Defends Jorge Valdano (Couples, Argentina, 1955), former player, coach and sporting director of Real Madrid, that soccer is a game that is infinite. He defends, with the memory, that during her childhood she had only one obsession: the ball. “I am convinced that my grandson will be unveiled with a t-shirt from your computer, because the fascination that produced the heroes already have more strength than the game itself. My grandson will not know that the instant you buy that t-shirt will go from supporter to customer to enable a business getting bigger”. It also defends the world champion with Argentina in the World cup of 1986 that a european League would be the end of many clubs, medium-sized and small, that football “is policy”, that “there is more money in circulation than talent,” that “the player is a man of business” and that the game “does not do repairs on the ethical issues”. Defends the ball wheel, incessantly, each time in more land, fields and countries. Also hits with more force. Only the Champions League generates nearly 2,100 million euros. In the background Valdano defends the arab proverb that goes: “The dogs bark, the caravan moves forward.”
Question. For the first time in history, the football teams of elite are profitable. Does this mean that it is reinventing football?
Response. The football industry is undergoing transformation but within a philosophy, the of the show. This sport lives with the bond of your audience. There was a time in which a club was as rich as the amount of tickets it could sell. It was when the partner had an economic power and this gave it also a kingly power over the institution. Now the challenge is to engage with the fans remote and convert them into customers. This strategy he started out with Manchester United and Real Madrid he quickly learned the lesson. We have spent two decades with tours throughout Asia and the united States. And this has forced the player, who is already a hero social, is to become a business man.
Q. The income arrive from abroad. China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. Geographies where there are significant democratic deficiencies. Do the football, you like it or not football, it’s politics?
A. The football has a symbolic force very strong. The writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán taught us that it is impossible not to read it also in political terms. It is not that this sport look for countries that have difficulties with the respect of human rights, what you are looking for are nations that are socio-economically strong. It is true, and this has shown the last Super cup [played in Saudi Arabia], that does not do repairs on ethical issues.
Q. The football have come in the private equity, the clubs-States, oligarchs and even businesses in the united states of baseball. Do these new players disrupt the game?
A. Is essential for regulation very clear of the UEFA and the FIFA. Without a doubt, Europe is a space of imperialism football. It is the continent that more raises, more money moves and where it circulates more talent, so there is much merit in what they do as Real Madrid and Barcelona, two clubs who live of what they are capable of producing.
Q. Are you in favor of a Super league for europe?
A. What now seems to us extravagant it will become normal in a very short time. It is something like when they changed the pre-season tour of the equipment. The first few times you were up traumatic because the bridges between the economic and sports are not always easy to tend to. But now it looks as something normal.
Q. how This Super league would be the end of the smaller clubs and their stadiums, one of the few places, incidentally, where they live, in a world of immense inequality, all social strata?
R . It is a dynamic time has been correcting little by little. When this started, the Real Union [Irun, Gipuzkoa), or the Arenas de Getxo [Bizkaia] were real powers in football, but were populations victims of their own size. The football is moved towards the provincial capitals, and now begins to be a problem of the large european capitals, that’s why it fantasizes about the possibility of creating a european League. And yes, the victims will be the small teams and the medium.
Q. what footballers and their agents dominate the football?
A. I have Not seen agents in the past few years have accumulated more power, those who have done so are the players. Are the great heroes of this game, as he once said Florentino [Perez, Real Madrid president]: “This is a business of heroes.” The players not only have that power, but who are aware of it. For a very simple reason: there is more money in circulation that talent.
