DOES AS MONACO HAVE AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE IN LIGUE 1?

Most soccer fans across the globe are aware of the impact that big money owners such as Roman Abramovich and the Oil tycoons from the Middle East have made on the game. While deep pocket owners such as these have definitely distanced their clubs from the rest of the pack, Ligue 1 faces a different problem.

New money has been injected into clubs Paris Saint Germain and AS Monaco. AS Monaco was recently purchased by Dmitry Rybolovlev a Russian Oligarch. Now in it's first season back in the French first division, AS Monaco join fellow big money club PSG there and have spent over 115 million Euros this summer attempting to secure a Ligue 1 title this season. Monaco does retain one advantage that PSG does not have. AS Monaco may play in the French first division but the team is from the small independent city state of Monaco. Monaco has long been considered a tax haven. While Monaco has a population of just over 35,000 it has 0% unemployment and no income tax. Sound great? The world's best players might agree with you. It has become a refuge for some of the worlds wealthiest.

France on the other hand boasts taxes on the wealthy that can exceed 100%. AS Monaco has seen plenty of success in the past. They even progressed to the Champions League final a few years back. Still the tax issue has never been seen as overly serious. That is, until now. Now that Monaco boasts not only no taxes on it's players wages but also seemingly limitless spending ability, the rest of Ligue 1 is speaking up. Who can blame them? With the money, tax advantages and beautiful beaches, who wouldn't want to play there?

The story does not end there. With the coming of Rybolovlev's deep pockets the rest of Ligue 1 decided they had had enough. The New York Times quotes Frédéric Thiriez as saying "It is therefore all the more important that the club adheres to French rules, especially in relation to tax, so that every club in the league is on a level playing field.”. AS Monaco haven't seemed to like this idea and have been strongly averse to any other compromises mentioned. So, it looks as though this issue will continue to be a problem for awhile. But Monaco face other problems such as small stadium and fan base. With so many big name players such as Falcao, Carvahllo, Abidal, Moutinho and Rodriguez, It will be interesting to see what AS Monaco and their big spending owner do to cope with these mounting problems.

Of course AS Monaco's return to Ligue 1 doesn't only bring problems. There are upsides to the former Champions League finalist returning to Frances top division. Monaco's newly purchased superstars and money to spend will attract attention to the French league. Along with PSG, Monaco could help French soccer to succeed in the Champions League (PSG made it to the quarter finals last season.) and gain important exposure.

Regardless of the team's success it is an interesting conundrum. One that you probably wont be able to find anywhere else in world sport. Overall, I think the perks of tax free wages do provide AS Monaco with an unfair advantage over the other Ligue 1 teams. Although, with all of its advantages, Monaco's tiny stadium and fan base cause cause major obstacles on the road to success. Either way a solution will be hard to find. We will all just have to wait and see.






http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/european/10250930/Money-cant-buy-Monaco-love-as-tax-battle-looms.html


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/sports/soccer/the-tax-haven-team-in-monaco.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

GLOBALIZATION AND SOCCER'S EMERGENCE IN THE U.S.

            Soccer has only recently become popular with fans in the United States. While the sport has had its die hards, it is only in recent years that the sport has had wide spread popularity. A recent poll stated that Soccer was the 2nd most popular sport for people between the ages 12 and 24. The first being the NFL.[i] There has been a giant leap forward in the sports’ exposure in the US over the last 5 to 10 years. Soccer has journeyed from never being seen on television to having special soccer channels and sometimes games being shown on network channels like NBC and FOX. Why has it taken so long for soccer to grab a foot hold among American sports and why is it suddenly happening now?

        Through out its history, soccer has always thrived through the exchange of culture. This is why the sport has flourished in Europe. The relative size of these countries and their proximity to other nations caused or even forced plenty of exchanges between different cultures. This is not thee case for the United States. As we know the US is a relatively large country. Because of its size and amount of resources, this type of exchange has not been as essential for America.

