their new salary cap set at 60% of revenue replaces the previous “Salary Cost Protocol”, that was supposed to restrict spending to 65% of a club’s income in any given year. But the failure of that system suggests a soft cap without tough enforcement and examination of clubs’ books is pointless, as the Irish Independent pointed out in February 2009, after the end of the first year the Salary Cost Protocol was supposed to be enforced:

When clubs were frequently failing to pay players, slashing budgets in haphazard fashion and investing in new additions when logic dictated otherwise, the defence from Abbotstown was that the necessary checks and balances were in place to punish the offenders. We had licensing deadlines, and the 65pc Salary Cost Protocol, which would serve as judge and jury come January.

Or so we thought. January 31 has been and gone, the accounts submitted and the individual cases have been judged. And, aside from the sorry plight of Cobh Ramblers, who effectively exited the League of Ireland proper yesterday, the news from the FAI is that everyone else has received the report card they were looking for. Nothing to see here, folks.

Sure, a few parties have been given the provisional OK subject to fulfilling a few more terms and conditions — after all, where would we be in Irish football without more deadlines — but the sum total is that after a calamitous campaign, where numerous clubs practised their business flagrantly, the sanction is a rap on the knuckles and a sterner warning not to do it again.

No wonder those few clubs who have lived within their means and within the letter of the law are exasperated. “It’s like a year’s grace has been granted,” said one official, who didn’t wish to be named yesterday. The frustration is understandable.

All that said, the benefits for global soccer from salary caps being introduced in Europe’s top leagues would be enormous. But a soft cap might not make as big a difference as it might seem at first glance, and getting agreement and implementation in the messy set-ups of European leagues quite a challenge compared to the single-entity of MLS, for example.

Irish Daily Star, published in Dublin, Ireland

Irish Examiner, published in Cork, Ireland

[Images courtesy of newseum.org]

Big Story

He did it, we all know he did it, some think it was normal, some think it was the devil’s work, and Ireland want a replay even though FIFA have already ruled it out.

This brings us, of course, to the tricky question of justice in football. Some point out there traditionally has rarely been any; and Fredoracci points out that football just has about as much justice as the rest of real life.

But here’s the dealio, campers, something you should have figured out a long time ago: this type of shit happens a lot — a lot — in sport. Sport disguises itself as life honed and concentrated, as a palace of justice in Lego, all instant judgements and inevitable punishments. It dissembles its true nature: that it’s just like the rest of the universe. As a matter of course, players will skirt the fringes of legality, and will sometimes cross the line: our guys, their guys, everydamnone’s eyes. You just have to hope that the arbiters can do their best. What Henry did was wrong. But to pick on this one incident as being somehow especially contemptible is to be wilfully blind to all the sport you’ve ever seen.

Still, no-one’s going to be buying Henry a Guinness any time soon, so perhaps the eternal scarring of his reputation is some small justice outside the lines.

Worldwide News

• Elsewhere, Bosnians are despondent (“We lost a war, we lost the past, we have no future, no jobs and now our team hit the entire woodwork of the Portuguese goal here and in Lisbon but never scored,”), 15,000 riot police couldn’t prevent riots in Sudan after Algeria knocked out Egypt (what a goal!), and there is, of course, euphoria in Slovenia.
• Buried under all the World Cup qualifying furor was news from the AP that “German authorities and police elsewhere have arrested an undisclosed number of people suspected of fixing matches in major European football leagues.”  15 arrest warrants have been issued in ten countries, and quite honestly, the dangers of match-fixing are a much greater threat to the integrity of football than a handball.
• Conspiracy theories about FIFA aren’t helped by their refusal to set seeding-rules before they know which countries they will be seeding: they have not determined exactly how they will seed the World Cup finals, and will decide just days before the draw on December 4th.
• Matt Hughes looks at Chelsea’s “expensive error” as they attempt to skirt around the consequences of their impending transfer ban.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Big Story
As expected, the Republic of Ireland have not been seeded for the World Cup playoffs — the four countries who have been are France, Portugal, Russia and Greece, who will each face one of Ireland, Bosnia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Ireland’s manager, Giovanni Trapattoni, expressed his dismay: “This [World Cup] draw must be open. We must give the opportunity to everyone. I thought it was going to be an open draw and in the future, they have to think about the rankings and change the system. But business is business. The big teams command Uefa in the rankings table. At the moment, it is difficult to change but they must.”

