Uefa and Michel Platini are missing the real targets with their £50 million fine for Manchester City

Paul Hayward in The Telegraph

When Abu Dhabi’s rulers first decided to build a bonfire of hundreds of millions of pounds at Manchester City they would have laughed at the idea that blowing money was a crime punishable by Uefa sanctions. Imagine that: a sport where they throw a £50 million penalty at you for excessive generosity.

Strictly, Financial Fair Play (FFP) is an anti-subsidy initiative by a game that prostrates itself to foreign billionaires and then ticks them off for investing too much. It defiles the World Cup by awarding it to Qatar, then disapproves of Qatari spending at Paris St-Germain.

It says little about rampant ticket price inflation, the huge sums extracted by agents or grotesque individual player salaries. Whichever way you turn it, Uefa’s clumsy lunge at “fairness” has ended up being about two gulf states who jumped into football as an act of future-proofing because their oil was running out.

No torch is being held here for sovereign wealth. But the distortion of the London house market by foreign speculators, for example, is a far more serious issue than City paying Sergio Agüero’s wages via a so-called sweetheart deal with Etihad Airways.

Uefa-ologists might have spotted that president Michel Platini enjoys a cosy relationship with Qatar, who chose Paris as their investment outlet, and that it might have been somewhat awkward for Europe’s governing body to punish PSG without also directing their disapproval at City. 

The clubs hit hardest by these arbitrary actions are those who had to spend heavily to raise underperforming clubs into the elite. City and PSG both fit this profile.

It was no surprise, then, to find Roman Abramovich broadly supportive of the FFP principle. Chelsea’s owner had already torched the kind of cash City and PSG have burned in the last three years. By endorsing the move to have such extravagance cast as a crime, Abramovich was simply blocking the way to new tycoons and therefore protecting his competitive advantage.

From Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s viewpoint, a £50 million fine doubtless leaves a kind of moral stain. It implies financial doping, or even cheating, with its suggestion that the £35 million-a-year Etihad deal was really a polite way to cook the books.

As with PSG and the Qatari tourist board (£167 million), Uefa clearly believe that the deal was inflated to allow one part of an oil-rich state to subsidise another. And they might be right.

Yet the people who struck those deals are unlikely to appreciate being singled out in an industry that is synonymous with creative accounting. If in doubt, consider the mess Barcelona got themselves into over Neymar.

Nobody wants an unregulated free for all, or illegality, or the crushing of the poor by the rich. But Uefa’s punishment of City takes no account of the direction in which the club is heading or the socially constructive investment in the Etihad Campus in a deprived part of Manchester. Shiekh Mansour and his entourage are not philanthropists, but nor does their spending fit the template of outright decadence.

So far all that expenditure has bought them one Premier League title and not much headway in Europe. There is no wholesale buying of trophies because the Premier League is too competitive to allow it. This season City have had to fight Liverpool and Chelsea for the championship. The seductive allure of FFP is that helps the poorer against the richer. All it might do in this case is to make Abu Dhabi resent being stigmatised and cause them to question Uefa’s motives. You can see the speech bubble now: “They take our money and then fine us for giving it to them?”

A much greater problem, certainly in England, is clubs being ram-raided by speculators who seek to suck money out, not put it in. Portsmouthand Birmingham City are just two examples of clubs that have been treated like lumps of meat on an “investment” menu.

Many of us would like to see regulation attack that issue before the Uefa bureaucracy drives through arbitrary penalties against a club (City) who are putting money in, rather than taking it out, however vulgar it might sometimes seem.

Where is the £50 million fine for the Glazers for servicing their debts from Manchester United’s revenues? On this evidence, FFP is mere grandstanding.

Is sport an art?

Ed Smith

In the early 1990s, there was a famous Reebok t-shirt with the simple slogan: "Sport is an art." Nice idea, but is it true? Can sport - which, by definition, is practical (score runs, take wickets) and competitive (beat the other guy) - belong to the same sphere as painting, literature and music?

The debate is not helped by the fact that sport and the arts are usually portrayed as antagonistic opposites - athletes v aesthetes, hearties v arties, jocks v thespians. From school to adult life, it is often (wrongly) assumed that there is little overlap between artistic creators and sporting competitors. (Writers, in fact, are often just as fiercely competitive as sportsmen.)

