Without much fanfare, it has been a week of change for football. They’re small changes, changes that may have slipped under the radar for most, but changes none the less. And not just change for change sake, change for the better. A better word could be progress.
One thing that may make this progress seem so significant is that it has come at a time when progress is anything but the name of the game in Spain. Spanish football had seemed stuck in its bigoted ways when Barcelona’s Dani Alves was subjected to racist abuse by Villarreal fans on April 28th. And this fire was fanned further by the Spanish Football Federations decision to fine Villarreal a measly £9850.
If legendary hip-hop star 2Pac were to comment on the situation in Spain, he would probably suggest that he sees no changes. All he sees is racist faces. (Very few other football writers will use a 2Pac reference this week).
But this was thankfully an exception as the rest of football seemed to have at least one eye on the future. Spain’s intolerant, narrow-minded outlook was certainly not shared by French Ligue 2 side Clermont Foot who this week hired Helena Costa as their manager. Yes, Helena, a (gasp) woman!
It’s hard to fathom exactly how good a manager a woman would have to be to get a job like this, to make people sit up and look past her gender. Kudos to Clermont Foot who have clearly made their decision based on Costa’s CV and ignored making a decision that would have been considered the norm.
Costa now becomes the first female to manage in the top two divisions of any of Europe’s big five leagues. It is probably too soon to expect wholesale changes across Europe, but what would have seemed impossible last week has been done now. A step forward, a tiny hint of progress.
It was that feeling, the idea of something once seeming impossible now becoming reality, that UEFA also left us with this week.
We’d all heard about financial fair play, a way of loosening the grip that the money-men had on the collar of football. It all seemed like a nice idea, but nothing that we’d ever actually see implemented, let alone punished. However that day is now here.
Oil rich Manchester City will be going into next seasons Champions League, a competition that they have always struggled in anyway, at a sizeable disadvantage. City’s squad size will be restricted from the usual 25 to just 21 players for the competition. On top of that, City will be hit with a £50million fine.
The fine itself is interesting, it’s a huge fine in respect of UEFA’s usual sanctions, but not ground breaking. Giving a football club a monetary fine for breaking restrictions due to their vast wealth is tantamount to punishing Mo Farrah with the threat of making him do a two mile run. The punishment sort of plays into the hands of the criminal. But it’s the restriction of players that speak volumes. Because, if you’re like me, you never actually expected a punishment for this type of offence to be felt on the pitch.
It’s not a massive disadvantage, but it is a disadvantage make no doubt. And there are reportedly eight other clubs under investigation for breaching similar rules. With news sources in France claiming that Ligue 1 giants Paris Saint-Germain could face even tougher sanctions than City. We still seem a long way from having a team banned from a competition for breaching these financial fair play laws, but this is a step in the right direction. Progress, you could call it.
Progress too at Old Trafford where the old guard seemed to be paving the way for the new heroes of Manchester United. Cameos for Giggs and Vidić, coaching work from Scholes, Butt and Phil Neville, debuts for youngsters James Wilson and Tom Lawrence, and the cycle continues. It has been a torrid period for United and their fans, but it is now the time to see that they are ever evolving and could very well to continue to move forwards.
If boy-band 5ive (that’s five, in English) were to give United some advice and or encouragement, it would probably look a little like this. “Get on up, when you’re down, baby, take a good look around. I know it’s not much, but it’s ok, we’ll keep on movin’ on anyway”.
(Very few other football writers will reference 2Pac AND 5ive this week!).