As we reported here initially, FIFA’s decision to announce the seedings was poorly timed in the extreme. It should have been announced before the qualification campaign began, so as not to appear to be a last-ditch effort to assist the bigger teams struggling in qualification. We were quite scathing when the announcement was made last month.

But seeding the playoffs did, after all, follow 2006 precedent and I didn’t hear too many complaints then. The question is, should the principle of open draws should be applied to the entire World Cup or only the playoffs?  There is a good argument that the latter should indeed be the case, as the qualification groups were seeded in the first place and smaller teams have thus by default had a tougher road to even get that far: seeding again for the playoffs is a further obstacle — but then so is seeding for the finals group stage itself following qualification.  This thus seems to be a larger debate about the value and justification for seeding throughout the entire tournament. How much seeding should there be, and in which stages?

Worldwide News

• D.C. United might be the big fish Baltimore hope to lure to seriously establish professional soccer in the city, but it looks like Crystal Palace’s USL offshoot will get their own stadium first, as plans for a 7,000 capacity venue in Caroll Camden are moving forward.
• Spain’s Anti-Violence Commission has banned the use by Barcelona of a video based on the movie 300 pumping up supporters ahead of this week’s clash with Sevilla.
• Andy Cole suggests England could do with a little less of their usual “institutional arrogance” if they are really going to compete for the World Cup title.
• Amy Lawrence of the Guardian looks at “Team America” (and gets smokebombs confused with flares) and their run to the World Cup finals. It’s a pretty positive, if completely fluffy piece.
• An issue we’ve been meaning to weigh in on is the controversy over black managers in England that has waged this week in the press, with the hot button of positive discrimination being repeatedly pushed. It’s not something we’d like to address in passing, but here is the latest, pretty sensible salvo on it from Gabby Logan. We’ll revisit this soon.
• That’s it from me for the week, apart from a photo daily coming up a little later — Richard Whittall will steer you through the weekend here, and I’ll be back on Monday morning, as long as the Fire don’t lose to New England on Saturday night. In which case, who knows what I’ll do.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Display by ultras of Shamrock Rovers, Ireland.

Photo credit: albertw on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Image by footyfactor.com

What happens when Sepp Blatter and his cronies see millions of dollars and plenty of prestige in danger of disappearing?  They change the system.

That’s the conclusion drawn by many after FIFA last night announced they were altering their planned World Cup 2010 qualification play-offs system to seed teams based on their FIFA world rankings, a decision which clearly favours the traditionally strong nations.

The One Team in Ireland blog responds by calling it U-Turn by FIFA to benefit the more successful teams, many of whom have surprisingly fallen into the likelihood of having to go through the play-offs system.

By using the FIFA rankings to seed the play-offs into two pots of four teams, it’s much less likely that (say) France would have to play Germany and much more likely they’d play (say) Ireland.

From FIFA’s report on their Executive Committee deliberations, it’s not clear that FIFA actually changed any procedures — people had just presumed they were not seeding the play-offs as they had never stated they were going to until last night.

FIFA will argue that the World Cup final group stage is seeded in part based on FIFA ranking, thus making this seeding consistent with that.

But either way, by only announcing this now, the motivation for the ruling is open to the obvious interpretation taken by many that FIFA is fixing it for the big fish.  To avoid this in future, FIFA ought to state the full procedures and rules for all parts of World Cup qualification before the qualification tournament begins. To announce such a key deliberation ruling at this stage shows very little concern for even the image of FIFA or the tournament, as it’s so easily taken as being done to benefit the bigger teams.

So we have another strike against Sepp Blatter and his complete disregard for even bothering to pretend to care about transparency and fairness.

Update: A reader has pointed out the 2006 World Cup play-offs were similarly seeded — whilst this supports FIFA’s precedent, it makes it even more bizarre that FIFA didn’t announce they were following that precedent again in the first place. Again, why the need for such a lack of transparency?