And yet no one (well, almost no one) disputes that sport can be beautiful. Last month, I tried to describe the aesthetic pleasure of watching David Gower bat - or just seeing him stand languidly and unhurriedly at the crease. When we watch Sachin Tendulkar turn his wrists at the very last moment, flicking the blade of the bat towards the on side just as the ball arrives under his eyes, we have experienced something beautiful: not just poise and grace but also concision and completeness. Nothing can be added or taken away from that Tendulkar flick that would not diminish the shot. Within its own terms, it cannot be improved upon.

A couple of years ago I watched Arsenal play Barcelona. The game finished a draw, but it was the spectacle rather than the result that left the deepest impression on me. Judged in terms of pure beauty - the physical grace of the players, the inventiveness of their movement - the match was surely the equal of any artistic or cultural event taking place in London that evening. Only someone with his eyes closed could pretend that the match had been defined completely in terms of goals scored and points bagged.

Occasionally I still hear arts-lovers complain that all sport is dull or anti-aesthetic. They are watching the wrong stuff. Anyone who loves ballet must surely recognise Roger Federer as one of their own. Again, elegance is matched by economy: the Federer effect is created not only by what he does but by what he avoids doing. There are no false brush strokes, no unnecessary chords, no superfluous sentences. There is no straining for effect, nothing is artificially tacked on.

There is another parallel between sport and the arts. In each sphere, the greats often have golden, productive spells late in their careers - periods when the insecurities have faded, when the urgent confusions that follow from deep ambition have receded. In his essay "Late Style", the academic Edward Said described how "age confers a spirit of reconciliation and serenity on late works". Yes, the artist may have been at the peak of his powers in his middle or "High" phase. But there is something even more moving about the final creative outpouring. (If you take only one thing from this article, listen, as I am doing now, to Richard Strauss'Four Last Songs - true Late Style.)

Said was writing about the arts, but the same principle applies to sport. The discerning fan will know the feeling of having watched a great player near the end of his career play sport on a higher level - without the fear and frantic-ness of his younger, restless days. We saw Late Federer in the Wimbledon final this summer, conjuring victory despite being outplayed for most of the first two sets. Late Zidane, too, seemed to grasp the whole football pitch before he made even the simplest pass. There was greatness in the small things - especially the small things.

But being beautiful does not make something an art. Many things are beautiful that cannot be classified as art. In The Principles of Art, the English philosopher RG Collingwood (no relation) set out to define the difference between an art and a craft. A skilled worker in a furniture workshop might be highly skilled - and might derive deep satisfaction from his work - but he is not an artist. He is a craftsman. A carpenter assembles bits of wood according to a plan for a table and, usually, the more exact the plan the better the table.

In contrast, art (according to Collingwood) demands a separation of means and ends. There must be an act of alchemy, the emergence of a creative vision. A poet "converts emotions into poems". Unlike the assembly of a table, the final poem is more than - and different from - the sum of its parts.

	A great sportsmen, very occasionally, does something that transcends the activity of scoring a goal or making a shot. He taps into a deep instinct that he cannot quite understand

Where does this leave sport? I would say sport usually has more in common with craft than art. The batsman practising in the nets over many years is honing his craft. He is searching for a technique that is reliable, consistent, resilient and robust. And if one bit breaks or becomes damaged, he hopes the rest of his game will function adequately while he makes running repairs. The job of a good craftsman is to create a finished article that can be repaired without the whole thing always needing a structural refit.

But sport is not limited to being a craft. A great sportsmen, very occasionally, does something that transcends the activity of scoring a goal or making a shot. He taps into a deep instinct that he cannot quite understand, let alone articulate. But I suspect this artistic strand can only be achieved by accident. If I was a coach, I would be worried if my star batsman said, "Today I am going to bat beautifully." Far better that he tried to bat as simply and naturally as possible - and the beauty happened along the way, as a happy but unintentional by-product.

Sport, I think, can momentarily touch the arts. But it cannot permanently belong as one.

But sports certainly fulfil some artistic roles. In the classical world, the arts had a defined religious purpose. For the Greeks, watching a play was a communal act of piety, a form of shared worship. Modern sport achieves something similar. What do we feel when we walk among the masses to a vast sports stadium? We are part of the crowd, we share a purpose and sense of hope with the thousands around us - we belong to a broader congregation. That religious language follows naturally. The art critic Robert Hughes famously wrote that train stations were the cathedrals of the industrial age. To update Hughes: sports stadiums are the cathedrals of the post-industrial age.