   Even though the organized sport is said to have come out of England, during the latter half of the 19th century it was not English coaches who developed the sport’s most successful style of play. It wasn’t until men like Jimmy Murphy began to look to the continent and utilize the methods of coaches from Spain and Hungary that English soccer began to grow and become competitive with other programs across the European continent. This “osmosis” in soccer is no different than any other aspect of cultures mixing with one another. Just as with food or art, this mixing has allowed for many different styles as well as more accessibility to develop in regards to this sport.

      The United States has always been a very independent nation. From its very inception with the writing of the Declaration of Independence, it possessed a determination to set its self apart.  Others have rarely dictated both US culture and policy. So, from the very beginning, it was going to be difficult for soccer to spread to the US the way it did through out Europe. Simply the nation’s size allows for it to be less dependent. The smaller countries of Europe actually formed the European Union, in part, to emulate the US’s economic capabilities. Just as the smaller European nations were forced to interact because of their size and close proximity, The United States was allowed to be more isolated because of its larger size.

       The internet has changed all of this. The emergence of technology that connected us all has figuratively shrunk the globe to a much smaller size. New media technology has a history of popularizing sports with in the United States. With the emergence of the radio came America’s past time. Baseball exploded. Families gathered around their radio sets (which were more of a piece of furniture at the time) to listen to their team every night or each week. For the first time fans did not have to go to the game to become a spectator. People could witness the game from the comfort of their own homes at minimal cost. This also allowed for the sport to gain fans that it might not have had. Women and children who might not or could not have traveled to the stadium could now follow their team from home.

       Then mid way through the century the television arrived and with it American Football. Football was able to excite sports fans with intense action they could watch from home. The television became the perfect vessel to popularize football to the American masses. Football was a game that needed to be watched. It existed before the television became a house hold item but it wasn’t until then that the sport really blew up. While baseball continued to be called America’s past time and continued to be a popular sport. Football slowly became what it is today: the number one sport in the country.

            Finally at the end of the 20^th century came the Internet and with it a whole new world. It was 1997 when my family first had the Internet in our home. In the decade and a half since then, the world has become a different place. I am not sure that there is another time in history where the world has changed so much in such a short amount of time. In that time we have seen the sport of soccer finally gain a place among America’s most popular sports. Soccer did have a run in the 70’s with big stars being drawn by massive amounts of money but this did not last. It was the Internet that lured American fans to the sport. In 2005 you could very rarely find a game of soccer on TV. Sometimes ESPN would show Champions League matches or some of the world cup. Now every game of every major international tournament is shown on cable. NBC has bought the rights to the EPL in the states and has pledged to display every game. Back in 2005 if you wanted to watch soccer regularly, you had to find a grainy and blurry stream online that would almost always cut out right as someone scored! It has only been 8 years since. Now most MLS and EPL games are televised. Major League Soccer has 19 teams with 14 soccer specific stadiums. We have come along way since the league’s inception in 1996.
        Of course, this goes both ways! While the internet has been popularizing "the world's
sport" in the United States, it has been doing the same thing for American football in other parts of the world. The NFL has never been more popular in places like the United Kingdom than it is now. Games are being shown on television and the sport is developing a fan base. They are even staging games in London for the sports promotion abroad. This just shows again how much the internet and globalization has changed the way American culture interacts with the rest of the world. 

            The national team should get a lot of credit. There is nothing Americans like more than to cheer for the nation in a sporting competition regardless of the sport. However, the US men’s team’s performance in the 2002 world cup showed that an American team could be successful and began drawing attention to the sport. Once again though it is likely that the success national team saw was because of the spread of coaching and development philosophy spread more easily in a now much smaller world.

            Soccer became available to Americans via the Internet. Even though America never had the close proximity relationships with other nations as European nations did, the Internet allowed these cultural exchanges to occur any way. It is simple globalization. As more technology becomes available, the world becomes more connected and more culture is diffused into new places through out the world. The United States is now a top 20 team international, the MLS is drawing more and more stars and there is a soccer game on TV every day. It is safe to say that Soccer is now a force to be reckoned with and will only become bigger and more successful in the years to come.

This is a very short very rough draft of a longer paper that would include more research. Hopefully, sometime soon I will get around to finishing it. For now I would love to hear any feed back that is offered!