you're conflating 2 separate issues though

one is the german 50+1 member ownership rule

the other is the UEFA financial fair play stuff

what you're talking about changing the landscape of sports (chelsea, formula 1) is big money injections from businesses and investors. as it applies to german football that's covered the UEFA rules and it's not just a german issue. applies also to the prem, la liga, serie a, etc.

the german thing about 50+1 member ownership is different though. these are actual sports clubs, with recreational facilities, multisports teams, and people who go there to practice them--not just providers of spectacle.

e.g, bayer clubs: https://www.bayer.com/en/clubs-sport...bby-bayer.aspx

while wolfsburg or leverkusen have been derided for their close business ties, both are clubs that were founded by the factory workers a long time ago. this is why leverkusen can use the name "bayer" without running afoul of regulations.

the issue with RB as far as i can tell has to do with the purpose of the "club" is not to serve its members but to promote a brand. so it has limited membership and only in the face of external pressure has relented to add members which aren't controlled by the red bull company. so it's effectively a branch of the business, not just related to/founded by/any of that. and they do only the minimum required to keep within the rules--basically, exploiting loopholes.

but again, this is independent of UEFA financial regulations that oversee big money injections. this is about team ownership per german rules, which don't apply to, say, serie A, where clubs like ac. milan can be bought and sold by investors from berlusconi to chinese conglomerates, but still are subject to UEFA rules.

...

RB are doing something different and it evidently isn't illegal. If whatever they're doing becomes successful, I can see other teams trying to mimic them. But admittedly I am basing that on the far less hostile reaction to corporate ownership amongst fans here. Not that there's a team in the Prem that functions quite like RB but he culture around the Prem is far more cynical than may be the case in Germany. I'd say most fans here would embrace almost anything if they believed it'd bring real success.

yeah it's not illegal but i couldn't tell you what part is it. evidently i only have superficial knowledge of the issue.

i can see a team selling 49% of their soul to a sponsor though. i mean, dortmund's shares are traded in the frankfurt stock market... but they don't earn much.

the issue is though, teams have to show a profit & be financially sustainable, per UEFA rules, yes? they can't be a money pit. this is as far as i understand why investors don't/can't put more money into them, and if/when they do, but lose money, the regulators come crawling.

i think RB picked a team that was low enough to not be covered by the regulations... but now they are on the top leagues and thus covered.

anyway i really couldn't tell you what's the revenue model for that club. but if RB starts pumping euros into a financial zombie, or the "club" becomes overly dependent on that one sponsor, they may find themselves scrutinized by UEFA... but again i don't know how that works. that's the whole UEFA though.

the only steadily profitable club... on the planet, maybe, is bayern munich. they've now surpassed real madrid in net worth/equity/whatever you call that. oh yeah. zero debt. proper cash cow. but it's a club with over 1/4 million members... they had enough money to rescue dortmund actually like a decade ago.

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whoa, CL games tomorrow! PSG/barça, benfica/dortmund

i'll watch benfica/dortmund cuz yeah. will miss out on the megastars.

That's true but, to be fair, the UEFA regulations aren't much of an obstacle. Teams work around them all the time. If they stood for anything they'd have never allowed Man U to get into so much debt, but their owners just did some clever accounting and they're fine - see also PSG's infamous 'misc. income' column.

Really looking forward to Bayern v Arsenal

i just googled psg miscellaneous income and i'm having a good laugh with headlines alone

bayern/arsenal is wednesday and that i don't plan to miss

maybe i'll catch psg-barça on replay if the internet permits

UEFA responsible for regulating dodgy finances?

ha ha ha ha those gifs

yeah. i don't understand what uefa can/can't do in that front. have they ever suspended/disqualified any team from their competitions? ha ha ha

i'd better go do some work right now cuz the game is gonna be smack in the middle of my workday ha ha ha

They've banned teams from buying plyers during a transfer window but the teams usually work around it. Other than that it's fines, which to the teams affected is little more than a light tap on the wrist.

Personally, while it's not something I advocate in normal society, I think sport should be as close to a free market as possible.

i'm for a free market in general, but the challenge there is preventing the formation of cartels and monopolies.

e.g., keeping chelsea from owning every player on the planet. ha ha ha ha. or the emirates from owning every team!

looks like i'm gonna be on the PSG/barca game first, after all

anyone else on it?

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whoa, PSG! and draxler, wolfsburg misses you ha ha ha

damn... really good game so far

ho. lee. shit.

holy shit, dortmund!

benfica beat them 1-0 today after dortmund completely dominated the first half and missed like a trillion chances to score. benfica also played the offside very well though.

anyway some time early in the 2nd half benfica scores in a header from a corner and adios.

soon after that my transmission stopped. really. i couldn't load the fucking stream. it's like the gods didn't want me to witness.

count orlok must have gone bananas by the game's end with frustration.

one doesn't win games with "deserves"

Yeah, that would be one of my only issues. No person or company should be able to own or have a share in more than one club. Not sure how easy that'd be to regulate though.