Above all, sport provides us with timeless stories. It reveals, in dramatic ways, essential elements of the human condition. A few years ago, speaking at a BBC debate called "Sport v the Arts", the classical scholar Edith Hall made this startling claim: "Sport has only two narratives - either you win or you lose - how boring!"

The truth could not be more different. A moment's reflection reveals that within the overarching narrative of victory or defeat (there are also draws and ties, Edith), there are countless twists and subplots - often far more interesting and affecting than the headline-grabbing result. Sometimes you have to look more carefully to see the real story.

Sport can be experienced at many different levels. Just like the arts.

Former England, Kent and Middlesex batsman Ed Smith's new book, Luck - What It Means and Why It Matters, is out now. His Twitter feed is here

Total Football - Barcelona style

Be it the 2-3-5, the 4-3-3, the 4-2-4, or the 4-4-2, Barcelona have consigned mathematical rigidity in football to irrelevance. They have done the same with the ancient and venerable notion that centre halves, or centre forwards, should be tall and strapping. Also torn to shreds is the article of faith that dictates all teams need a “stopper”, a specialist in defensive destruction, in midfield.

What’s more, Barcelona have signalled a democratic revolution in the sport. They have shown, through their success, that the qualities a football player requires to prosper are technical skill and intelligence on the ball. Size doesn’t matter; neither does the position of each player on the pitch.

The seed of it all was the “total football” of Ajax Amsterdam, patented by one of the sport’s philosophers, Rinus Michels. His favourite disciple, Johan Cruyff, brought it to Barcelona, first as a player and then as manager. From there the Barcelona “Dream Team” of the early Nineties emerged.

What we are witnessing today is the perfected version of that model, a purified distillation of the ideology of Michels. What the “Pep Team” delivers is more than total football; it is absolute football.

Michels led the great revolution of modern football. He bequeathed a legacy that included three consecutive European Cup triumphs for Ajax, from 1971 to 1973, and that took Holland’s “clockwork orange” team, with Johan Cruyff as standard-bearer, to the World Cup final in 1974 and 1978.

The system was based not on the manner players were distributed on the field – by a clear division between defenders, midfielders and forwards – but by a change in attitude that led the entire team to perform, and think, in a different way. The defender was no longer a mere stopper, he had to be capable of distributing the ball as adeptly as a midfielder. Possession was the indispensable prerequisite.

A player in a Michels team had to be comfortable with the ball at his feet, whatever his position. When he recovered possession, he would lift his head, find a team-mate and initiate another attack. The game was suddenly being played at an entirely different rhythm. Ajax and Holland appeared to play with more speed than any other team in history. They gave this impression because it was true.
Michels carried the orange torch to Barcelona, where he was coach for two spells in the 1970s, failing each time to make his model gel. He did, though, leave his mark, not least by his decision to sign Cruyff, even if they were unable to break the dominance of Real Madrid.

The turning point came when Cruyff took over the team’s reins in 1988. Suddenly the coach was king; his philosophy would now become the key to success. Cruyff’s first season at the helm was, however, a disaster. Had it not been for his legendary name, and if he had not believed so stubbornly in his own abilities, Barcelona would have sacked him. Cruyff convinced the president of the club, Josep Lluís Nuñez, to forget about the short term and think strategically, allowing time for the concept of total football that had captivated the world 15 years previously to permeate the club. This was the path to adhere to, this was the cause for which it was worth fighting.

In a private conversation back then, on a particular evening long on Heineken consumption, Cruyff confided to one of his drinking companions, “I am going to change the world of football.” How? “My defenders will be midfielders; I will play with two wingers and no centre forward.” Cruyff’s interlocutor wondered if that might have been the beers talking. It wasn’t.

Without a centre forward to preoccupy them rival centre halves would be left bewildered, unemployed; with two wingers the available space opened up enormously and from such a tactical platform a team whose players were all masters on the ball were free to play expansively.
Cruyff’s Barcelona never defined themselves in terms of European triumphs accumulated, like Real Madrid or Ajax, but his trophy haul was not inconsiderable: four consecutive Spanish Liga titles, a King’s Cup, a Cup-Winners’ Cup, European and Spanish Super Cups and that one, coveted first European Cup, at Wembley, courtesy of a goal from Ronald Koeman, total football made flesh. The Cruyff blueprint became emedded in the club’s DNA.