Aviva Stadium location

Stadium Name: Aviva Stadium, more commonly known as New Lansdowne Road. In February 2009, naming rights were won by Hibernian Aviva, Ireland’s largest insurance company, for a ten-year period.
Capacity: 50,000 (projected)
Opening: May 2010 (projected)
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Ownership: Jointly owned by the Football Association of Ireland and the Irish Rugby Football Union
Cost: $350 million (projected)
Architects: Populous (US), partners in the Wembley Stadium project along with dozens of international stadiums, in collaboration with local Irish firm Scott Tallon Walker.

Background:
In 2007, Dublin’s famous Lansdowne Road stadium (then the world’s oldest international rugby stadium) was demolished to make way for the construction of a new stadium that would take Ireland’s national soccer and rugby teams into a home fit for the 21st century: Aviva Stadium.

The development project has been fraught by political controversy over the past decade. The original plan of the Irish government, led by Bertie Ahern, was to build “Stadium Ireland” as part of a massive sports campus on the outskirts of the city, with a substantial 80,000 capacity for Ireland and Scotland’s joint failed Euro 2008 bid. Millions were spent without a brick being laid in what became known as “Bertie Bowl.”, with the plans collapsing in 2002.

In 2003, plans for a new international soccer and rugby stadium were considered to move on from “Bertie Bowl”.  Initial plans had called for a 65,000 capacity stadium, but the residential location saw the plans downsized to 50,000 when a new development at the Lansdowne Road location was decided upon.

The situation is further complicated by the nearby presence of Croke Park, the fourth largest stadium in Europe with a capacity of 82,300 — but one usually closed to association football, used primarily for the Gaelic games. The Gaelic Athletic Association’s mission is to support indigenous Irish games, but, amidst quite a controversy, the GAA finally allowed rugby and soccer to be played on Croker during the last two years due to the closure of Lansdowne Road.  Croke Park’s own redevelopment has cost over $300m, almost half from the public purse, meaning the Irish government has spent hundreds of millions on three different stadia projects in the past decade. Some argue the GAA should have relented and allowed Croke Park to host rugby and soccer permanently to avoid the considerable expense of building a new Lansdowne Road, but traditionalists (and nationalists) objected.

Instead, then, Aviva Stadium will be the home to both the Irish national football and rugby teams from next May. The stadium will host the 2011 Europa League final and the Republic of Ireland will play their first game at the stadium against Argentina next August.

The Design:
Aviva Stadium is set in the midst of Dublin’s streets and with a railway line running underneath the West Stand. To this eye, the dramatic curves seem to conflict with the urban setting rather than meld into it. The curves, though, do have a practical purpose: The North side — nearest in the rendering above — swoops lower with just one tier of seating because of its proximity to residential housing. The South, East and West stands each have four tiers of seating.

Concerns over the impact of the stadium on the residential area have remained despite this compromise, with the official planning permission report stating that “It is acknowledged that the proposed stadium will have adverse effects on adjacent residential areas but these are mitigated by the organic nature of the building profile which will reduce its visual massing and extensive overshadowing. The amenity of residents will be further safeguarded by recommended conditions  in relation to noise, traffic, crowd management and design. It is considered the quality contemporary design contrasts, rather than conflicts, with the traditional architecture of the locality”.

Aviva Stadium rendering

Aviva Stadium: Interior rendering

Construction Photos

October 2008. Photo credit: Peter Barrow Photography

March 2009. Photo credit: Peter Barrow Photography

March 2009. Photo credit: Peter Barrow Photography

August 2009. Photo credit: Peter Barrow Photography

Cork City FC have just a few days left. As the club’s official statement said today “Following High Court proceedings today, Cork City FC has been given until Friday to settle its liabilities to the Revenue.”

That amount is €439,000, and it seems rather unlikely Cork will raise that sum by Friday, despite another appeal to supporters to help out. The problem stems from serious financial mismanagement of the club over the past few years, leaving debts the club has been unable to get themselves out of.

A year ago, the Irish Independent reported that “They are arguably the most marketable club in the League of Ireland with good attendances, a decent stadium and a large catchment area with no opposition of substance. Yet the tragic reality is that this morning, Cork City’s very survival hangs in the balance.”

Unable to resolve their financial crises since then, Cork have just a few days left now to find a way to survive.