Barca got literally deconstructed yesterday. It felt painful to watch that game and be a Barca fan. I haven't see Messi play so badly ever yet.

maybe with argentina? he's had some invisible games with them.

but speaking of argentina-- di maria! there was also a uruguayan contest there, & cavani won it gloriously.

this psg i had not seen in action before. the new sevilla coach looks like he knows how to win. and this team is a strong candidate to win it all. fantastic performance yesterday.

anyway, i share your pain a bit. as a dortmund fan, i'm glad i actually got interrupted from seeing aubameyang's missed penalty. he missed a lot of goals yesterday!

and not too confident about today's bayern/arsenal either. don't know what to expect. ancelotti's squad hasn't really been firing on all cilinders and mueller is going through a season-long slump. am i glad pep is gone? yes. do i like what ancelotti is doing? er... let me get back to you about that later.


according to libertarian object of worship murray rothbard, monopolies & cartels are not easily maintained without government support of said entities. i'm not sure i believe him but he's got a video lecture out there where he tries to make that case.

PSG played like from a different world. flawless performance. I think the coach finally found the right chemistry in this rich-as-fuck squadra. plus, Draxler is a beast.

It looked a bit like the Netherlands tearing apart Spain.
PSG are not leading the French league, which is quite new, and coach Unai E. has been under pressure ever since.
This game yesterday was fantastic, the goals beautifully built and taken.

draxler was great at schalke but too much for the team and then unhappy at
wolfsburg. great to see him get a chance at fully developing his talent.

and the new coach is the one that won all those europa cups with sevilla so he must know a thing or two


i felt like i was witnessing history-- which, yeah, i was.

there are yellow shirts everywhere

OH ROBBENNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ha ha hahah a YEAH

Yow!

VS.

holy huevos that alexis goal after the failed penalty

i'm conflicted.

on the one hand, i want bayern to steamroll arsenal

on the other hand, i can't complain that this is a boring game. i might end up with slightly wrecked nerves ha ha ha.

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yeah lewandowski! i saw it i saw it i saw it

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YASSSS!!! LEWANDOWSKI>> THIAGO!

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i hate these fox commentators all they talk about is arsenal and the prem. where is their bundesliga point poerson?

man the ref oh

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ah, this game is going my way after all. so far anyway.

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o man. that was great. that was fucking great.

that made my day. and the ramdeuter is back. how great was that. /

a psg-bayern final would be glorious

No kidding. Complete annihilation. This may mark the beginning of the end for Alexis in Arsenal — the team is never gonna win jack shit apart from the FA or League cups and everybody in Europe wants the guy.

Sanchez will go for sure. Wenger will never be sacked but surely his own pride will see him leave in the summer. And why the board are wasting an atom of energy trying to get Ozil to sign a new contract is beyond me. The guy's a joke.

sanchez to bayern! lolololol

My money's on Juventus, but can see Bayern getting Koscielny. They're looking at him and after Sanchez he might be Arsenal's only other real bit of quality.

Alexis right after Bayern's fifth goal:



Juventus seems to be the main club after him but the Serie A has been boring as turd for several seasons now — no real challenge for the Scudetto, both Milano teams are ass (!@#$%!, last year you mentioned how good Gary Medel is, and you're right, he's a beast; the reason he's not an international superstar —as much as defenders can be— is that Internazionale sucks donkeydongs), too many games put any living creature to sleep, and they don't win dick anyway: Last Champions League? Mourinho's Inter, 2010. Last UEFA Cup/Europa League? Parma 1999!

Bayern could be a nifty destination, but I don't know if they're prepared to shell out that kind of dough. He already was in Barcelona; I don't wanna see him play for Real fuckin' Madrid. The Manchester teams could snatch him, I guess, City in particular...

http://www.totalsportek.com/money/ri...ootball-clubs/

however, they claim they've surpassed real in some way, jsut read the other day... let me see if i can find it

medical insurance for Robben?

ha ha ha ha!

i think the bit of information i had was that back in 2014 or so bayern had higher revenues than real. this has changed lately, around 2016. makes sense as real has racked up the most recent european cups and pep did what pep does which is work for barcelona.

anyway, robben, was he great today or what? and he's 33! bayern sure knows how to take care of its players. ribéry was watching with his wife. he's the injured one right now, but got a contract extension.

robben was talking to his old pal chech after the game, not sure if you spotted them, looked very friendly. probably thanking his lucky stars having landed where he has.

eta: badstuber is the one you have to look at regarding treatments. i am amazed that they keep him around as he easily spends more time on the mend than playing.

http://www.transfermarkt.com/holger-.../spieler/54659

the guy is an injury champion. he wins all the medals for pain.

