Flop art fuels football compensation culture

In football’s parallel universe, it pays to fail. Manchester United celebrated an 11th English Premier League title at the weekend – as well as eyeing a potential third European crown under Sir Alex Ferguson – which was achieved on a 2008 wage bill of 121 million pounds ($185 mln).

By comparison, Chelsea, out of the title race in England and Europe, have spent 148 million pounds ($226 mln).

Up in England’s under-performing north-east, Newcastle United welcome 50,000 fans to a home game who deliver a million pounds ($1.4 mln) in gate receipts.

The club also receives tens of millions more in TV income and have also enjoyed a couple of lucrative, if brief forays into the Champions League.

Billionaire sports retailer Mike Ashley, who bought the club in 2007, paid off only part of a debt mountain estimated at around 150 million pounds including outstanding transfer payments.

But the club which lifted the last of its four league titles in 1927, and has won nothing for 40 years, has one of the biggest wage bills in the country.

Veteran striker Michael Owen earns a reported four million pounds a season and even derided ‘bad boy’ Joey Barton makes around three million.

Add ten managerial changes since Kevin Keegan first resigned in 1997 – and the compensation bill for his myriad – and trophyless – successors has rocketed.

Even in the two years since Ashley took charge, compensation payouts have topped 15 million pounds – including a reported 1.5 million for unlamented executive director (football) Dennis Wise, whose original appointment came following a similar payout to his former side Leeds.

“There are no plans to appoint a replacement in this role,” Newcastle announced, prompting the London Times to note wryly: “That was a couple of million quid (pounds) in salary well spent then.”

Add to that more than 20 million on signing disparate and largely second rate players and it is hard to identify the club’s business plan – particularly considering Newcastle sold two of their best players, Shay Given and James Milner, on the way to potential relegation which would risking lost income of around 50 million pounds.

On the plus side, another million for coach Alan Shearer’s touchline services for eight games will prove money well spent if the ultimate gamble pays off with survival by the skin of Geordie teeth on Sunday.

If diehard Newcastle fans have been crying in their beer all season failure doesn’t have to leave a bitter taste.

Ask Sven-Goran Eriksson, sacked as Mexico coach after poor World Cup qualifying form.

The suave Swede’s reward?

A third massive payoff in three years, coming after his jettisoning as England coach after the 2006 World Cup fisaco in Germany which netted him a reported three million pounds – (he was originally in line for six) – and then another reported million following his one-year tenure with Manchester City.

Beyond football, England may ponder the value of a truncated early summer cricket Test series against a West Indies side whose board demanded a reported 1.4 million dollars rather than the usual 250,000.

That was on the basis that the series was set up at short notice with players recalled early from the money-spinning Indian Premier League.

Given the West Indies’ abject showing Lords and Chester Le Street, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) might feel the money could have been better spent.

But in these credit-crunched days some glimmers of light have appeared, not least the impending arrival of a financially streamlined version of Formula One despite myriad team howls of protest.

Back in the rarified world of football, Louis van Gaal earned a move to Bayern Munich by guiding AZ Alkmaar to the Dutch league title on an annual budget of just 20 million euros, the sixth lowest in the top flight.

As cutting one’s sporting coat according to one’s cloth becomes de rigueur amid the global downturn, maybe there’s hope even for Newcastle.