By Susan Hotopp
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal included not one, but two pieces of football-related reporting. And you won’t find either one on the sports page, either. (Yes, there is a sports page in every Friday’s Weekend Journal ).
I’ll give you three guesses at what I find objectionable in Culture Clash: Soccer Fans, Art Elite Butt Heads. This fascinating story describes how Basel, Switzerland is coping with the nearly simultaneous influx of football supporters for Euro 2008 and visitors for “the world’s most prestigious contemporary art fair.” The latter include the sort of people who are prepared to pay $600,000 for a sculpture that’s comprised of numerous small rooms, each decorated with political images.
Dear readers, you’re no doubt seething with indignation, as was I. Something is wrong with the world when honest, hard-working supporters of the Swiss and Czech national teams must share Basel with denizens of art snobbatoria from around the globe. But would you believe that the WSJ has a different take on this? They’ve quoted a New York art advisor who claims that “soccer hooligans drove our room rates through the roof.” Curiously, she believes that “This has ‘Christopher Guest movie’ written all over it.”
Does she mean a film like Best in Show? And the art people are like the high-strung, status-conscious couple whose weimeraner attacked one of the judges? (You really must see this film, if you haven’t already).
We see a photo of a wild-eyed, flag-waving man and boy juxtaposed next to an elegant couple standing in front of a no doubt significant piece of modern art. Most of the article is spent describing the art crowd’s dismay, but the author did apparently speak to one footy supporter. He is a social worker who counsels “troublesome soccer fans.” Really, I’m not making this up.
In Soccer Players Drain Coffers,
Steve McGrath takes a look at a recent Deloitte report on wages, revenues, and profitability in European football. (The full article is not available online without a subscription. If you have access to the print version, please see page C2 of the WSJ, May 30, 2008).
There’s nothing offensive about this story, unless you’re a Chelsea fan. During the 2006-7 season, Chelsea paid 132.8 million pounds in player salaries to Arsenal’s 89.7 million and Manchester United’s 92.3 million. I suppose Chelsea did win two trophies in 2007 (the Carling Cup counts, right?) and United only won the Premiership. The Journal said nothing about this, noting only that neither London club has won the Champions League.
Other interesting facts: John Terry was the highest-paid player in the Premiership in 2006-7, Premier League salaries as whole are 75% higher than those in La Liga, and Bundesliga operating profits of 250 million euros exceeded those of the Premiership (141 million euros), for the first time ever. As a percentage of revenue, player salaries at top clubs are at record levels (63%). High salaries lead the clubs to take on debt and raise ticket prices…etc., etc. You won’t catch me wringing my hands over any of this, though. When fans stop buying tickets and watching televised matches, the salary spiral will stop.
There’s supposed to be no such thing as bad publicity, but I think that the tiresome, offensive tone of the Culture Clash article far outweighs the Journal’s neutral coverage of European club football finances. The former, after all, occupied a prominent front-page position in Friday’s popular Weekend Journal and “Soccer Players Drain Coffers” was placed on page two of the Money & Investing section.
That probably wasn’t obscure enough for John Terry, though. The Journal still had room to run the now-famous photo of him seated on the rain-soaked pitch after that critical missed penalty in last week’s Champions League final.