Soccernet is claiming that "reports from Abu Dhabi suggest that Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour believes his club's chase for Brazilian superstar Kaka has ended in success."
Reports. Suggests. Belief. Make of it what you will.
Kaka can make an assload of cash of it if he wills.
Friday, January 16, 2009
UF Quick Throw: Someone Thinks The Kaka Deal is Done
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14 comments:
If it does go through, it's bad for football.
And it will not save Citeh, because their problems are largely with the back line and there's always the pesky issue of Ireland, SWP, Elano, Jo, and Robinho all having to play with just one ball. Now you add Kaka to the mix, and it becomes even more muddled.
Why is it bad if it goes through? They are ridiculous sums of money, yeah. But if the owners want to overpay for a player that might only exacerbate their current problems, then let them.
Shit, if I'm a Milan fan I'm ecstatic. This is like the Herschel Walker deal the Cowboys made that allowed them to completely rebuild into a championship team.
I see your point, PR, and I don't entirely disagree, but the sum being discussed here a almost beyond the pale.
How does a smaller club hold onto a core of talented players? How do they establish any sort of continuity when that core can be bought, regardless of price? I think it sets a bad precedent, and it makes successful football more a matter of money than of proper coaching, developing team chemistry, and the like. Citeh may not be able to buy success with Kaka and Robinho, but at some point, they will. Just like Chelsea.
I'm not saying AC Milan is a small team by any stretch. My second paragraph is purely hypothetical.
Nope, superior talent identification, player development and proper coaching will always be able to compete.
Sure it helps if you can spend money by the truckload, but it doesn't guarantee anything (see: Yankees, New York). Or even more relevant, look at Real's Galaticos. Won the league then struggled to do it again for the next three years.
If Citeh doesn't have the structure in place to scout and develop talent then they'll have no choice but to go overpay for that talent.
The Yankees have won 26 WS. They're not much of an argument agaisnt buying success.
Your last paragraph, if I'm reading it right, makes an nice point: that if Citeh has to go and overpay for talent, it might benefit the league by giving smaller clubs large infusions of cash. Hmmmm. That's an angle I hadn't considered. Interesting.
The Yankees point was more about the last 8 years. They've outspent everyone by several orders of magnitude (save for the Red Sox of late) and they've won zero World Series in that time.
Yes, they are in the playoffs almost every year, so they've been able to buy the ability to compete in that top stratum, but have bought no guarantees of winning.
Okay, so now Citeh can buy their way near the Top 4, but Hughes will still get outmanaged by SAF, Wenger, Benitez regularly.
PR--but Real and the Yankees can reasonably expect, year in and year out, to have a legitimate shot at winning silverware (or a garish gold monstrosity in the case of the Yankees). That they don't always do so doesn't change that. In baseball, at least even the Marlins and the Twins and the Devil Rays (suck it Christians) can rise up in any one year in and win (or reasonably believe that if things fall their way they have a shot). Note the I didn't include the Royals. In the Prem, all the small teams and their supporters know from the first day of the season that they have no chance to compete for the league. The best they can hope for is a mid-table finish or a Carling Cup run. I think if this thing goes through, the disparity between the haves and the have nots is only going to become greater.
If Citeh doesn't buy some fullbacks, I'm not sure they can buy their way into the top 10!
Is Hughes going to last there much longer. I mean, if they buy Kaka, yet remain in the relegation fight, won't he get the sack?
And then it's just a matter of time until they try and buy The Special One!
I'm more of your mind, Goat, but PR seems to be arguing the opposite: that the influx of cash to smaller clubs from Citeh buying their stars could actually help the league even out.
I was just explaining to my dad this concept of big-name clubs buying the rising stars of small clubs (using Ibrahimovich going from Malmo FF->Ajax->Juve as my example).
The theory sounds good when you're explaining it (or on paper), but does it really happen in RL? Malmo continues to be a Top 4 club in the Allsveskan (sorry for my lack of umlauts), but can you really say that the 8 million euros Ajax paid Malmo is THE main reason Malmo remains a top-flight club within their league? I know every bit of money helps, but...
Anyway, just thinking out loud.
Oh and one more thing:
Kaka can make an assload of cash of it if he wills
You think he's going to tithe 10% of that?
http://www.lookpic.com/files/kaka1.jpg
ALL salary caps benefit only the owners - NO one else, including cities, fans, and players. END OF DISCUSSION. (Economics degree on parade!)
Now, if you'd like to argue for "debt limits" on ownership, THEN you're talking a subject that might make a difference. But NO owner has ever had a gun to his head and been told "Pay this sum for player X".
This is all a perception issue, not an economic one...how can Kaka make so much freaking money playing a game? Well, how the fuck can some person in Dubai afford to PAY HIM THAT MONEY????
For a more complete explanation, see:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8409
(freebie)
This is directly related to baseball, but the economics work in all sports...
I see your point, jjf, but "can" does not imply "should."
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