Whatever happened to hometown heroes?
After the summer transfer window in Europe, Gaby McKay wonders if Financial Fair Play rules are taking something special away from the game.
While a splashy and exciting signing will always get fans fired up, there’s something even more special about the local kid done good.
Think of Daniele De Rossi and Francesco Totti at Roma, Xavi and Andres Iniesta at Barcelona, Manchester United’s ‘Class of ‘92’ or Lukas Podolski in various spells at FC Koln – these are some of the most revered players in the history of their clubs, their connection to their hometown and boyhood clubs linking them with the fans in the stands in a way no big money purchase could ever hope to match. Think back also to Alan Shearer, who in 1996 turned down Manchester United and Real Madrid in favour of his beloved Newcastle United. His goals couldn’t bring a single trophy to the Magpies, yet his statue will stand outside St James’ Park forevermore.
Of course, if you’re playing at the very top level it’s never going to be realistic to pack your squad with local boys and youth team products – the chances of that many world class players coming from such a small geographical area, or one academy, are just too slim. Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona were an exception, as were the Class of ’92 and Celtic’s 1967 European Cup winning side which famously featured a squad born within 30 miles of their Parkhead home. But in general, at the elite level, the hometown hero is a rare thing. With that in mind, we turn to one of the unintended consequences of various Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. This summer saw Emile Smith Rowe, an Arsenal fan favourite who joined their academy aged 10 shipped off to Fulham. Conor Gallagher, who grew up 10 minutes from Chelsea’s training ground and joined the club aged eight was told in no uncertain terms to accept a transfer or be frozen out, eventually moving to Atletico Madrid. The midfielder captained the side last season, while Smith Rowe has made over 100 appearances for the Gunners and is still just 24. So…what gives?
To explain this phenomenon, we need to look at the way football clubs book transfers on their accounts. When a player is signed they become, in effect, an asset and the transfer fee is broken down over the length of their contract in a process known as amortisation. What this means is that their notional value as a financial asset depreciates over the life of the contract – if Club X signs a player for £10m on a four-year deal, their book value will decrease by £2.5m over the length of that deal.
However, when selling a player the transfer fee is booked immediately and anything above their book value is pure profit. For a youth product there was no initial transfer outlay involved in signing them, so whatever you bring in can go straight on the books as profit and help with Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), FFP or whatever it may be. To take the previous example, if Club X signed that hypothetical £10m player at the same time as selling one of their academy players for £10m they’d book a £7.5m profit across those two deals – the £10m fee minus the £2.5m for their new signing’s first year.
Basically Smith-Rowe, Gallagher, or any other youth team product is a quick-fix for compliance, meaning they’ll always be first on the chopping block when time comes to sell players. This summer, two clubs thought to be in peril of falling short of UEFA’s FFP laws and the Premier League’s own version were Aston Villa and Chelsea. With clubs’ accounting periods running from July 1 to June 30 there’s a hard deadline to make sure you’re compliant. On June 28, Chelsea sold academy product Ian Maatsen to Villa for a reported £37.5m. The following day Omari Kellyman moved the other way for £19m. Both signed six-year deals, though thanks to a change in Premier League rules their fees can only be amortised over five. However, the deal would allow Villa to book a profit of £11.5m and Chelsea £33.7m.
All of the above is perfectly legal, and indeed standard accounting practice, even if Maatsen and Kellyman can boast one Premier League start between them. While neither would qualify as being a ‘hometown hero’, the horse trading is indicative of the way big clubs are coming to view their academy players – not as talents to nurture for the future, but as ready ways of making a quick bit of cash. No-one’s comparing Smith Rowe to Totti or Gallagher to Iniesta, but it’s another development taking clubs away from their local communities.
Even Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca finds the situation less than ideal. “This is not Chelsea’s problem, these are the rules,” he said. “All the clubs at this moment are compelled to sell players from the academy because of the rules. It’s all of the Premier League clubs’ problems. “It’s a shame because in Italy, we have Totti with Roma, 20 years with the same club – one club man. We love that in football, the fans want to see that. But with the rules now it is different than the past.” All this suggests that the current version of the rules, despite their good intentions, need a little revising.