It has been a long road for Cork to this final denouement. Formed in 1984 amidst the ashes of numerous failed Cork football club dreams (Cork Celtic tried to hit the big time with George Best and Geoff Hurst, but ended up bankrupt in 1979), the club had some notable success, with two league titles and a famous 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich in 1991.

The passionate and strong crowds at times showed potential, but this promise has often translated into reckless ambition, epitomised by the takoever of the club by shady investment fund Arkaga in 2007.

Arkaga promised to to pump funds in and make Cork Ireland’s biggest success story. But Arkaga were gambling on the formation of a potentially lucrative All-Ireland League raising the value of their investment — when this fizzled out, they reneged on their promises of investment and left the club €1.3 million in debt.

And unfortunately for Cork fans, it soon became evident that Arkaga were headed by a man “fraudulently misrepresenting himself” as a Lamborghini dealer. When Arkaga pulled the plug, Cork were left in disarray — players were forced to take a 70% pay cut, and a dozen staff were laid off. The FAI’s Chief Executive John Delaney was scathing in his criticism of Arkaga: “What Arkaga did is a disgrace. It’s just not right what they did. To leave people down, leave the club down, the supporters down, the management and players down, is just not right.”

Since the departure of Arkaga, the club has been unable to find a sure financial footing, despite the players continual willingness to forgo pay and the help of Cork native Roy Keane, who brought over his Ipswich team for a lucrative recent friendly.

Cork’s demise is symbolic of the ongoing financial crisis in the League of Ireland (we reported last year on the problems at Cobh Ramblers). Costs continue to exceed income across the league, who seem unable to keep their clubs on a path of fiscal prudence.

For the club, of course, they make money and — increasingly — are used to “raise brand awareness” around the world. Well, whatever. The bigger issue comes when the cash cows start interfering with competitive play, and Real Madrid’s schedule of friendlies this summer demonstrates that perfectly.

It’s hardly shocking news that the world’s biggest clubs are touring the world chasing every last dollar, to the potential detriment of competitive advantage by draining their players energy and taking games away from local supporters to satisfy the global fan’s desire to consume their team in the flesh. Real Madrid are hopping around the world to squeeze every last return they can on their Ronaldo investment, to nobody’s surprise, and it’s a path well-worn by others.

Celtic manager Tony Mowbray recently complained about his club’s pre-season fixture list, which includes a gruelling trip to Australia followed by the “Wembley Cup” shortly before they begin their Champions League campign this month. “Let’s not disguise it — this is a tough trip,” he said. “For physical preparation, I wouldn’t, personally, have taken it on, but I understand why. Manchester United do it every year, going to Asia or America to sell their brand. The bottom line is that Celtic is a global football club that does have a lot of supporters in parts of the world. I don’t sit here and stamp my feet and get upset about it.”

Global branding is of course the imperative for Celtic, Real Madrid and Manchester United in their pre-season scheduling. When David Gill responded to criticism that Manchester United were putting themselves in danger by ignoring Foreign Office advice to play a lucrative friendly in Jakarta just cancelled after the bombing there today, he was clear about their priorities. “We are very disappointed to have to cancel because Indonesia is an important market for us,” he said.

Friendlies have played an important role in the development of football worldwide. The tours of British teams in organised football’s early decades demonstrated the sport to locals just learning the game around the world, leaving lasting legacies in names, colours and styles of play in many unusual places. But now, even countries with established leagues are rolling over to support the globe-trotting of the likes of Real Madrid, shunting aside actual competitive games to roll out the red carpet — or even an entire new grass pitch.

When Real Madrid signed up to visit Toronto FC on August 7th, the Canadian ownership group MLSE announced it was pulling out all the stops: a temporary grass field will be installed to satisfy the Spaniards wishes to avoid playing on FieldTurf and the team rescheduled an MLS match set for August 9th against Red Bull New York, moving it up to June 13th.

Many Toronto fans were livid about the changes and the blatant cash grab at the expense of the regular season competition (not least because the Madrid friendly would not be one of the bonus games in their season ticket package). As Toronto FC blogger Ben Knight put it, the sudden move “not only scrambled summer weekend plans for 16,000 season ticket holders on cruelly short notice, it also left the club with only one MLS home game in each of July, August and September.”

