Kane’s rise spurs Tottenham’s top-four chase

The relegation zone: The Giovinco gamble and the future of MLS

As Europe’s top leagues enter the second halves of their respective seasons, Major League Soccer (MLS) opened preseason training camps last week, uncertain if they will even make it to the season. The collective bargaining agreement expired last Saturday and negotiations between the league and players’ union are seemingly at an impasse. The specter of a work stoppage looms large.
Despite this, the biggest stories going into camp have been the massive transfers of European stars to the U.S. Recent months have seen Frank Lampard, David Villa, Kaka, and Steven Gerrard all announce moves to the MLS. All are international superstars that bring exceptional talent to a league looking to fill a star power void left by Thierry Henry and Landon Donovan.
Toronto FC (TFC) stole the headlines though, landing the out-of-favor US Men’s National Team star Jozy Altidore from Sunderland and, even more shockingly, the diminutive Sebastian Giovinco from Italian champion Juventus. The Jozy deal was damn smart business and impressive in its own right. TFC shipped the unhappy Jermain Defoe back to England in exchange for Altidore, getting younger in the process and, by most reports, gaining a nice chunk of cash in the swap. Despite his struggles in England, Jozy had already excelled in the MLS and is one of the most recognizable faces for US Soccer, which is a great marketing opportunity when he hits the pitch next to his US national teammate Michael Bradley.
The real big fish though, somewhat ironically, is Seba Giovinco. At just 5’4,” but full of energy and with an incredible work rate, Gio lives up to the nickname “La Formica Atomica”—the Atomic Ant. He’s an incredibly creative talent with tremendous pace and versatility. That versatility will allow him to play anywhere from a second striker position behind Jozy to outside on the wing, to an attacking midfield position, all while creating space for Michael Bradley with his pace, dribbling and ability to take on defenders.
The Giovinco move is massive not just for the quality of player that he is, but also for how and when he decided to make the switch. While Gerrard, Lampard, and Kaka are all fantastic players in their own right, they are all on the wrong side of 30 and are well past their prime. Gio just turned 28 and still has his best years of football ahead of him. The MLS has improved by leaps and bounds over the past decade, but still needs to buck the “retirement league” moniker that, true or not, has dogged it in recent years. Snagging a player of Giovinco’s caliber at his age should help change that perception.
Perhaps just as importantly, he reportedly turned down offers from Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool, and numerous other flashy-name European clubs. Other players of his caliber have moved to MLS in the past, but none have done so in their prime and turned down the top clubs in the world simultaneously.
The Giovinco move could be the start of a seismic shift that puts the league at least in the same neighborhood as the top European leagues. Seba’s Italian National Team manager Antonio Conte certainly thinks so, stating about the move, “In a few years players will elbow each other to go there. [The MLS] will grow so much”.
Let’s not pretend that Giovinco is doing the MLS a favor, though. He’s still getting paid. A lot. His new deal will make him the highest-paid player in the MLS, and the highest-paid Italian player in the world by most accounts. Despite all the inroads made toward developing into a major league, the MLS still has to overpay its stars, as every large name recently has received a deal well above their market value, highlighting some of MLS’s major issues. The wage discrepancy in the MLS is stunning, with the big-name designated players making upwards of $6 million per year, while the MLS median salary hovers around $90,000. Younger players are forced into semi-guaranteed contracts, where they can be terminated without compensation by the clubs at almost any time, leaving many without safety net.
All of these issues are ever more salient as the league and players union try to hash out a new collective bargaining agreement to prevent a work stoppage. Free agency remains the sticking point for the union, as the MLS still bizarrely operates without a free agency system, but issues like increased league minimum salary and salary cap, and guaranteed contracts remain at the forefront of their disagreements.
It’s hard to believe the owners when they cry poor after doling out massive contracts like so many of them did this offseason, and it seems the players agree. With no real progress made in the negotiations, all signs point to a work stoppage, which would cripple the post-World Cup wave of momentum the MLS garnered at the end of last season. World soccer is a competitive marketplace for attention and money, and it remains to be seen if the MLS can afford to lose ground while mired in a labor dispute. In the players’ minds though, they might not be able to afford not to.