The goal was great but what was Coquelin doing backing off him like that? If there's one thing you don't do it's give him space and time to switch to his left foot when he's anywhere near shooting range. Not saying he could've stopped him if he had tried to close him down but to back off like that what just criminal defending. It's hardly like no one knows exactly what Robben does.

After Koscielny went off, Arsenal simply collapsed. Credit to Bayern on capitalising on it but Christ did Arsenal make it easy for them in the end. Did anyone even notice that Ozil was playing last night? Guaranteed when the going gets tough that fucker disappears. Mustafi? Coquelin? Gibbs? Iwobi?Awful. Had Ospina not made some great saves, the final score could've been edging towards double figures.

I'm not putting Bayern down, they were excellent, but anyone who's watched Arsenal with any regularity these past few years will tell you that's what they do: against strong opponents, under pressure they lose all focus and shape and basically just give up. And that has to be coming from Wenger. Well done to Bayern but in the 2nd half Arsenal were just a joke. There should've been a laughter track every time they tried to defend

Sanchez (and to a lesser degree Koscielny) has been carrying them for the past two seasons and I doubt if any Arsenal fan would blame him for going, and I can't see even the most loyal Wenger fans not now thinking his time is up.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to Ozil. He's stalling on signing a new contract when frankly, if I was on the Arsenal board, I'd be looking to offload him asap, while there's still a few people left out there who are buying into the hype. The definition of a luxury player. Great when everything's going to plan but guaranteed to disappear the moment they aren't. On the pitch, he, maybe more than anyone, embodies the problem with Arsenal.

people make mistakes. especially in fútbol. bayern just made fewer.

what i mean is-- i don't think it's really fair to say "why was robben allowed to use his left foot for a brief moment." i mean, that shit happens. bayern fans could blame xabi alonso for allowing alexis to score-- why did he let that ball etc. and ozil... i don't see him regularly but players have good and bad days. neuer had a couple of impossible and unusual fuckups, for example-- they're just not highlighted because bayern won. so his flaw is hidden but there were mistakes and low performances on both sides.

however i do think that wenger is problematic, yeah. i don't watch arsenal regularly, but i was told by the commentators that their lineup was their predictable usual shape, no adjustments for bayern of any kind.

the commentators were saying that with ospina in the goal, because he's shorter, it made it possible for bayern to shoot more crosses. and that's exactly what they did. they exploited the vulnerability. so that's a big difference between the coaches: stubborness v.s adaptation.

the other thing i noticed is that after arsenal started getting punked they changed nothing in the way they played. reminds me of fucking pep: if the system is failing, double down on it. and so it was 5-1 instead of 2-1 or 3-1 or 3-2, which would still have been a contest. but no. he insisted.

a comment from the talking heads that cheered me a lot was "the horse jumps as high as it needs to clear the hurdle" in reference to bayern.

because with pep we had gotten used to always XTREEM RECORD VICTORY AT ALL TIMES. but then they couldn't clear the final hurdle.

whereas with ancelotti, they do what they need to win their weekend games and just that. which keeps them fresh, prevents injuries, and surprises all enemies.

i was so happy to see bayern hitting arsenal with fast counters. that ability had almost disappeared under pep.

not saying that arsenal is a first-rate adversary (they aren't) but it was great to see bayern push the pedal to the metal when it counts. and mueller finally broke out of his slump.

i was nervous before this game but now i'm not so worried about the future rounds. i'm just keeping fingers crossed for an injury-free squad and the return to full form by douglas costa, who on the left wing can be satan incarnate but had no goals yesterday.

I highlighted that one moment with Coquelin cos it resulted in a goal but his positional play throughout the game was shocking, but then so was Gibbs's and Mustafi's. Whichever way you cut it, Arsenal's defending after Koscielny went off was just awful. It takes a very good side to punish them so heavily for that but I'm sure the Bayern players after the game couldn't believe the amount of space they were given and the general disarray in the Arsenal defence.

yeah. too much space. i get your point about coquelin.

now let's talk that ref.

that penalty!

no

the missed handballs!

no

just no.

Never mind about that, what about Barcelona v PSG. I never watched it but Enrique looks like a dead man walking after that.

Could be an interesting management reshuffle in the summer. Pochettino to Barcelona? Simeone to Arsenal? Klopp still at Liverpool?

Sampaoli or Koeman to Barcelona, apparently. Simeone to Arsenal would be the biggest 180º of the millenium.

sampaoli! the disciple gets the crown before the master? wow

psg vs. barcelona was amazing. i wanna watch it again.

i don't know what tactic luis enrique did or did not use, but they looked like the schoolchildren playing the masters in a monty python sketch.

then again their current coach knows barcelona very well.