How are supporters ever supposed to take the Major League Soccer regular season seriously when it’s clear the leadership of teams and the league has other priorities?

One could argue that this is Real Madrid, after all, and the league needs the high-profile games and the income to survive (though MLSE aren’t exactly paupers). But it’s not even the decision itself, it’s the lack of compunction about rescheduling the competitive match to accommodate a friendly that stings.

In Ireland, Real Madrid are playing another high-profile friendly this week against Shamrock Rovers. Preparations for the match have led to the postponement of an Irish league fixture, but Shamrock’s chairman Jonathan Roche does at least have the decency to express regret that the friendly is interfering with competitive play:

“We’re very disappointed in hindsight. If we’d known this was going to happen we wouldn’t have agreed to play Real Madrid,” Roche said. “It was mooted last Friday, and since then the FAI has tried its utmost to sort things out, but the council insisted that the game couldn’t go ahead on safety grounds. It’s an alarm bell to us, and presumably the FAI, that something like this could happen.

“This could have an effect on our friendlies going forward. There is no reason why the Sligo game couldn’t go on, but clearly we can’t allow friendly games to be interfering with out league campaign,” Roche concluded.

It’s frightening for the future of MLS that it’s unthinkable MLSE or Don Garber would say a similar thing; in the long-term, having a league everyone takes seriously as a sacrosanct priority is far more important than the occasional cash grab against Real Madrid. MLS should be careful not to get too friendly too often.

Last season was a season of records for the club: their first piece of major silverware, a record number of games unbeaten (27), and a record number of points in the first division (77). The club also saw its old stadium revamped with new seats put in the stands.

This season, however, anything and everything has gone wrong for the seaside club. With 23 games of the season gone, Cobh sit bottom of the table with only 12 points and and abysmal -28 goal difference. They are currently six points from safety and have only scored 12 goals over the entire season. Ramblers were also dumped out of Ireland’s domestic cup, falling at the first hurdle to a team in the first division.

The joy the club’s players and fans experienced last season has turned sour with a number of controversial and comical incidents both on and off the pitch. One example of bad luck occurred during a crucial away match to fellow strugglers UCD a month ago. Ramblers took the lead from the penalty spot and looked set to take all three points, yet were robbed by the UCD goalkeeper, who headed home a 94^thminute free kick to the dismay of the 20+ traveling away fans.

The problems on the pitch, however, have not come close to the problems the club is having off it. Last month the club’s directors held a board meeting whose outcome could have meant that Cobh Ramblers would drop out of the Irish Premier Division and instead play intermediate football in the Munster Senior League (Ramblers last played in that league 23 years ago before being inducted into the Irish League). The board meeting ended with chairman Barry Walsh remaining in power after a 4:1 majority vote in his favor. The meeting brought further embarrassment and confusion to the club with manager Stephen Henderson publicly stating that he would have left the club if Walsh had been removed from his post.

With the board meeting out of the way, it looked like everyone at the club could now concentrate on keeping the club in the Premier Division. Yet more off the field distractions were just around the corner. The club’s rising debts forced the chairman to take the ludicrous measure of asking the players to take out 2000 euro each in personal loans to help the club’s debt. The players laughed off the proposal, reminding everyone that most of the players are on one year contracts meaning many of the players would soon be paying back a loan for a club they used to play for. The players did agree to help the club out by taking at 30% wage cut.

Further embarrassment followed when a board member leaked documents to Ireland’s national newspaper The Independent revealing the club’s massive debts. The Chairman admitted that the club is now about 150,000 euro in debt, even after a recent friendly with Sunderland reportedly raised over 100,000 euro.

Ramblers next match was away against fellow relegation strugglers Finn Harps in Donegal, the longest away trip of the season. The club told the players that they could only afford a bus for the match, meaning the players would have to make the long journey to the other end of the island on the day of the game. In a gracious gesture the players offered to drive up from Cobh the day before the game if the club would pay for a hotel. The club agreed to this, and the extra rest seemed to help the players who came from two goals down to draw 2-2 in the last minute.

The last gasp equalizer has been a rare happy moment for the club so far this campaign. 2007 was widely considered to be the best season in the clubs 86 years of existence, but 2008 will be remembered as perhaps the worst.