The relegation zone: The downward spiral of once-proud Parma

After a 10-minute hearing in Italian court last week, Parma F.C., with it’s outstanding debt estimated at nearly 200 million euros, was declared bankrupt. This means that for all intents and purposes, the club is dead. Long live Parma.
For a club that collected four European trophies and four additional Italian trophies in the late 1990s and early 2000s while swashbuckling around the pitch in its blue and yellow striped kits emblazoned with the logo of dairy giant and club benefactor Parmalat, the fall from grace has been swift.
I'm left with this question: How could a comfortable member of European football’s middle class burn through three different owners in the past six months and ultimately end up in bankruptcy court?
The Parma story starts with Parmalat, which bankrolled the team through its glory days. On the back of the vast dairy money, Parma seemed secure as a member of the Italian top flight, with aspirations to challenge traditional Serie A giants like Juventus. When Parmalat imploded during a massive financial fraud scandal in 2004, Parma was declared insolvent before being bought by Tommaso Ghiradi.
Under Ghiradi, Parma found mixed success on the pitch, but qualified for European competition as recently as last season with a sixth place league finish. While it was not claiming UEFA Cup titles, the club seemed to have stabilized after its financial struggles.
The first cracks in the façade appeared when UEFA kicked the club out of this season’s Europa League for an unpaid tax bill. Ghiradi chalked the issue up to a clerical mistake rather than underlying financial issues.
He proved to be a poor liar though, as the depths of the club’s financial struggles were revealed over the following months.
Players haven’t been paid since August and are now forced to do their own laundry and drive the team bus to matches. Meanwhile, the club has had to cancel home matches because it quite literally can’t keep the stadium lights on. The youth team can’t even afford water bottles.
In December, Ghiradi sold the team for a single euro, passing on its debts to a Cypriot-Russian company, which promptly sold it—again for a euro—in February to Giampietro Manenti, a Milanese businessman. Manenti promised to pay off debts, including back wages for the players. His failure to do so, culminated in Parma’s day in court. Manenti was arrested on money laundering and embezzlement charges last week.
After the bankruptcy ruling, Parma looks doomed. The club has already received an emergency loan from the other clubs in Serie A in order to complete its season. Unless a financial backer steps forward to buy the team and pay off the massive debts, the club will dissolve at the season’s end, forced to start again under a new name in the lowest professional tier in Italy.
It’s hard to assess blame for Parma’s demise without laying the bulk ofit at Tommaso Ghiradi’s feet. When he bought the club before the 2006-2007 season, Parma’s gross debt was estimated at 16.1 million euros, a substantial amount, but relatively insignificant in comparison to debt at other football clubs. Under his watch, the debt ballooned to its current levels.
Since the Parmalat bankruptcy, the club has clearly spent beyond its means. By my count, it has over 150 players on its books, an absolutely massive amount, with most out on loan throughout Europe. For comparison, Chelsea, a club notorious for snapping up young talents then sending them out on loan, has about 50 players on its books.
The problem though is also an institutional squeezing of the football middle class, especially in leagues like Serie A and Spain’s La Liga. The biggest problem is the massively inequitable split in TV revenues in those leagues, with the vast majority of the money going to a few titans like Real Madrid, Juventus and Barcelona. This stands in stark comparison to the relatively even split in the Premier League. Clubs from smaller areas face other issues as well.
They can’t depend on large ticket revenues and therefore have to spend outside their means to challenge for titles.
Parma’s tale is a tragedy, but it’s not entirely uncommon, especially in Italy, where corruption and shoddy management seem inexplicably linked with football. Fiorentina and Napoli both underwent similar deaths in the early 2000s and have since returned to competitiveness in both the Serie A and Europe.
Outside of Italy, storied clubs like Glasgow Rangers, Leeds United and Portsmouth F.C have “died” and been resurrected, although they have yet to reach their prior heights. So while Parma certainly seems dead and gone now, there remains a sliver of hope for its future.

