Sponsorship Deals

Chelsea F.C. Have signed a new kit deal worth an estimated £40 million per year with Yokohama, the Japanese tyre manufacturer. No more Samsung. Nest season’s Chelsea will not have Samsung written across the body of the jersey for the first time in nine years. The new deal hugely overshadows the £18 million per year deal signed with the mobile device manufacturer. It stills seems small however when compared to Manchester United’s deal with US car manufacturer Chevrolet. That deal is worth roughly £50 million per year with a seven year contract, giving an overall yield of £350 million. Chelsea’s deal with Yokohama will give them around £200 million in total. Arsenal’s deal with Fly Emirates is worth £30 million per annum, which includes naming rights to the stadium until 2021, the deal will generate a total of £450 million for the north London club at the end of the 2018/2019 season. Real Madrid too have a deal with Fly Emirates, running for five years at an estimated £25(€34) million per annum, £125(€171) million estimated total. The total income of these four deals is a staggering £1.125(€1.542) billion. That isn’t even their biggest source of income.
Sources: BBC Sport

English football league history

I'm going to write about the history of the English football league, I will update it every time I publish another post.

Foundation of the football league

I suppose I should start in 1863, this was the year the FA was founded, this was the start of competitive football. Fast forward to 1878, the greatest year in football. It was the year Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Football club, or Manchester United as they are now known, was founded. Fast forward to 1885, the year the English football league was founded, when ‘’professionalism’’ was introduced and players could be paid wages, the birth of the sport as we know it today. The first actual league competition took place in 1888 to stem the chaos being caused by individual clubs arranging their own matches and cup competitions. It was Aston Villa director who put the motion forward and wrote to directors of various football clubs with the suggestion. The first season began on the 8^th of September, 12 clubs took part. Each club played each other twice, two points for a win, one point for a draw. The first ever winners of the English football league were Preston North End. They also won next season which concluded in 1890. Preston North End, Aston Villa and Sunderland were the three main forces in the early years, dominating the league, only Everton interrupted these three clubs in 1891. Sheffield United in won in 1898 and Liverpool won their first in 1901. Before that however, P.N.E. Sunderland and Aston Villa in particular dominated the game.

Football and the 20th century

The early 20^th century saw the rise of a more open, competitive teams from around England. The addition of teams such as Newcastle United and Manchester United began to have great success. Both winning the title twice before the outbreak of the First World War as well as The Wednesday and Blackburn Rovers. 1905 saw both the first and second tiers of English football league extended to 20 teams, which allowed further southern clubs such as Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur to play with the best in the country. The league was suspended for the First World War.

 Manchester United were renamed in 1902, the names suggested included the likes of ‘Manchester Celtic’ and ‘Manchester Central’ but it was the Italian Louis Rocca, who held a seat on the board of directors, who dismissed these names, claiming they didn’t suit the club. Rocca was the man who suggested ‘Manchester United.’ He was responsible for the two words that mean so much to so many.

 

Spitting.



credit image: skysports.com

I was going to do a piece on economics today concerning Chelsea’s new sponsorship deal but something that is infuriating and frustrating me has come up, so I’ll leave that until next week.
    Some of you may have been following the Spitting incident between Manchester United’s Jonny Evans and Newcastle’s Papiss Cisse. What happened basically is, after a poor challenge from Cisse after which he appeared to kick out at the Manchester United defender. Evans stood and confronted him with a temper. Footage shows what appeared to be Evans spitting at Cisse, I still believe that he was spitting at the ground as is quite common however. Whatever you believe, if it was intentional it was unacceptable but what happens next is worse.
    Clearly outraged by Evans’ action, Cisse gets up and spits directly at Evans, getting his neck mainly. This is absolutely disgusting. The officials didn’t see the incident during the match so no action was taken other than to break the two up to stop a fight. Since then the FA, rightly, has charged both of them. Evans has received a six match ban having been found guilty, I still believe he isn’t. Cisse faces seven matches on the side as he was banned for violent misconduct earlier this season. Cisse has apologised, fair play to him, which is however an admission of guilt. Evans remains defiant, pleading innocence. It is still disgusting however but something about this whole situation disturbs me.
    The minimum ban for spitting intentionally at an opponent is six games, the minimum ban for being found guilty of racism toward an opponent is five. This scares me, why isn’t that ban longer? It should be far longer, I believe if a player is found guilty of racism they should be banned for the duration of the season because I believe that that is inexcusable.

Sources: BBC Football

                 Sky sports news

        

                

News on Qatar.

I’m going to start with some news recently released from FIFA, football’s governing body, in relation to the 2022 world cup in Qatar. The issue being the time frame in which the greatest sporting event in the world will be allowed to take place. A FIFA task force is proposing that the competition can only take place during winter of 2022.

credit image: skysports.com

    This raises a lot of issues for Europe’s top leagues which will be heavily disrupted by this reorganisation. The majority of Football Associations in Europe would prefer the traditional May/June/July option. The reason for this is not tradition as many people are worried about, the fallout would create havoc among Europe’s top leagues. Traditionally, seasons take place between late August and May. If the world cup were to take place during November and December, it would be occupying a large slot bang in the middle of the footballing season. This means that each Football Association would have to submit to a break of up to seven weeks, never mind recovery time, before their league can be resumed. This means leagues will have to switch to annual cycles instead of playing over two years. So games will have to be played in the summer, which isn’t such a problem for the English league but it is in the Serie A or in La Liga as it will be far too hot to play football at a professional level.

    It could be up to four years, when the next world cup takes place for this to be rectified, although that could also be solved by the Euros in 2024.
    There is another controversial issue. When attempting to bid for the world cup, Qatar was criticised over not being able to play the competition in the summer heat. They proposed an air conditioning system that would keep the main pitches, training pitches and fan zones cool, promising to run the competition in the summer. This was likely a major factor in Qatar securing the world cup and yet they seem to have abandoned the technology which raises two questions. Why were they allowed to get the world cup? Why are FIFA letting them keep it? FIFA is already being accused of corruption, so this certainly won’t help.

Intruduction

Hi all, this is Ben. In this blog I will be talking about football geography, news, economics as well as little sections for history every week. My focus will be the English Football league, I will also provide regular updates in all of these fields on Premier league club Manchester United F.C. Where possible. I hope you enjoy!