The star players without commitments with contracts, the new managers, the young football fans who do not watch matches and the landmark year.
If one spends 1,5 hours watching a football match of the 90's or 80's, one will realize how different it is from today. How much has changed. Some will say for the better, others for the worse. On the one hand, the argument will be that it has become faster, more organized, more athletic or even more glamorous.
On the other hand, the arguments would be that it was more technical, more spontaneous, more masculine, perhaps purer. Either way, the assumption is common. Football has changed competitively, as it has changed business and as it will change, at all levels, in the coming years.
Is it a change that should scare? Time will tell, although the truth is that change eventually gets used. If the struggle that one will sit down to see from the 90's is hers Barcelona, will find that the Camp Nou is still crowded today, but the feeling it brings out is completely different. There are not the tens of thousands of angry Catalans on the stands, but the tens of thousands of fans.
If the match that one will see from the 80's is Juventus, he will probably be shocked realizing how much the air of the team has changed and consequently the club today, how much the badge or the jersey has changed. The reference to these two teams was not accidental, as they are the teams that have in their ranks, the two stars that changed the football industry.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are the two best footballers of our time, but also the two biggest "businesses" of football. In the years of their own battle, Barcelona and Real Madrid became the dominant forces -apart from the match- on social media and now the Portuguese has brought Juve to 3rd place on Instagram followers, turning it into a real force on social media as a whole. , behind the two Spanish.
Their enormous dynamics are reflected in the trade agreements signed by their teams, changing their financial status and position in the current power game of football. Messi and Ronaldo, however, will not exist forever, so it is necessary to have the next stars. And there will be.
Speaking to Bleacher Report, its revenue chief JuventusGiorgio Ritchie said that "football will change completely in the next 4-5 years" and added: "The new generations of fans are not interested in whole live broadcasts, but in highlights and behind-the-scenes images." If you think about it, it's probably shocking: Young football fans do not want to watch football. They prefer the best phases, they prefer the images from the locker rooms, where they can see the footballers, that is, their idols, off the field. At the same time, however, it makes sense, since footballers are now stars and in the coming years they will become even bigger, even stronger, probably even richer.
"In my 40 years in the field, I have seen all the transformations of this industry. From sponsors to television rights, from the financial invasion of entrepreneurs to the present day. At a time when transfers have completely buried romance, the flags that once were the personification of the team spirit and gave them an identity, no longer exist. The top-level of football is becoming more and more entertainment. The best footballers will become, more and more, like the stars of show business and will have temporary jobs, like actors, almost without any commitment with a contract. We may not want it, but the world economy is pushing us in that direction ", said in August 2017 Bebe Marotta, then general manager of Juventus and now Inter.
The thought of footballers temporarily signing into teams, such as a star actor with a film company, seems scary. Just like the amounts their managers get. According to FIFA, in 2019 the players' agendas received a total of 564 million dollars as commissions, legal, from the transfers. The amount, to understand the speed with which things change, is four times higher than in 2015.
The data alerted the world federation, which announced its plan to reduce managers' commissions. What was the reaction? For the first time Jorge Mendes and Mino Raiola, the two strongest players' representatives, sat at the same table with the immediately stronger ones, discussing how to defend what they have today.
"None of the FIFA he never came to my office to talk to me. If you ask the players, they will tell you that they are in favor of the managers. There are never any complaints from players about the amount the manager gets. "We will try until the last minute to solve the problem, but I assure you that if necessary we will go to all the courts of the world," he said. Rayola giving the stigma.
After all, as well as the clubs know where things are going and what changes will take place in the football industry, so do the managers, who are essential to the star players. Those who are already like that, but also those who will become, with Giorgio Rizzi adding that one of the areas in which the clubs will focus in the coming years, having already started to do so, is in the promotion of the players' social media accounts. media.
Projection is necessary to turn a player into a star. The star needs a strong manager. Friendship with the strong manager is essential for the club, just as a strong club is essential for the manager. What is not necessary for the above, are FIFA and UEFA or at least their power.
Changes to Champions League is a result of the pressure of the clubs, that is ACE (Association of European Football Clubs). Opposition to the Club World Cup is another move to challenge the current order. All these are preparations for the changes that will be attempted to be made in 2024, a milestone year for football, since then the FIFA calendar will have to be rewritten. Dates for national teams, tournaments, everything.
Coincidentally, it is in four years, when everything in football will start to change, as the head of Juventus' revenue said. And will we be led to a football where the players will be stronger and stronger, the contracts more and more weak for the teams, while the football fans will want to watch less and less a 90 minute match? Maybe. And so it happens, after all, we will get used to it in the end…