Unfortunately, I think you have hit the nail on the head with this statement. Lots of us remember when this wasn't the case but with the advent of agents, tv, advertising etc, it's changed beyond recognition.
It's extremely difficult to see the the sport and the team you love embracing this extreme capitalist culture but this is the way in which the whole world is now traveling. Lewis. Levy, ENIC.....they're symptomatic of the current climate as are the owners of City, Chelsea and others. In order to get back to enjoying the beautiful game, I for one, have had to put aside my personal feelings and moral compass. Otherwise the whole footballing world would make me sick to my stomach. This crisis has put a microscope on the game and revealed the true nature of the business. However, again, in my personal opinion, Homo Sapiens are natures greatest evolutionary mistake and disregarding football and the present crisis, there won't be any civilisation or even a habitable planet in 50 years. Sad but inevitable.
Football clubs as businesses, do a shocking bad job of embracing capitalism. The overwhelming majority of them fail to make a profit. Unlike efficient capitalist companies, who put profit - and shareholder remuneration - above all else, football clubs rarely do. We have clubs in the EPL paying their staff over 100% of their revenue. Nearly half paying their staff more than 70%. Only 8 PL clubs made profit last year. Go into the championship and it's a mess of biblical proportions financially.
The only real explanation for this is that rather than embracing capitalist ideals, they can barely manage basic fucking housekeeping, which continually puts their "local club" and it's employees at risk. And here's the irony, the stupider a club is run, the less fiscally prudent, the more some fans cheer it. The better a club is run, the more it's owner/board are criticised.
And an even bigger irony is these same fans, who criticise Levy for refusing to risk the financial viability of Spurs, often tend to regard owners like Abramovic and the Sheikh's as pariah's despite the fact that they do exactly what they want Levy to do, they don't run their clubs for profit, far from it, they were prepared to invest their own money - not the banks - into their own clubs, for nothing more than the pursuit of footballing glory (even if their may be spurious cultural/politicalmotives for chasing that glory)
People talk as if football only exists in £60 a ticket, prawn sandwich format. The beautiful game is there, in it's naked, humble form, at a field near you, every weekend. Walk your dog and to the local park and you can watch it for nothing. Smell the vaseline, hear them cunt referees off (despite the poor buggers giving up their Sundays for fuck all so they can have a game). Or you could go to any of the numerous tiers of football and increase that payment from a fiver upwards.
You choose to watch PL football. It's like choosing to only eat Michelin Starred food and then complaining about how expensive it is.
