Tuğrul AKŞAR/

Indeed football is seriously ill today.  It has a lot of problems such as financial, economical and managerial  problems etc. Football has been effected by all of these problems for years. At the same time there are interactions between them. Namely they are continuosly effecting each other.

  Many football clubs which don’t have enough money to pay for their operational costs have gone bankrupt. Because they weren't  able to make money from their activities. At the same time they couldn't pay players salaries because of dramatic salary increases. In this cases rich inventors came in and  begun to buy these clubs.

There is a lot of unfair competition between football clubs. The competitive balance which was set up between the clubs was not sufficient and in fact resulted in a lack of competition.

Many of these problems of the clubs result from industrial football today. Industrial football is the highest level of football. It means football has become reached commercialised and has created a new economy of its own. In other words football is being played as a business today. Nowadays a global brand and sporting success in industrial football is required first and then it is hoped that  financial success will follow.

At the present time football is watched by millions of people all over the world and many have to pay money to watch on line in real time. For example, Premier League matches are broadcast every week in 174 different countries and are watched by 470 million people at the weekend. It means, football has been transformed into show business nowadays and has changed the football clubs in the world.

Football created big money when it was transformed into showbusiness. Leading football clubs have become sport business. Therefore football clubs have reorganised themselves  economic units.. In this way  some  football clubs have become very popular and very rich all over the world and they have reached huge budgets during this period. They have some  advantages when compared with other clubs which weren’t able to provide extra benefits for themselves. As a result, very important gaps have occured between these football clubs.

Although football has  become a very popular game, in fact it has a very important and different  function. So football's problems have nothing to do with its popularity, which is on the rise.

Many of football's problems could be fixed by better marketing and old-fashioned financial discipline. Managers, generally ex-players, lack basic business expertise. Teams fail to fully exploit merchandising or sponsorship opportunities. There are ways to make money in professional football, but not many clubs are using them. 

The success of football clubs and their companies can depend on the two centimeters that determines whether  the ball went over the line or not.

As a result, If we want to answer the main question, yes, football can be saved from its serious illness. It is possibble to save it and we can provide a fair competition and we can solve its problems.

 This solution is  only possible with a intervention from side football. The clubs have to rearrange their cash flows; They have to control all their  expenses; they have to provide a balance between their incomes and expenditures. In brief,  all football club have to reorganise their financial, economical and administrative situations as soon as possible. In fact we tried to solve these problems with Kutlu MERİH who is from  The Research Centre of Football Economy (FESAM). Therefore we have been writing and debating  all of football problems with Kutlu MERİH for five years and we have published three books on this subject in this period. The first one was Industrial Football which was published in 2005 and the second one was Football Economy which was published in 2006 and the third and the last one was Football Management which was published in 2008 in Turkey  we have also published a lot of article about these problems on the web for the last years.

We hope that the football can be saved...it must be saved too. We believe that we have enough time to save it. Because it is too beautiful a game to lose.{jcomments on}

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