The seductiveness of the Cruyff playing style captivated the fans, the Catalan press and the youth players, none more so than the most intelligent and receptive of them all, Pep Guardiola, who rose to the first-team captaincy under Cruyff, where he remained after the Dutchman’s departure in 1996. Two Dutch coaches, Louis van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard, perpetuated the club ethos, with varying success but unwavering fidelity.

When Guardiola, Cruyff’s protégé, ascended to the first team bench, he coincided with the emergence of a group of players who had been immersed in the in-house philosophy from adolescence, among them Xavi Hernández, Víctor Valdés, Gerard Piqué, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi.
What they had been taught, as their chief article of faith, was that the ball was sovereign; possession the primary — practically the only — priority.

The striking thng about Guardiola’s team is that, while tactical discipline is strict, one is never sure exactly what position on the pitch at least three quarters of the players are supposed to occupy.
The images showing the nominal formation of the starting 11 flash up on the television screens at the start of each match but when the whistle is blown the Barca players pop up everywhere, defying the game’s ancient orthodoxies. Dani Alves is listed as a right back but he often plays more an attacking midfielder or a winger; it has never been made clear whether Andres Iniesta is a right or left winger, or whether his natural position is in the centre of midfield. Alexis Sánchez is a centre forward — the smallest target man in the history of the sport — but disguises himself as a winger. Messi is a “false nine”, occupying a deeper position than a traditional centre-forward, and much more.

As for Cesc Fàbregas, the former Arsenal captain defies all analysis of the position on the field he is supposed to occupy. It is his superior football brain, and his years in the Barcelona youth teams, that have allowed him to impose order, under Guardiola’s watchful guidance, on the apparent chaos of his role.

Xavi Hernández is, of course, the conductor of the midfield orchestra, but he tackles back. Messi also wins back possession; if it were ever necessary he could perform perfectly ably as a full-back. Valdés, the goalkeeper, passes the ball more often than he stops shots.

Guardiola requires his players to pass the ball, even in defensive extremis, because the cardinal sin is to play a random long ball, to reduce football to an anarchic game of chance.

It is the dream that Cruyff aspired to and Guardiola finally transformed into hard, trophy-winning reality. Possession is the sacred principle, as much in defence as in attack, because if the opposition is deprived of the ball, there is no need to defend.

The team’s forward movement operates on the principle of a wave in the sea, gathering momentum until it breaks on the shore of the opposition penalty area. Even if a goal is not the outcome, even if the ball is lost, the rival team recover control so deep in their own half that they have a long and winding road ahead before they can mount an effective threat on the Barca goal. The opposition are obliged not only to cover the entire length of the field to mount a threat, along the way they have to thread a way through a team under orders to chase the ball like a pack of rabid dogs. Barca are artisans, but workers too.

What Barcelona have done is to invent a new language, or what Fábregas, since his arrival from Arsenal this season, has described as the Guardiola “software”. It is hard to assimilate for those who have not been raised from an early age at the club’s La Masia academy.

Some, such as Eric Abidal and Javier Mascherano, have managed to pick it up. But it is a measure of how tough the challenge is that two such reputed superstars as Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic failed to adapt, each ending up as awkward misfits, only fitfully effective, in the Nou Camp ballet.
Barca have imprinted an instantly identifiable picture on football’s global consciousness. Physicality and athleticism have bowed to refinement and technique, the warrior spirit remains but has been leavened by intelligence and the killer grace of the champion swordsman, or the matador. It does not matter if a player is tall or short, wide or thin, so long as he knows how to caress the ball.

Will Barcelona’s triumphant run last? Who knows? Guardiola may leave the club; Messi might suffer a career-diminishing injury, or simply run out of steam; a rival coach might come up with the antidote. It is possible, if highly unlikely, that Barca won’t add to the 13 out of 16 trophies they have won in the past three seasons. But whatever the future may hold, they have left an indelible mark on the game and its history. Nothing will ever be the same again.

From The Telegraph