WHEN the ball stopped rolling, West Bromwich Albion were sitting in second place in the Championship, one point behind leaders Leeds United and six points clear of third-placed Fulham with nine games to go.

Understandably, there will be a sense of injustice among their fans should the “Baggies” not get promoted back to the Premier League they left in 2018. Hence they are eager for the campaign to be completed and insist the Hawthorns is “ready to go” for behind closed doors games.

Although they’ve been out of the Premier just a short while, Albion’s financial position has obviously changed, underlining the power of English football’s top division. The club’s revenues fell by 43% in 2018-19 to £ 70.8 million, the highest in the Championship, and they posted a net loss of £ 7 million for the second successive season, despite cutting expenses by 43%. Albion’s wage bill reduced by 49% to £ 46.8 million, a dramatic fall on the £ 92.2 million paid out in 2018-19, but the fifth highest in the Championship.

Predictably, the revenue streams most affected by relegation were broadcasting (down 48% to £ 52.8 million) and commercial (30% lower at £ 10.7 million). Matchday revenues were only marginally down, hardly surprising given attendances were just 1.5% lower, with the average gate amounting to 24,148 (2018 – 24,520). Albion’s fans demonstrated their loyalty in 2018-19 by buying more season tickets than in their last Premier season (17,750). Up until lockdown, crowds at the Hawthorns averaged 24,053 in 2019-20.

Albion sold some players after relegation to ease wage outlay, but after 2018-19, players like Jay Rodriguez, Salomón Rondón and Craig Dawson were released, bringing in more than £ 35 million in transfer revenue. In 2018-19, Albion generated £ 10.1 million in player trading, an increase of 73% on 2017-18. Other the past two seasons, player amortisation has been £ 25 million and £ 23 million respectively.

To counter the lost income, Albion received around £ 43 million in parachute payments, but despite still having one of the highest wage bills in the Championship, they missed out on promotion in the play-offs, losing to Aston Villa (wage bill £ 83 million) on penalties in the play-offs. The pressure being placed upon clubs who have invested heavily in order to compete at the top is now creating difficulties, said Cardiff Chairman Mehmet Dalman, who added that a dozen Championship clubs could be up for sale owing to the Coronavirus.

Football finance expert Gerard Krasner warned that clubs with foreign ownership could face additional problems in the near future should owners have to reassess their investments held overseas. Notwithstanding the economic downturn on the horizon, they may consider football clubs are no longer viable interests in the post-crisis world.

But Albion’s situation is fairly reasonable compared to some clubs that have suffered relegation in recent years. Aston Villa, for example, lost £ 69 million in their first post-drop campaign. Albion’s wage-to-income ratio is 66%, some 40 percentage points lower than the Championship’s outrageous average. Albion are also unlikely to get extravagant in the transfer market should they go up, and will avoid the cash-happy antics of some recently promoted clubs.

It was notable in the 2018-19 accounts that Chief Executive Mark Jenkins received a significant pay increase but he has received plaudits for the way he has managed Albion’s transition from Premier League to Championship. Since then, however, Jenkins has taken a 100% pay cut during the lockdown period.

Two years after he returned to the Hawthorns, admitting that he was shocked at the state of Albion’s accounts, Jenkins insists the club is financially stable. Like all clubs, they have seen revenues dry-up, but they are due £ 10 million in transfer income representing the latest instalments from the sales of Dawson, Rodriguez and Rondón, which should ease some of the discomfort. Meanwhile, the “Baggies” are waiting to see how the 2019-20 season will be settled and whether they will return to the Premier League any time soon.

@GameofthePeople

Photo: PA

Categories: Finance & Business

Tagged: 2018-19, Championship, finance, Lead, Premiership, top slot, West Bromwich Albion

Bayern Munich's Georg Schwarzenbeck tackles St Etienne's Herve Revelli (r) from behind. Bayern Munich goalkeeper Sepp Maier (l) looks on.

Saint-Etienne in the 1970s – painting the town Vert

GOTP Editorial Team

Posted on May 20, 2020

BEFORE PSG got rich and threatened to join the uber-clubs of Europe, French football had only spasmodically made an impact on the big stages. True, Stade de Reims reached a couple of European Cup finals in the nascent years of the European Cup, and Marseille won the competition in the 1990s, but the team that captured the hearts of European football watchers was Saint-Etienne of the mid-1970s.

