Bolts From The Blue

So no one expected the Rooney turnaround, but stranger things have happened. I mean look at the Serie A table. Lazio are sitting above Inter Milan with a four point lead. If you love an underdog, you cannot but agree that it is fitting. What’s even better is that the despicable ultra faction of the ‘SS’ Lazio’s fanbase, who have long contested the grounded approach of club president Claudio Lotito to the transfer market, have been served with a large slice of humble pie, despite their professed ‘love’ for their club.

Last season’s Serie A was also subject to a bolt from the blue, the early season high flyers being Sampdoria. Inevitably this led to parallels with Sampdoria’s legendary side of the early 90s that conquered the 1990-1991 Serie A in style after tasting European silverware in ‘89. These claims grew when Cassano and co. beat Mourinho’s Inter (treble winners) in their first clash. Eventually the wind in the club’s sails was lost as injury took its toll on the side. Nevertheless Del Neri’s Blucerchiati enjoyed a resurgence late on in the 2009/2010 season, going on to claim the coveted fourth spot in Serie A and European football.

Although Lazio are this season’s ‘mick o’ the moment’, nobody has yet compared this year’s side to the team that dramatically claimed the Serie A in 2000 (courtesy of Juventus losing to Perugia on a soggy pitch). And I’m not sure anyone ever will, even if results keep going the way of the Aquile. Lotito’s Lazio are an entirely different beast from the championship winning side built by Sergio Cragnotti, the first most notable difference being the tran$fer kitty made available in Lazio’s war chest.

Many football fans will recall the exciting and heady days when the boss of Cirio would whip out a cool 18million quid for Seba Veron, with Christian Vieri arriving for a single season for 19million quid and Crespo brought over from Parma for a then world record 35 million quid. Hardly have football headlines ever been so exciting, in a time when English football was only just beginning to reassert itself in Europe and the Serie A was still an elite league with Cragnotti rivalling Moratti’s spending power at Inter.

 

A difference rendered all the more notable this summer when Lotito only coughed up 10 million Euros for a single player. Which in itself presents a perhaps more significant change from Cragnotti’s Lazio, in that these days the club is not run at a huge loss, and does not risk taking up the paths of Tanzi’s Parma, Ridsdale’s Leeds or Gaydamak’s Portsmouth, (with Hicks and Gillett’s Liverpool only just missing out on this list). Unlike Cragnotti’s Lazio, Lotito’s brand need not seek to quickly offload its biggest stars, e.g. Crespo and Nesta in 2002. In fact, players like Zarate and Ledesma remain among the Aquile’s ranks despite the interminable transfer speculation which has surrounded them. Furthermore, despite the occasional ramblings of discontent in recent years from the dressing room and the club’s supporters, Lazio’s players need not endure an 80% pay cut to save the club.

Those were the incredible circumstances Lazio found themselves in 2002 when all financial hell broke loose and the club had to face up to its overspending. (Today Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini cops a lot of stick from the English press because of the war chest at his disposal. However many forget that the former Sampdoria & Lazio hero took over the Aquile in these dire circumstances in 02 and besides sparing them from relegation even managed to win the club silverware after by clinching the Italian Cup.)

Some might present the argument that Cragnotti et al are not really to blame and that football can only ever be run at a loss. So how can Lazio with its prudent income and expenditure be performing so well on the pitch? These days the sides they play do not even manage a shot on goal. The confidence in Lazio’s play has soared and derby rivals Roma cannot be looking forward to their impending encounter with the biancocelesti. According to recently appointed manager Edy Reja, the success on the field has all been down to his insistence that the club’s entire transfer kitty of ten million Euros be spent on a single player, Hernanes, who has been fundamental to recent successes (it is also worth mentioning that the wily Reja, the Serie A’s oldest coach, quietly went about obtaining Australian Mark Bresciano on a free transfer before the world cup kicked off in South Africa).
 

 

Lotito may not yet have won any major trophies but his legacy of financial stability at the club is finally paying dividends. What's more, the kids of Lazio supporters have players to look up to and who serve as role models, who won’t necessarily vanish to Milan overnight. Clubs who prudently monitor their spending have been constantly penalised by the system in the past. Few might recall former Bologna president Gazzoni Frascara’s lament in 2004 that Juventus and Bologna were the only teams in the Serie A that ran their clubs without incurring any debt, whilst angrily casting an accusatory finger at Franco Sensi’s Roma who fielded a clutch of star players without having even paid for the away tickets of Roma’s season ticket holders.

Yet the tables are set to turn with the introduction of UEFA’s financial fair play measures which will become mandatory from the season 2013 / 2014 and will doubtless hit some club owners like a bolt from the blue.  This initiative has passed almost unnoticed by many football fans due to other 'important' headlines which have been given more prominence by the ever tasteful tabloids.

It is most unwelcome news for owners who want to make a plaything out of a club they own but great news for long-suffering owners and coaches who have striven to do the right thing by their club by not exposing it to financial ruin or possible extinction. Can Leeds United supporters who these days endure championship games against the likes of Scunthorpe and Lincoln City still be grateful for their club’s run to the Champs League semis in 2001 which was aided by players Leeds could not afford in the first place? Perhaps they are, but many amongst them must now wish that success could have been achieved in a different manner.

 

 

UEFA’s new measures will seek to ensure that a club can only spend money from its earnings, thus seeking to make football more sustainable and avoid an owner coming in and then jumping ship after leaving the club with a mountain of debt. After the distasteful excess of spending witnessed in the Premier League, Serie A and Real Madrid this is a welcome development in a year of international economic crisis (and the sickening trials endured by Portsmouth last season).

Doubtless some might bemoan sheikhs and oil tycoons being unable to splash the cash on a plethora of exciting stars but these measures should at least help protect clubs from descending into oblivion due to irresponsible and egomaniacal owners. It should also ensure that players are paid on time.  One major criticism which has been levelled at these rules is that clubs that qualify for the champions league will earn such a huge windfall from their participation in the competition when compared to the other clubs in the league that a big-spending owner taking over a club that has recently missed out on the champions league (e.g. a modern version of the late Jack Walker) will be unable to lift the club into the big-time despite him footing the whole bill without leaving his club in the red. All of which threatens to make the big clubs (or at least those regularly qualifying for the champs league of late) even bigger. This is one hot potato that UEFA will have to address sooner rather than later.

All that being said, the measures should hopefully help common sense prevail again in football, and since a club’s (as opposed to an owner’s) earnings are to become of greater relevance, there could be more impetus towards making stadiums bigger and encouraging incentives for crowd attendances to rise. The sight of a half empty Riverside stadium during games might yet become a thing of yesteryear when wealthy owners realise that the best chance of splashing money on better players in the summer and / or January is not to reach for their own chequebook but to ensure that fans’ bums are back in their seats.

Meanwhile the much maligned and sensible clubs in world football like Lazio, Arsenal and Juventus will be vindicated for continuously refusing to succumb to ridiculous transfer fees beyond their means. And as evidenced so far this season, this approach should make big-spending club owners and raving ultras look like muppets.