Chapter 569: The Business of The English Premier League
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Real Madrid’s loss to Nottingham Forest was not considered an “upset.” It was normal for the two teams win or lose in a game with each other. After all, everyone could see the Forest team’s strength.
The next night, Twain brought the entire team to watch the game between AC Milan and FC Lokomotiv Moscow to study their opponents in the final. Twain decided to take it seriously, even if it was just an invitation tournament.
The popularity of the game was a.s.sured because of the host team’s partic.i.p.ation. The stands were full of spectators, the vast majority fans of the FC Lokomotiv Moscow from Russia. The AC Milan fans were few and far between.
Despite the small number of people, they were generally optimistic that it was not a problem for their team to defeat FC Lokomotiv Moscow. Truthfully, the host team was not as strong as compared to the other three teams.
However, to state that elimination was certain?
The football was round. No one would know the outcome of the game until it was over.
Eighty-five minutes later, Twain stood up in the stands and stretched his back while he said, “go back and rest, guys. There’s nothing more to watch in this game.”
The score on the big screen was “2:0.”
The home team was listed first and the visiting team was second.
AC Milan was behind.
Ancelotti did not deploy all of their main players, while FC Lokomotiv Moscow sent in its strongest lineup. One team wanted to train its players and the other team wanted the honor. The result was conceivable.
AC Milan lost to FC Lokomotiv Moscow, and FC Lokomotiv Moscow would compete with Nottingham Forest for the Russian Railways Cup trophy a week later. AC Milan would play against Real Madrid in a game to determine the third-place team.
This result was a disappointment to many people. Originally, they wanted to see the replay of the Champions League final in Moscow. No one would antic.i.p.ated that AC Milan would lose in the first round.
A week later, Nottingham Forest took down the opponent with a score of 3:1 at the Lokomotiv Stadium and picked up the first trophy of the season.
Although it was only the t.i.tle of an invitational tournament, their morale was boosted. Even after having just picked up the Champions League trophy, the Forest players still looked excited at the awards ceremony.
Beckham, who a.s.sisted his teammates twice to score the goals in the final, was chosen as the best player in the final.
David Beckham did not have to worry about fitting in with the team. After having played in both games, he was completely one of their own.
Furthermore, Beckham’s performance at the invitation tournament had shut some people’s mouths.
Previously, there had been talk that Beckham was no longer likely to achieve any more success. His career had entered its final phase early due to his frequent commercial activities. Real Madrid’s decision to dump him was absolutely correct, because his final season as a champion was only a dying back. Having only won one t.i.tle in his four years for a league like Spain, it had to be almost impossible for Beckham to accomplish much if he went to a faster-paced and more compet.i.tive Premier League on top of his frequent injuries.
Beckham had been surrounded by controversies since his debut. He had a deep awareness of it. Therefore, no matter what the outside world said about him, he just concentrated on training every day and played at his own level in the games.
Twain did not buy him to help sell the jerseys. He valued Beckham’s right flank pa.s.s and precise long pa.s.ses from the middle and back of the field. These were skills that complemented the Forest team’s counterattacks well. With Albertini gone, the Forest team midfield lacked a player with the ability for precise long pa.s.ses. Van der Vaart’s short pa.s.ses were inventive, but his long pa.s.ses were far off. In that regard, Beckham’s ability was unparalleled. When he was at Real Madrid, he had used countless long pa.s.ses from the backfield ranging more than fifty meters to accurately send the football to his teammates’ feet.
Previously, the Forest team’s two flanks depended on speed to prevail. However, once the opponents compressed the defensive s.p.a.ce, the Forest team’s flank attacks would be blockaded. Now with Beckham, the Forest team’s flank attack routines would be more diverse, leaving the opponents unable to defend effectively.
In addition, thanks to his four years at Real Madrid, Twain could also allow Beckham to make the occasional appearances as the defensive midfielder and use his long pa.s.ses to launch attacks, which was much faster than dribbling the ball.
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Nottingham Forest, who had won their first t.i.tle of the new season, ended their training in Russia and left for the United Kingdom to prepare for the impending English Premier League.
They could not partic.i.p.ate in the FA Community s.h.i.+eld since the Premier League champion was Manchester United. The English FA Cup final was a game between Manchester United and Chelsea. Both teams tied at 0:0 in the 120-minute civil compet.i.tion, which Chelsea eventually won in the penalty shootout. Consequently, the FA Community s.h.i.+eld in the new season would repeat last season’s FA Cup final — Manchester United versus Chelsea.