Most people will struggle to put a pin in the map and tell you where Saint-Etienne is located. It’s in the Massif Central, and is a name synonymous with the French bicycle industry. It has often been a Tour de France stage. It was once a big coal mining area. And if justice had been done, this city of 170,000 people would have been known as the home of the 1976 European champions.

Founded in 1919, Saint-Etienne’s golden age started in the late 1960s with four Ligue 1 titles between 1966-67-68 and 1969-70 and two Coupe de France wins in 1967-68 and 1969-70. Pivotal in this successful period was the Malian striker Salif Keita, who scored 125 goals in 149 games for the club, including 71 in his final two seasons. Saint-Etienne assumed that Keita, like many African-born players, would take French nationality, but he refused and departed for Spain’s Valencia in 1972.

Keita’s move to Spain had further controversy attached to it as the Spanish press claimed, “Valencia goes out to buy Germans and comes back with a black man”. Nevertheless, and thankfully, Keita was popular at his new club and became known as La perla negra de Mali (the black pearl from Mali). Keita’s success was a signal that the game in France was beginning to tap into its colonial territories, rather like Portugal did in the 1960s with players like Eusebio and Mario Coluna.

St Etienne’s Gerard Janvion (r) blocks a shot from Bayern Munich’s Uli Hoeness (l)

The gallic Billy Bremner

One of the most influential figures in the late 1960s for Saint-Etienne was Robert Herbin, compared by many to Leeds United’s Billy Bremner. English fans may recall the limping figure of the French international midfielder-cum-defender at Wembley in 1966 after he collided with Bobby Moore. Herbin, who was later recognizable for his red frizzy hairstyle, was moved to full back by coach Albert Batteux, the brains behind the Stade de Reims side of the 1950s and the France side of 1958. In 1972, Batteux stepped aside and Herbin became one of the youngest coaches in the game at the age of 33.

Herbin’s preferred style was not a million kilometres away from the approach of neighbouring Holland and Germany. In other words, it was the spirit of Total Football with un peu de prudence. In 1973-74, Herbin’s Saint-Etienne won the title, finishing eight points ahead of Nantes. They completed the double by beating Monaco in the cup final 2-1. In the European Cup the following season, the continent saw the first signs of an emerging force. Les Verts beat Sporting Lisbon, Hadjuk Split (a dramatic comeback) and Ruch Chorzow on the way to the semi-final, where they met Bayern Munich. Not for the last time, their more cavalier approach came unstuck against the clinical, methodical and Beckenbauer-organised Germans, who won 2-0 on aggregate.

The side, however, was taking shape nicely and was founded on a strong defence. Goalkeeper Ivan Curkovic from Mostar was a Yugoslav international and an Olympic gold medallist. Pierre Repellini and Gerard Farison were both international full-backs, while Christan Lopez and Oswaldo Piazza were outstanding central defenders. Energy in midfield came from Gerard Janvion, Jean-Michel Larque, the muscular Dominique Bathenay and Christian Synaeghal, and up front, the Revelli brothers, Patrick and Herve, helped by Yves Triantafilos, provided the goals.

The Green Angel

Saint-Etienne’s success provided a boost to the ailing French game. After the demise of the French side of Kopa and Fontaine, domestic football took a downturn, with crowds falling to all-time lows. Something changed at the start of the 1970s as development schemes produced some very good players. Saint-Etienne were the first French club to get through to the country through the small screen. And by 1975-76, they had a player who was tailor-made for TV exposure- Dominique Rocheteau.

He was a 20 year-old forward who had the looks and panache of a teen idol and the sort of virtuosity that earned him the tag of “the French George Best”. Rocheteau was a graceful player who combined pace, dribbling skills and poise. His nickname was as elegant as his style, L’Ange Vert , the Green Angel. He liked rock and roll, notably the Eagles and the sound of west coast America.

Rocheteau was constantly earmarked as a man to watch by publication like World Soccer and the 1975-76 campaign saw him come to the fore in the European Cup. Rocheteau and his team-mates won many friends for their performance at Ibrox Park as Saint-Etienne beat Rangers 2-1 and 4-1 on aggregate. And then he tore Dynamo Kiev apart as Les Verts came back from 0-2 away defeat to beat the Soviets 3-0. After overcoming PSV Eindhoven in the semi-finals, Saint-Etienne returned to Glasgow to meet old foes Bayern Munich in the final at Hampden Park.

