When Yankees Attack

For those of you with the good fortune to have seen Mad Men, you will remember the story arc where a British advertising agency bought out Sterling Cooper. You will have undoubtedly been as appalled as I was to see the oppressive and out of touch hand of a foreigner come down upon that organization we had grown to support. The men and women of Sterling Cooper may have been a herd of misogynistic, hard-drinking, anti-gay, materialistic, adulterous proponents of the white picket fence version of American free enterprise on Madison Avenue, but they were OUR herd of misogynistic, hard-drinking, anti-gay, materialistic, adulterous proponents of the white picket fence version of American free enterprise on Madison Avenue.

Imagine, then, how the fans of Liverpool Football Club must feel. Three years ago, American businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr bought the club, as part of a surge of interest among the Stateside moneymen in investing in Premier League clubs. After purchasing Fernando Torres--a terrific buy--there has been little to no further investment, and Liverpool's standards have slipped from challenger for the title to Champions League entrant (where they failed to qualify for the knockout rounds this year and dropped into the Europa League) to unlikely to qualify for next season's Champions League. They have debts, though not as severe as the debts at Manchester United--whose American owners, the Glazers, as I understand it, saddled the club with the very debt they accrued to purchase the club in the first place--small wonder the Manchester fans are up in arms against the American invaders.

The stratospheric debts accumulated by clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid certainly lend attraction to Michel Platini's plan to require all clubs to spend no more on players than they earn through soccer-related revenues. For the most part, this is not the point I am trying to make, though it is relevant in how it reveals that for many owners, including Hicks and Gillett, sports are a business.

Of course, we have all known this is true for some time, considering the obscene salaries and profits to be made, but fans never like to be reminded of this, especially not when it is about their own team.

There never seemed to be any evidence that Hicks or Gillett were buying Liverpool because they wanted see Steven Gerrard and company overtake Chelsea and Manchester United and bring home a trophy. In fact, you can see their priorities in this article about the sale.

Gillett wants to consolidate his finances to shore up the stability of . . . a NASCAR team. NASCAR is not a sport; it is at best a business, at worst environmental destruction with spectators, pollution at high speeds. But it makes money, selling advertisements to people who want to watch cars crash, which, to be fair, is rooted in human history--that is presumably why chariot races were so popular in Rome. But that is spectacle, not sport, the willingness of the masses to spend money to see disasters. Obviously the priority of Gillett was business and making money. He saw the market in the Premier League and tried to colonize it, with unsatisfying results, to say the least.

It is a businessman's right to spend his money as he sees fit, I suppose, as long as he doesn't do anything unethical or illegal. But it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of fans when people come in, looking to make money off of a life-and-death cause, i.e., the sports team in question, fail to bring in the improvements they promised, and leave the club in worse shape than when they found it. It creates the perception that these owners neither care about nor understand the stakes involved, that they don't actually care about soccer.

To be fair, Gillett and Hicks purchased Liverpool just before a global economic crisis, which would impact the amount they could invest in the club. But to choose NASCAR over soccer? How Ugly American can you get? Driving around in circles accomplishing nothing but the expenditure of gas and the selling of advertising.

When you look at the unpopularity of Gillett and Hicks, and the Glazers at Manchester United, it makes you think that we should stick to exporting players, not owners. Everton fans loved Landon Donovan during his loan spell. Brad Freidel has had a long and distinguished career with Blackburn and now Aston Villa. There's some profound lesson here about the difference between workers and capitalists in the American culture, I'm sure of it.

In any case, hopefully the new owners, whoever they are, will right the ship at Liverpool and re-strengthen the squad, properly prioritizing the soccer over the bottom line.