The relegation zone

Kane’s rise spurs Tottenham’s top-four chase

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

February 20, 2015

Only one Premier League player has 20 goals across all competitions this season and his name isn’t Costa, Aguero or Sanchez. It is Tottenham’s Harry Kane. He plays with a certain unbridled energy reminiscent of a golden retriever, gleefully chasing after the ball in manager Mauricio Pochettino’s high-pressure game plan.

Kane’s rise from near obscurity to the most in-form striker in England has Spurs in the thick of the muddled race for the top four and a Champions League berth.

Born in North London, Kane spent a year in the Arsenal youth academy, before finding his way to the Gunners’ archrivals Spurs. He developed in their youth system before bouncing around on loan to various clubs in the English football league system. Cracking into the Tottenham first team last season with three Premier League goals, he’s roared onto the scene in recent months.

Making his name early in the Europa League, Kane seized his Premier League opportunities and impressed, setting up Eric Dier’s winner on opening day, stealing points with a last gasp winner against Aston Villa, and sparking Spurs’ rally with an equalizer against Hull. His New Year’s Day match against league leaders Chelsea served as a true coming out party.

Kane terrorized the Cahill-Terry central defense pairing, scoring two goals, assisting on another, and drawing a penalty, willing Spurs to a 5-3 win at White Hart Lane. This inspired performance, in which Kane grabbed the game by the scruff and manhandled the best defensive unit in England, was the apex of his dazzling run of form, and also helped Tottenham’s creep back into contention for the Champions League places.

Kane has found the most scintillating vein of form in England, banging home six goals in Spurs’ last five Premier League matches and 23 across all competitions, while writing himself into club lore by vanquishing Arsenal with two goals in the North London derby. This season, he’s put together all the various tools showcased during his loan spells and is scoring goals at a dizzying pace.

All the ridiculous talk about building the English National Team squad around him aside, Kane has developed a remarkably complete game. He’s perfectly suited to Pochettino’s system, playing with an impressive workrate and tracking back to defend, while still occupying a traditional center forward role. His hold up play has created space and an outlet for the midfield, and his directness and finishing provide a nice foil for the creative talents of Christian Eriksen and Erik Lamela.

Kane and Eriksen have resurrected Spurs’ season, with the two stealing the squad a league best 12 points in the 88th minute or later this season—enough to put them in sixth place with 13 matches left, three points outside the top four. The North London derby victory has complicated the race for those Champions League spots, with five teams vying for the third and fourth place spots behind Chelsea and Manchester City.

Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham all have solid chances of latching onto one of the remaining top-four spots. Liverpool is starting to look like last season’s team that was one Steven Gerrard slip away from the title. With star striker Daniel Sturridge healthy again, Liverpool will have no problem scoring, but will play a number of tough fixtures down the stretch that may prevent them from reaching the Champions League for a second consecutive year.

The North London derby proved a massive missed opportunity for Arsenal to put distance between them and Spurs. But they are rounding into form, turning in brilliant performances recently against Manchester City and Aston Villa. Their match against Manchester United at Old Trafford on the penultimate matchday of the season may prove vital if they cannot distance themselves against weaker opposition in the coming weeks.

Current top-four teams Southampton and Manchester United are smart money picks to drop out of the Champions League race. A feel-good story all season, the Southampton bandwagon is running on fumes. Ronald Koeman’s team is struggling to break down defenses, with just one goal in its past three matches. The Southhampton defense is still the stoutest in the Premier League, but its tough to see them sticking around much longer without an offensive spark.
Manchester United, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent this summer on transfer fees, has a comical lack of depth in midfield with their best attacker, Wayne Rooney, often forced to play as a deep central midfielder. Their lack of depth will force them out of the top four, as they complete the season with the toughest run of fixtures out of any of their rivals.
Tottenham sit just three points off fourth place, with important matches left at Southampton and United. The supporters at White Hart Lane cheered during recent matches, “Harry Kane, he’s one of our own; he’s one of our own, Harry Kane”. If he can continue his marvelous goal-scoring run and drag Tottenham into the top-four, the Spurs faithful may well crown him King Kane.

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