Giving up on football

As I stated in a previous post, what has really galled and repulsed me over the past year or so is not, on reflection, the Arsenal, so much as it is the current state of football itself. Again, I must reassert that I'm no nostalgic - I was there in the bad mid-70s, bad mid-80s and bad mid-90s. But something about the current culture of football, and the popular culture in which it is nested, is rotten; nay, even perhaps close to collapse.
Arsene himself said just a day or two ago that he thought that the era of the transfer fee was coming to an end. I would put it more bluntly. The era of the footballer's binding contract is coming to an end. Bosman inaugurated our current era of player mobility; the Webster ruling furthered it; and the unwillingness of FIFA and UEFA to impose its own rules about tampering with other clubs' players (epitomised by the foolish Platini, who inveighs against clubs with large debts or large overseas playing contingents yet endorses Cristiano Ronaldo's 'right' to leave Old Trafford, contract notwithstanding, and join Real Madrid) leaves the door open for a degree of player mobility that will erode any possibility of long-term team-building by less financially powerful teams and place even more securely in the hands of the wealthy a dominant position with regard to trophies and cash flows.
There seems to be a multi-tier ranking among European (i.e. world) football clubs. At the very top are AC Milan, Inter, Real Madrid and Barcelona, who cherry-pick the best available talent from other clubs not in this elite group, largely through means of agents, 'super-agents' and tame media outlets such as AS or Marca, by 'unsettling' players and then dealing with the clubs. Manchester United (as shown through the pursuit of Owen Hargreaves) and Chelsea (the Ashley Cole case) are on the periphery of this group. In the next tier are teams such as Arsenal, Liverpool, Bayern, Juve, Roma, Sevilla and Valencia perhaps, who are (in the main) Champions League qualifiers year-on-year with the financial muscle to attract high quality players. Below that, teams such as Ajax, Werder Bremen, Monaco, Villareal, Fiorentina, PSV. And so on in a vast pyramid. Each tier preys upon those below.
That is why I feel aggrieved at Adebayor's stupid, insensitive, greedy comments vis a vis a move to Milan or Barca, but also understand that it is what we did to PSG with Anelka, Marseille with Flamini, and so on.
Arsene has kept Arsenal at the bottom end of the European top table by a canny knack of spotting and developing players. The corollary of this, as with the above-mentioned Anelka and Flamini, is that these players come to the notice of teams in the tier above who offer a large transfer fee (or very large contract; or both) to secure that player for their own team. Arsenal have therefore to develop another to fill this gap, just as Ajax have done for 30 or 40 years. Ajax have been chronically prevented from keeping together groups of developed players because they have a reputation for producing excellent young talent; Arsenal now play like the great Ajax sides, produce players like the Ajax system, and are preyed upon like Ajax are. Indeed, one of the players we have been linked with as a possible Adebayor replacement is Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, the latest Ajax 'starlet'.
Like Ajax, Arsenal are particularly vulnerable to changes in player mobility because their continued success relies upon developing young talent, but they do not have the financial resources to ward off bigger sharks. In Ajax's case, this is because they play in the comparatively small Dutch league; in Arsenal's case, because they are still in a process of developing their capitalization and financial power (the building of the Emirates) and because they compete domestically against Manchester United and Chelsea who, for different reasons, have far greater economic power than Arsenal. Arsenal therefore struggle to win domestic (let alone European) trophies on a year-by-year basis, and, therefore, eventually to retain ambitious players.
For clubs like Arsenal, I think the near future looks potentially very worrying: maximised player mobility will mean a much higher turnover of playing staff year on year, resultant problems of team cohesion and maintenance of quality, and the spectre of turning into a 'feeder' for the elite teams. The same situation pertains now in the English lower leagues. There are few long-term contracts, and high turnovers of playing staff. While Arsenal might give Adebayor a five-year contract, after one successful season, it seems that contract has little effective force.
What's the alternative? I'm not sure. One alternative is to 'do a Bolton': accept the changing nature of the market and recruit older players whose market value will be less than rising stars, in the hopes that this will provide some kind of continuity. Another is simply to accept the situation, carry on, and hope to retain enough good and sensible young men (Fabregas, Clichy, Sagna) to win a trophy every two or three years. For this is the real problem: the bonds of player 'loyalty' to club are now pretty much dissolved, except among a few. For Adebayor (who has form on this: see his departure from Monaco) or Cristiano Ronaldo, it is their 'right' to demand ever-higher wages, and also to demand a transfer to a bigger club if these demands are not met. For them, a contract has no binding force; they blindingly, maddeningly perform their status as the football commodity, their labour power sold to the highest bidder.
It may not be 'football' as it has been, but it is late capitalism, in full effect.