The Forest team had nothing to do with the game. They were just spectators. Their first major champions.h.i.+p t.i.tle game for the new season was on August 31st, to vie for the UEFA Super Cup against the UEFA Europa League winner, Liverpool.
Twain had scant interest in this opponent. It was clearly the UEFA Super Cup, and yet, because the opponent was a team from the league, it felt more like the “Football League Super Cup,” nothing novel about it.
He preferred to play against Sevilla.
However, it was a pity that the team, selected by FIFA last year as the best football club, had wanted to defend its t.i.tle, but was beaten by a goal from Liverpool in the final instead and lost the t.i.tle.
Nothing could be done about it. If the team did not win a credible t.i.tle again, Benítez might be dismissed. Other than helping the team magically win the UEFA Champions League in his first season since his arrival at Liverpool, Benítez accomplished little else these few years. Benítez was not good at competing in the league tournament. Following the sudden rise of the Forest team, they further lost their eligibility to enter the Champions League for two years in a row, which made the club’s board of directors and fans extremely unhappy.
If he lost the game in the UEFA Europa League as well, the only thing Benítez could do was to admit his responsibility and resign.
Fortunately, the t.i.tle saved his coaching career at Liverpool.
Liverpool recruited new players in the new season and vowed to return to fight for the t.i.tle again.
After the signing of the new Premier League televised broadcast contract, more money was given to the Premier League teams. Under the new broadcast contract, the Premier League champion could receive a 50-million-pound bonus, while even the bottom-ranked team could get 30 million pounds, catching up to the Premier League champion bonus a few seasons ago. No matter what level the England national team was at, the English Premier League remained the most lucrative league in the world.
Against that backdrop, with the exception of Nottingham Forest, who was building a new stadium, the other clubs had only two options: either spend money or be left behind.
No one would choose the latter.
Liverpool spent 11.5 million pounds to buy Ryan Babel, 5 million pounds to purchase Yossi Benayoun from West Ham United, and signed Andriy Voronin on a free transfer from Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Their largest sum was the purchase of Fernando Torres from Atlético Madrid, which took 21.5 million pounds.
The amount of money spent on transfers was an indication of Liverpool’s ambition. Twain had reason to believe that with so much money spent, if Liverpool still could not break into next season’s Champions League, then a dismissal was the only way to go.
Life was full of all kinds of surprises.
The Liverpool people would not be quick to forget the humiliation that Nottingham Forest gave them in the final moments of last season — kicking them to fifth place in the league tournament and taking their Champions League qualification for two years in a row.
Now their chance for revenge had come.
Benítez’s team could rob Nottingham Forest of its first credible t.i.tle for the new season at Monaco’s Stade Louis II. Did Twain not always say that “he is a manager who seeks only the champions.h.i.+p t.i.tle”? Taking away his trophy was the best revenge against him.
Even though the English Premier League had not started yet, the Liverpool media began to hype up the game on the last day of August. For many Merseyside people, they had never longed for the victory in a game like that — to defeat Nottingham Forest.
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According to the compet.i.tion schedule for the new season, the first round would be fully rolled out on August 11th. In the final friendly match before the start of the season, Manchester United and Chelsea tied again in the FA community s.h.i.+eld. They relied on a penalty shootout to determine the winner.
This time, it was not Mourinho who got the last laugh but Ferguson.
The two teams had a Premier League history of playing against each other for thirty games. Out of which, Manchester United was at a slight disadvantage with eight wins, thirteen draws and nine defeats. They were neck in neck with four wins, seven draws and four losses at home. Mourinho had a lot to do with this. When he came to Chelsea, he made the team perform well in their encounters with the Premier League’s strong teams, except for Liverpool.
The FA community s.h.i.+eld loss to Manchester United was just a small part of the feud between the two men.
Mourinho congratulated Manchester United on getting the FA community s.h.i.+eld because that implied that they would lose the league t.i.tle and Chelsea would win again.
Conversely, Ferguson mocked Mourinho for bringing up an old wives’ tale. The curse of the FA community s.h.i.+eld was a thing of the past. He added that Chelsea would not have won the league t.i.tle even if Manchester United had not win the league.
