Rio: The first over-priced pom?
Jack Leahy
Sports Editor
Whether it be ‘bouncebackability’ or ‘second-season syndrome’, Premier League ongoings have a knack for coining and popularising new terms.
The most recent addition to a colourful lexicon is that of the ‘English Premium’: n., a transfer fee paid for an English player considerably greater than the price commanded by a player of corresponding talent and experience of another nationality.
For me, the precedent for this phenomenon was set by Michael Owen’s £17m move from Real Madrid to Newcastle in 2004 and Rio Ferdinand’s £29.2m move from Leeds to Manchester United in 2002. Owen signed for the Spanish giants a year previously for a fee of £11m and, despite managing 13 goals, did nothing to suggest that his value had increased by 64%. Ferdinand had just returned from a fairly average World Cup showing, and while he may have justified his sky-high price over the course of he last 9 years, his transfer fee is twice that of the combined total of Nemanja Vidic’s move to United and Lucio’s move from Bayer Leverkusen to Bayern Munich two years later, Lucio having won a World Cup.
Since then, some fairly extortionate fees have changed hands for the commodity of the English footballer. For the sake of example, Joleon Lescott set Manchester City back £24m, while James Milner decreased the capital of the Abu Dhabi United group by £26m.
But that’s fine, right? Sure don’t City do these things? Well yes, they certainly do pay over-the-top fees for their playing staff, but they are by no means alone in the game of jingoistic fiscal hyperbole. Manchester United became £36m pounds the poorer this summer for the captures of Phil Jones and Ashley Young (£19m and £17m respectively) while Liverpool paid £35m for Andy Carroll and £20m for Jordan Henderson in the last 6 months, players with two full Premier League seasons under their collective belt.
With the astronomical potential transfer figures mooted in daily tabloids, we tend to lose sight of exactly how much money is being spent and what these figures mean. What’s £17m when Cristiano Ronaldo cost Real Madrid £80m? Only this afternoon did a re-reading of Roy Keane’s autobiography remind me that, in the Premier League Sky-financed era, the British record fee was once £3.5m.
How did this all come about? Surely English clubs aren’t all so blind as to genuinely perceive that 6-a-season Carlton Cole commands a fee of £15m, Stewart Downing £20m and Glen Johnson £17.5m?
The truth is that English clubs inhabit a culture of hyperbole. Sky Sports pay massive amounts of money to screen scoreless draws between Fulham and Blackburn on January Mondays, but bill them as clashes of titans with endearingly alliterative bombastic phrasings. Jamie Redknapp rates players according to varying degrees of how ‘top’ they are (‘he’s a top, top, top player’), and the national media, conscious of grave fundamental defects in the national set-up, expect flamboyant triumph in 100% of international tournaments. Why shouldn’t they, with foreign coaches appointed at £7m a year to do just that?
As a result, just about every English-born talent to make it through the 6-year gym session that is the FA youth system is heralded as the next big thing, the one to reassert the false perception that the Premier League is the best in the world, the jewel in the crown of the side that will emulate Hurst’s heroes of 1966. Players with absolutely no experience can command millions of pounds in transfer fees on their reputation as the ‘next big thing’, simply because a football-mad nation starved of national celebration for 45 years needs to believe that the next big thing exists.
The counter-argument is that basic economics dictates that there should naturally be a premium on players proven to be equipped with the unique skill-set required by the fast and physical Premier League. Manchester United spent £17m on Ashley Young but know he can play in the Premier League; Liverpool spent nothing on Argentina international Maxi Rodriguez, and he absolutely couldn’t cope. If players are allowed to command big-money moves on reputation, surely they can in turn be discarded for a similarly ridiculous fee two years later if it all doesn’t work out.
I’ve always conformed to the belief that however ridiculous they may sound to footballing traditionalists, clubs are entitled to pay whatever fee they choose for a player within a self-sustaining business model. However, economics cuts across me once more when we consider the ratio of utility derived from the player’s services to the price he costs. Sure, you can pay £35million for Andy Carroll, but you’ll get a better return for your money from investing £20million is Luis Suarez.
In that sense, with UEFA’s financial fair-play laws set to dominate fiscal policy for the rest of our days, English clubs will start looking abroad for their talent. The reason we see so many ‘flops’ from abroad is because clubs simply cannot compete with the prices commanded by home-grown talent. With West Ham unwilling to sell Carlton Cole for anything less than £15m, is it any wonder that Manchester United would take a gamble on a £7m Mexican, or West Brom a £3m punt on a Nigerian plying his trade in Russia? Javier Hernandez and Peter Odemwingie have proven themselves worth of the gamble, but there are far too many failures to even go into naming.
To conclude my point, I’ve complied a ‘best-of’ XI of English players for which their current clubs paid a transfer fee, and an alternative XI of foreign players in the Premier League who have cost their side a transfer fee. Which would you rather have?
English XI: £240.5m
English XI
Foreign XI: £101.5
Foreign XI
