Football (aka soccer) is a sport that everyone loves it’s a beautiful sport that contain history, passion, culture even drama all of them make soccer become most watched sport in the world. Unfortunately, in every year’s people critique that money is having a negative impact on football in many aspect and the number of money that spend in one season also increasing in every years and these are the reasons why money ruining football.
Betting change Fan’s behavior
As we know soccer is very famous in betting and nowadays people can bet anywhere anytime through their device due to the massive number of matches has helped the industry to grow and to allow bettors to place a wager on a whole host of markets, with many betting website or application this may good for betting industry but in some country, betting is illegal such as Thailand.
During World cup 2022 according to a survey from University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce and Stop Gambling Foundation estimates that there will be money flowing up to 75,815 million baht, an increase of 24.2% compared to the Euro football two years ago, but shocking because of this amount, only 18,561 million baht was spent in the economy. and the remaining 57,253 million baht or 3 in 4 of all current money Out of the circular economy system, all in football betting circles which makes the Thai government concerned about the increase in the number of young people who have gambling debt from illegal betting sites while gambling debt still be one of the main reasons of suicide in Thailand.
Betting also affect to the soccer player mentality and safeness because some soccer fans who lose money by the bet they wanna blame the player for the bad performance with abusive words and sometimes they even threaten or ambush player.
Widening the gap between team
When soccer becomes one of the businesses we can see some teams which have wealthy owners and famous sponsors they are most likely gonna be the top team in the league in a few years because they can spend money on star players, either sign contracts or give the huge wage due to the demand for talented football players being high as they increase the team’s chances of winning these things can lead to a widening gap between the top teams and other teams in the league which can result in making a boring or less competitive league, for example
People in the community they consider that French league or “Ligue 1” as one of the most boring leagues in Europe because a star or world-class player in this league such as Messi, Neymar, Mbappe or even Sergio Ramos plays for Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG) when other teams in the league have a normal player or rising star(young player) which make PSG win the league title or League cup most of the time and last year PSG won the league at 86 points with 15 points ahead the second place team Marseille (71 points) at this point you can already see the skill gap that causes by money in the league so FIFA start to create a “Financial Fair Play”. Financial Fair Play regulations were introduced to prevent clubs from overspending, however, it has not been enforced properly. As a result, clubs with wealthy owners can continue to outspend their competitors, leading to an unfair advantage.
Overpaid player
Constantly rising wages and inflation in the soccer world make the transfer market and some player’s salaries go crazy and overpaid some players are deserving big amounts of wages due to their skill but in nowadays or in modern soccer, many players are not worth their wages due to their performance when it comes to value-for-money for example “Kepa Arrizabalaga” a goalkeeper from Chelsea before he comes to Chelsea he’s a young goalkeeper playing in the Spanish league (Laliga) who never won any trophy then Chelsea signed him for £71.6m on a seven-year deal and receive around £155,000 per weeks which makes him become a world-record fee for a goalkeeper at 23 years old but when it comes to the real game Kepa really struggle for playing in Premier league and keep doing mistake then Chelsea going downhill so it takes just two years after arriving in London, Kepa was pushed to second-choice after Chelsea signed a new goalkeeper.
Business impact on team performance
From what we say above we already know that not every big transfer deal is gonna worth the money that the team spends it is normal when someone did not have a good performance coach or manager they gonna benched or switch those players to substitute but nowadays most of the team owners are a businessman who doesn’t know anything about soccer so they order team manager or coach to let the highest fees player in the team play in the main line up in every game because they spend so much money on that player even though that player is not in the manager or coach plan for example “Mykhailo Mudryk” a 22 years old forward move from Shakhtar to Chelsea with an £88million deal at first Mudryk wants to go to Arsenal but Chelsea offer him more money which makes him change his mind so the problem of this deal is “Graham Potter” Chelsea manager never interest in signing Mudryk and don’t have him in his plan at all but the Chairman of the team want Mudryk for marketing purpose because he want to make people feels like he steal rival team player target in the last minute of the transfer market right now Mudryk consider to be one of the overpaid player by Premier league fans due to his poor performance but Chelsea has to put him in line up everygame.
High fees cause high expectations & pressure
Nowadays young players can have really high fees and wages due to the rise of the money in soccer and the demand for young soccer players increasing every year because on the business side signing a young player is a long-term deal they can play for many years and if those young players have good potential they can also make a profit for the club to this cause competition in signing young players which sometimes it ends up with young players receive the huge amount and unreasonable of fees due to the lack of soccer knowledge in Chairman or board of the club but in soccer, perspective signing young players with high fees is like investing on something that you don’t know the result it’s risky more than signing middle age player and it can cause much pressure to those young players due to the high expectation from fan’s and club which can afflict into a mental health issue in a player for example back in 8 years ago Martin Odegaard joins Real Madrid at 16 years old for £2.3 million this is a very large number in signing player at 16 years old so it’s make people expect him to be a wonder kid or kind of a new ronaldinho but after he join Madrid he didn’t receive that much opportunity to play for Madrid most of the time in Madrid he play for other teams with the loan transfer for 4 years 4 teams around the world including Heerenveen : Dutch league , Vitesse : Dutch league , Real Sociedad : Laliga and Arsenal : English premier league after 4 years experience in many club it make his name disappear from the news because his performance is good but not as good as fans expect from the kids who join Real Madrid at 16 years old when Odegaard come back to Madrid he still receive little opportunity and cause him some mental health issues and he decide to leave Madrid to join Arsenal because he couldn’t take the pressure from fans and his teammate anymore.
Conclusion
While money has made some benefit for soccer it also comes with many negative impacts that corrupted the game in many aspects either the player or the audience and with the influx of money from the Chairman who want to make income from soccer into the game it makes people nowadays critique that is soccer right now are some kind of Rich man toys or not nowadays it’s really hard to find a team that has Board or Chairman who really loves or know football/soccer and money also make the betting industry grow really fast and ruin or change some audience behavior they are not watching the sport for just entertainment anymore so we can say that money makes soccer not beautiful as before nowadays many clubs focus on making profits so they have started to raise the money of the price of ticket and merchandise so it makes not everyone can watch soccer on the stadium as much as before and making it harder for fans to afford to attend matches or buy gear but lastly soccer may change a lot from the past but soccer still be one of the most beautiful sport in the world.
