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Football is big business. It’s a mega business involving club owners, agents and players. And the money involved is in billions of dollars.
In other climes, football runs itself making a lot of money for those involved. But here, either we don’t appreciate the money spinning nature of football or we are just not capable of running it the right way. Most football clubs in Nigeria are funded by government.
Many footballers lose weight on the field without food in their stomachs. Just like in the larger society, footballers don’t get paid as and when due. When you see how it is done elsewhere you weep for our country.
Recently, I was in Madrid, Spain so I decided to visit the Santiago Bernabeu, the iconic stadium of Real Madrid football club. Let me make a disclaimer here; I’m not a Real Madrid fan. I support Barcelona FC in Spain but I’m a fan of Arsenal FC of England. Did I hear you say, that useless club? I agree. Arsenal has been a pain in you-know-where, and our problem is the manager, Arsene Wenger. I’m yet to see a manager without ambition like Wenger. He is yet to win the league in the last 12 years yet he mouths with glee the fact that he qualifies the club for the league every year.
Arsenal could have won the league in recent years but for Wenger. The man is so rigid when it comes to the makeup of the team and he thinks he knows best. Most fans and analysts alike agree that what Arsenal needed to do to win the league was to strengthen the spine of the team. The club needs a world class defender, holding midfielder and a world class striker. These additions would have made the difference. Yet Wenger is adamant. He chose to do it his way which had not worked. He had only won two F.A Cup trophies in 12 years.
To make matters worse, we have a board that cannot help the situation. About three members of our board are very old men of yesteryears.
They are not in tune with the modern trend in the game. Stan Kronke, the majority owner on the board is not a football person. He hardly comes to the stadium. He prefers to stay put in his US base. Without any knowledgeable person on the board, Wenger is allowed to do as he pleases. The bottom line for the club is profit. Provided Arsenal play champions league football and the balance sheet is healthy, Wenger can do no wrong. Little wonder, Arsenal has the highest cash reserves in bank than any other club in the world. For fans who pay the highest ticket to enter any stadium in the world, that is not enough and the experience is very frustrating.
But I digress. As I was saying, I visited the iconic Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, home of Real Madrid during my last trip to Madrid, Spain. I was impressed. And I wept literarily for Nigeria. There, I remembered the shame of a nation in our two national stadiums in Lagos and Abuja. The National Stadium, Lagos that has hosted many sporting events in the past has been abandoned for years. It is now home to prostitutes and other undesirable elements. Such is the decay in that place that you would wonder why a nation would build such an edifice and allowed it to rot away. It is simply incredible.
Typical of the way we are, another National Stadium was built in Abuja. Initially, the maintenance contract was given to Julius Berger and things went well for a while. But like its Lagos counterpart, the National Stadium, Abuja has since been abandoned. And it is rotting away as I write. Pray, what is wrong with us? Why can’t we maintain a structure like a stadium? I think the problem with our sports, not only football, is politics. It has a lot to do with how the minister of sports is appointed.
Instead of appointing technocrats like it was when NSC was first created, government now uses sports to compensate politicians who knew little or nothing about sports. Instead of realizing the importance of sports and its power to unite the country and engage the youths, government just zones the sports ministry to a particular geographical zone and picks a politician from such zone.
The man so picked comes into the ministry without knowing what to do. So instead of acting as minister of sports, the man becomes minister of football. At the end of the day, nothing is achieved. What I saw at Santiago Bernabeu made me cry for this country. We are talking of a stadium built and run by a club. That is not even the only club in Madrid not to talk of Spain. And yet there is nothing compared to that stadium in a football-crazy country like Nigeria.
As a visitor to Real Madrid Stadium, you pay about N10, 000 just to tour the stadium. And the queue is always long. On hand to guide you on the tour are full compliments of guards and guides. And as you move through the stadium you are reminded about the enormous success of Real Madrid that made them the number one brand in the world of football. As you move along, you see documented evidence of the club’s success since the 30s. How the club evolved, the boot, jersey and other paraphernalia of those eras-30s, 40s, 50s, 60s till date. You see iconic stars that made Real Madrid tick over the years complete with audio. And a special place is reserved for Santiago Bernabeu, the club president that started the remarkable success that Real Madrid has become. It is a complete museum of facts, history and culture of the club.
The tour does not end there. You are allowed to enter the stadium and soak up the atmosphere. You enter the State Box and see how the owners of the club and their friends are pampered on match days. You also enter the dressing rooms of both the home and away teams and have a feel of hour the teams are prepared for the battle on match days. But perhaps the most exciting is the opportunity to sit in the dugout and play the role of a manager for some time. All these experiences would make you want to come back. And they put in place so many creative ways of generating money during the tour apart from the gate fee.
In the course of the tour, you are asked if you want to snap pictures with your favourite stars. If you are interested; that is done complete with wearing a Real Madrid shirt. And at the end of the tour you pay another N8, 000 for the picture. Not only that, the last place you visit before exiting the stadium is the well-put together Adidas Shop. The temptation to buy is quite high.
This is a club that knows that football is big business and they put structures in place to achieve that. In Nigeria, we don’t have records. We don’t celebrate our heroes who made us proud in the past. We don’t even maintain what we have not to talk of generating money with our assets. To move forward, we need to change our marketing template. Government should just provide enabling environment and allow the private sector to drive our sports.
For example, government can enact a law mandating every corporate body to contribute a percentage of their profit annually for sports development. This would go a long way in developing our sports especially football. There is a lot to learn from Real Madrid football club.
But there is something that is not in doubt; though I’m a gunner, truly, Real Madrid is the best club in the world!