It should have been the crowning of a new European power. Saint-Etienne’s flowing football, highly technical and extremely watchable and admirable, made them natural successors to the Dutch masters of Ajax and Feyenoord. Rocheteau could have been almost as influential as Cruyff was for the Netherlands. But there were question marks over his fitness and generally, of Saint-Etienne’s stamina – often they would run themselves into the ground. Rocheteau only played seven minutes due to his injury, replacing Christian Sarramagna, who, contrary to his name, was not a James Bond villain.

For long periods, Saint-Etienne outplayed Bayern at Hampden, striking the woodwork through Bathenay and spurning at least a dozen good chances. French fans blamed Hampden’s goals for this bad luck, les poteaux carres, the square posts. The Glasgow public were willing them on, the watching neutrals urging them to win. But this was Bayern, a team that soaked up everything that Leeds could muster a year earlier before hitting them with a late double. They had won two successive European Cups prior to this game and knew exactly how to time their run and take advantage of a tiring opponent. It was a free kick from Franz Roth that won the game and broke French hearts. For many, it was comparable to West Germany’s World Cup win against the Netherlands two years earlier. Tearful Saint-Etienne would never come as close again.

Testing the reds

The 1975-76 season saw Saint-Etienne complete another hat-trick of Ligue 1 titles, but in 1976-77 they slipped to fifth place, 13 points behind champions Nantes. They won the Coupe de France, however and in Europe went on another exciting run, reaching the last eight.

Les Verts scraped through against CSKA Sofia in the first round, thanks to a second leg goal at home by Osvaldo Piazza, the under-rated Argentine. The second round was another 1-0 aggregate win, this time against PSV Eindhoven, and Piazza was the matchwinner once more. This paired Herbin’s side with Liverpool. In the first leg, Bathenay scored 12 minutes from time at a heated Stade Geoffroy-Guichard. The second meeting was a classic and has lived on in footballing folklore in Liverpool. Around 6,000 fans, armed with green and white wigs, klaxons, whistles and sirens, invaded Merseyside. Liverpool took less than a minute to level the aggregate scores, through Kevin Keegan. But Bathenay scored a spectacular long range equalizer with a dipped beyond Ray Clemence. For a while, it looked as though Saint-Etienne would go through, the video of the game, available on You Tube, shows how close it was. But Ray Kennedy gave Liverpool and 2-1 lead, which was still not enough owing to the away goals rule and near the end, with the Liverpool crowd in a near-frenzy, David Fairclough made it 3-1 and won the tie. Liverpool went on to win the European Cup, but their players were unanimous; Saint-Etienne were one of the best sides in Europe and the toughest hurdle they faced on the way to winning the competition. Scant consolation for Herbin and co. but let’s not forget, this was a very good Liverpool team.

And in the end…

That defeat signaled the end of Saint-Etienne’s golden age, although in 1978, the four members of the France World Cup squad from the club – Janvion, Lopez, Bathenay and Rocheteau, who were all 25 or under. They didn’t win Ligue 1 again until 1980-81, by which time, Michel Platini had been signed from Nancy. A year later, he left for Juventus and in 1983, Herbin departed. Scandal engulfed the club and in 1984, they were relegated. They are back where they belong today, but whatever they do, it is unlikely to eclipse the achievements of Herbin’s glorious team. “Allez Les Verts”, as they say in the Rue Paul et Pierre Guichard….

Photos: PA

Categories: Teams

Tagged: featured, France, great reputations, Lead, Saint-Etienne, top slot

Di Matteo and Barton showed the unsung hero can also take football’s top stage

GOTP Editorial Team

Posted on May 19, 2020

THE THREE men who have managed a European Cup/Champions League winner on three occasions are well known to all: Bob Paisley, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane. Unsurprisingly, most of Europe’s biggest names have won the competition and some equally notable managers have not – Bill Shankly, Don Revie, Arséne Wenger and Franz Beckenbauer, for example, never led a team to European Cup glory, although Der Kaiser was well acquainted with the trophy in his playing days.

Interestingly, some of the lesser-known managers have taken their sides all the way to the final. The first English manager to reach the final was Jimmy Armfield in 1975 with Leeds United, while the only final to feature two Englishmen in charge was in 1979 when Nottingham Forest (Brian Clough) faced Malmö (Bob Houghton). Even then few people had heard of Houghton, but he was just 31 in 1979 and had played less than a hundred senior games for Hastings United. Houghton’s career took him to the Middle East, Far East, the Canada and the US, central and northern Europe. He managed three national teams: China, India and Uzbekistan. He finally hung up his tracksuit in 2011 after a fascinating and lengthy journey. His Malmö team were beaten 1-0 by Forest in an uninspiring game, but reaching the Munich final was an achievement in itself.