The much-antic.i.p.ated war of words between the two sides had begun even before the start of the league tournament, which gave the best publicity to the English Premier League in the new season.
This was a brand-new Premier League season with new ways to sell its televised broadcast rights, new televised broadcast contracts, new players, new teams, as well as… a new champion.
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On August 11th, Nottingham Forest would travel to Liverpool, but their opponent was not the “infuriating” Liverpool. Instead, it was Liverpool’s nemesis in the same city, Everton.
Moyes and Twain had been friends for years and the game would not be too explosive. The special thing was that it was the first league game the former Forest player, Arteta played for Everton and he would encounter his former owner, Nottingham Forest.
Meanwhile, the game was chosen by Sky TV as a live broadcast. There were two reasons. One was because it was the European champion’s first game in the new season; the other was because Beckham was back. It was the first game for Beckham since his return to the English Premier League after four years, which would be in the spotlight. The live broadcast of the game would also bring more advertising revenue to Sky TV.
When Beckham left Manchester United, there were the economic experts who said that it was not just a loss for the Manchester United Football Club, it was also a loss for the English Premier League. There was even an exaggerated suggestion that Beckham’s departure meant the decline of the most lucrative Premier League and that the world’s top league was going to become La Liga.
Before this season, the Premier League re-auctioned the Premier League’s television rights for the next three years, with the broadcast rights divided into six parts. Each part contained twenty-three games, four of which were sold to Sky TV for 1.31 billion pounds! Furthermore, the Premier League’s coverage rights of all tournaments over the next five years were shared by Sky TV and Ireland’s Setanta Sports, with a total value of 1.7 billion pounds! That did not include the cost of broadcasting rights sold by the Premier League to the foreign television broadcasting corporations — with the television channels in more than two hundred countries paying 1.23 billion dollars to the Premier League for the next three years to broadcast the Premier League, which was about 617 million pounds. The figure put the NBA to shame. Their annual overseas broadcast revenue was only 130 million dollars, which was slightly more than 50 million pounds, equivalent to the bonus for the new Premier League champion team in the new season.
It could not be said that there was no relations.h.i.+p with Beckham’s return at all. Beckham’s return to the Premier League had given many big corporations the confidence to continue to invest in the Premier League and good for the Premier League’s promotion to the world. It was believed that in the next five years, based on the previous results, the Premier League broadcast rights would be offered at higher prices.
Tony Twain was the one to bring him back, but the benefits were shared among the twenty clubs.
It had only taken 191 million pounds for Murdoch to first buy the five-year broadcasting rights for the Premier League games. Five years later in 1997, the amount became 670 million pounds. And in 2004 after the Serie A economic bubble burst and the collapse of KirchGruppe in Germany, the Premier League’s broadcast rights still sold at a sky-high price of 1.02 billion pounds. The English Premier League remained the most lucrative league in the world.
Allan and Evan were in a hurry to launch the new stadium development plan this season. In addition to the Forest team’s historic Champions League victory after twenty-seven years, it was also due to the new televised broadcast contract was signed before this season. The twenty clubs had a lot of money at their disposal. The Premier League almost allocated all of the 1.7 billion-pound money alliance to the Premier League teams. With that funding, all the clubs could plan and build their futures, including Nottingham Forest.
Twain and Allan might have had a lot of small frictions in their daily work, but they were still responsible for their own areas and did not interfere with the other person’s job. However, when it came to the matter of signing Beckham, Allan was so delighted that he could have kissed Twain.
The television broadcast fee in the Premier League was unlike NFL (National Football League), wherein the thirty-two teams received an even distribution. Instead, it was set according to the number of times a team’s games was broadcasted and the team’s eventual ranking in the season. Teams with good results and more star players would get more live broadcast opportunities, which meant more bonuses when the time came.
As the European champion, they would secure more televised broadcast opportunities. On that basis, because the team had a world-cla.s.s star player and a popular idol like Beckham, their number of broadcasts would only increase, especially given the vast audience in Asia and the Americas.
Sky TV’s decision to broadcast all of Nottingham Forest’s live games in the new season was proof that his commercial appeal was impossible to resist
In the 2007-08 season, Nottingham Forest would become the star team that would hold the focus of the world. If they could obtain the results that matched that focus, the goal that Evan had been looking forward to would be achieved ahead of time.