Another British manager, Tony Barton, took over Aston Villa’s league title-winning side of 1981 in February 1982 after Ron Saunders resigned over a contractual dispute. Barton was an eyebrow-raising choice but he inherited a talented team that had already made its way to the last eight of the European Cup. One of his first games in charge was in the Crimean city of Simferopol, a 0-0 draw with Dynamo Kyiv. Villa won the second leg 2-0 and then scraped through 1-0 over two legs against Belgium’s Anderlecht in the semi-final. Bayern Munich presented a stiff challenge in the final in Rotterdam, but a Peter Withe goal won the cup for Villa and Barton. He was soon gone, though, sacked in May 1984 as Villa failed to build on their success.

Real Madrid’s early successes in the European Cup have passed into football folklore, but people remember Alfredo Di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas, Raymond Kopa and other fine individuals. The managers are rarely mentioned in despatches. The first to win the European Cup was José Villalonga Llorente, who was not the only the first but also the youngest ever to coach a champion club – just 36 and 184 days. He was succeeded by the Argentinian Luis Carniglia, the first non-European to manage a European Cup winner. Then came Miguel Muñoz, the first to play and manage a winning team in the competition. Muñoz is part of a select band who have achieved that feat. The others include: Giovanni Trapattoni, Johan Cruyff, Carlo Ancelotti, Frank Rijkaard and Pep Guardiola.

When Zinedine Zidane led Real Madrid to their hat-trick of triumphs between 2016 and 2018, he became the first coach to win three in a row. He was also the first French manager to win the competition. Albert Batteaux, Robert Herbin and Didier Deschamps had all tried before him.

Coaches from the other main countries seem to have more joy – 12 times the trophy has been won by an Italian manager, 10 times a Spaniard and eight times a German. English coaches have won the competition seven times, the first (1977) was Bob Paisley and the last (1984) being Joe Fagan of Liverpool, another relatively unknown figure who was promoted to run the first team via the fabled Anfield “Boot Room”.

One of the unlikely coaches from Italy was Roberto Di Matteo, who led Chelsea to victory on May 19, 2012. Di Matteo was never seen as more than a stop gap by Chelsea’s top management, although he was popular with the fans and won the FA Cup as well as the European Cup in his short spell in charge. It was ironic as the club had pursued a strategy of hiring marque managers such as Jose Mourinho, Luiz Felipe Scolari and Carlo Ancelotti and Di Matteo was something of an untried alternative. But he certainly delivered. It was no shock that within a few months of his – and Chelsea’s – greatest moment in the game, he was gone.

Germany’s European Cup winning coaches have all been well known characters, from Udo Lattek in 1974 to Jürgen Klopp in 2019. Of the five Germans, perhaps the least celebrated has been Ottmar Hitzfeld, who won the competition with Borussia Dortmund in 1997 and Bayern Munich in 2001. The German list, which is completed by Jupp Heynckes and Dettmar Cramer, is an impressive one.

It’s hard for a relatively unknown manager to win the competition today. Increasingly, the big names circulate the big clubs and they change jobs frequently. Therefore, the chances of a Barton or a Di Matteo emerging as manager of Europe’s number one club are extremely remote. Regardless of their CVs, their successes are part of the romance of the game.

Photo: PA

@GameofthePeople

Categories: History

Tagged: European Cup, Jose Mourinho, Juergen Klopp, Lead, managers, Pep Guardiola, top slot, UEFA Champions League

The Grey Neutral: The football lives of others

GOTP Editorial Team

Posted on May 17, 2020

FOOTBALL is back in Europe, with the Bundesliga kicking off in empty stadiums and players acknowledging goals with a grin, a mannekin-like pose and not a hint of schadenfreude.

Rout in the Ruhr

The world’s biggest crowd-puller, Borussia Dortmund (average gate 80,000-plus), opened the restart in a near empty Signal Iduna Park. The absence of a crowd allowed you to see just how vast the yellow wall must be with a [safe] terracing area straight out of the 1970s. It was easy going for BVB, who scored four, well-crafted goals. Interestingly, there was not a minute of added time in the second half which made you wonder if that had anything to do with a deserted stadium – were they just desperate to get off the pitch? It was good to see a decent game of football, but the surreal atmosphere underlined that the product is very diluted without an audience. It becomes as compelling as a park match. We may have to get used to it, though, for putting 22 people on a pitch is one thing, getting 30,000-40,000 and all accompanying bacterial and viral activity into a relatively confined space is a different story. That said, Dortmund showed they were not too rusty after the enforced lay-off, but Schalke have some work to do!

Rewriting history

Crystal Palace’s historian is claiming they are the oldest professional club in the world after reassessing the line of succession from the original Crystal Palace to the club that now plays at Selhurst Park. This all seems a little tenuous given the old team, which played around the Sydenham Hill area and appeared in the first FA Cup in 1871-72, disappeared for more than 20 years. It’s hard to claim a club is the same when it is no longer active, even if the company records show it was still in existence, probably because nobody had bothered to wind things up? The problem with football history is that for many years, it was not taken seriously and there was, for many years, no rigorous academic research into its past. The proud boast, “oldest professional club” is also questioned given that Sheffield, the widely acknowledged oldest club are in fact “professional”. Nobody would blame Palace’s fans and archivists for trying to claim a rather dubious honour, but clearly, the CPFC that was formed in 1905 were seemingly satisfied they were not the organisation that played in the inaugural FA Cup. Why try and rewrite history? However, the first Crystal Palace club’s opponents in the FA Cup, Hitchin FC, were once guilty of the same debatable claim – Hitchin FC folded in 1911 and a new club, Hitchin Town FC was formed 17 years later! In both cases, it is surely more accurate to say their roots date back to 1861 and 1865 respectively?

Kylian killing time

The transfer market may well be seized up when football finally returns, so it’s no surprise that Kylian Mbappé has said he will probably see out another season with Paris Saint-Germain. The fact is, with clubs of all shapes and sizes feeling the squeeze, there may be a lack of willing takers for the talented young Frenchmen, both in terms of a transfer fee and a lucrative personal deal. Real Madrid are said to be interested in Mbappé, but even the biggest clubs are worried about their cashflow. One of the positives that may come out of the virus lockdown is a more realistic transfer market – Mbappé has been valued from € 175 million to € 250 million, but it would seem unlikely that anyone in the post-virus environment will want to pay € 200 million for a player. Apparently, relationships between Mbappé and PSG are strained, which does sound a little familiar when a player is a year away from the end of his contract. Transfer talk in this time of restriction and deprivation is a little crass.

Rich man, poor man

The Sunday Times could not have timed their Rich List more inappropriately. With the Coronavirus about to send the UK over a cliff economically, we really needed to know just how wealthy the wealthy are. And it is quite obscene in places, making you wonder just what does it take to become a multi-millionaire or even a billionaire. As for football, the richest English player is Raheem Sterling with a net worth of around £ 28 million, boosted by his £ 300,000 per week contract. It’s not that difficult for a moderately well-paid person to become a millionaire in terms of the accumulation of assets such as pension, property and investments, but just consider that it takes players like Sterling about a month to earn another million.

Lack of cohesion

Stevenage are probably mightily relieved they probably won’t be getting relegated from the EFL back to the non-league world. However, at present there seems to be a hotch-potch of ideas and solutions and no consistent approach towards getting the season either written-off or played-out. It cannot go on forever and the sooner the Football Association and Football League apply a one-size fits all answer to the problem – for once this would seem the fairest way – the better.

@GameofthePeople

Photos: PA

Categories: Talking Points

Tagged: Borussia Dortmund, Bundesliga, Coronavirus, Crystal Palace, English Football League, FA Cup, Kylian Mbappé, Lead, Premier League, Ruhr, Schalke, Sunday Times, top slot

West Brom manage the drop in status well… and wait

GOTP Editorial Team

Posted on May 21, 2020

Saint-Etienne in the 1970s – painting the town Vert

GOTP Editorial Team

Posted on May 20, 2020

The gallic Billy Bremner

The Green Angel

Testing the reds

And in the end…

Di Matteo and Barton showed the unsung hero can also take football’s top stage

GOTP Editorial Team

Posted on May 19, 2020

The Grey Neutral: The football lives of others

GOTP Editorial Team

Posted on May 17, 2020

Rout in the Ruhr

Rewriting history

Kylian killing time

Rich man, poor man

Lack of cohesion