In my post Germans are Engineers, Britons are Businessmen I dealt with the different mentalities of the two mentioned peoples and gave examples of typical behaviour and achievements (from the Industrial Revolution to the development of modern computers). For the upcoming start of the Premier League season, I would like to continue the comparison. Because, as Urs Siegentahler, long-time head scout of the German national football team already knew, football is a mirror of society. This special consists of two parts. In this post I will show that German engineering spirit and the British focus on business can also be found in the respective football cultures. In the second post I deal with the question of what lessons a crisis-ridden British society can learn from the success of the Premier League, but also what dangers come with a Premier League approach.
A small note: I will mainly refer to men's football in my analysis. Although women's football is attracting unprecedented attention with the current World Cup, it is unfortunately still far from being anchored in the centre of society as men's football has been for many decades. But let's start.
Football has changed enormously since it was invented almost 150 years ago. But none of the great innovations came from Germany. While my home country was considered the land of the libero, and today is the land of Gegenpressing, we did not invent these styles. The "free player" was actually developed in Italy. Pep Guardiola's FC Barcelona were the first to play modern Gegenpressing. The innovative power of German engineers lies in improving what already exists rather than in creating something new.
The lack of innovation has not harmed the success of the German FA’s team at big tournaments. 22 semi-final appearances and seven titles in 38 World and European Championships are (almost) unmatched (as of 2022). German national teams are considered tournament teams. Inconsistencies in the process are identified and improved. The short preparation-time before competitions is an advantage. Making the best out of the available opportunities in just a few weeks suits the German engineers.
The only problem with the German way of thinking is that we stick to the tried and tested until the competitors have left us behind. This is one of the reasons why die Mannschaft usually fails miserably when defending a title: the concept has become outdated and the players old. The team has been eliminated six times in group stage, four times as reigning champions.
The current long-lasting misery of the national team seems to me to be a reflection of German society, too: After years of success, it has somewhat disappeared. The tried and tested is annoying and has worn out, but there is a lack of motivation to develop or adopt new ideas. From Hamburg to Munich the country seems to be drowning in misery and Weltschmerz (While other countries would like to have our crises.) The federal government is led by a cheap, male copy of Angela Merkel, even though the country was Merkel-weary. After months of searching, Rudi Völler became sporting director of the men's team. Although Völler had just retired from football, after more than 40 years in the business....
But let's look at Great Britain (or rather England). The English invented football, like so many other modern achievements. Unlike the Industrial Revolution, however, they were unable to benefit from the head start – at least not at the World and European Championships. Firstly, because the tournaments were only established in 1930 and 1960, respectively. Secondly, because the team of the English FA did not take part in the competitions at the beginning.
All British Football Associations had left FIFA in 1928. The reason was FIFA's claim to sovereignty over all football matters. The British did not want an international organisation to dictate how their game was played. Or in the words of William Pickford, then vice-president of the English FA: "We have nothing against the FIFA, but our people here prefer to manage their own affairs their own way, and not be entangled in too many regulations." [1] If you replace FIFA with the EU, the sentence could have been said by a Brexiteer.
18 years later, the English FA rejoined FIFA. Its first World Cup appearance followed in Brazil in 1950. In the meantime, other nations had developed a rich football culture too, only this news had not reached England. Winning the title was almost expected. But the English team got kicked out in the preliminary round when they lost to Spain and the USA. The US team had been formed of semi-professional players who had only been able to train together once before they left for Brazil.
England's subsequent history at major tournaments is hardly more successful. The motherland of football has reached just four semi-finals and only at the World Cup at home did the national team triumph, with the help of two irregular goals in the final (this might just be a German point of view ;) ). Most of the time, English teams lack the nerve to work on their own weaknesses. Often these are not even noticed. Because the players were blinded by the English marketing or their arrogance. The British are always better than other peoples, are they not? Historically, English teams often turned out to be the opposite of a tournament team.
While the national idiosyncrasies in association football are more to the advantage of the Germans than the English, the opposite is true in club football. German clubs should have dominated European competitions in recent decades, if only because of the economic strength of the country.
But the Germans are a conservative people. The lagging-behind-in-tactics is more noticeable. And when it comes to professionalisation, German clubs are rarely among the avantgarde. For example, a national league was not introduced in (West) Germany until 1963. In Italy, Spain and France, national leagues already existed at the beginning of the 1930s, in England since 1888. Professional players have been around in most European countries since the first decades of the 20th century. Even in the first years of the German Bundesliga players were still amateurs.
Today, German clubs are struggling not to lose economic ground to their European competitors. A statement that applies to both men's and the emerging women's football.
The lagging behind at club level results in a lack of trophies. Bundesliga teams have won 19 major titles on the European level (as of 2023), no comparison to Italy (29), England (33) and Spain (40).
English club football reflects the development of British society. Since the 1980s, there has been innovation, especially in the areas of finance and marketing. In 1992, the English Premier League (EPL) was established. The clubs, who were more interested in tapping new sources of money than the English FA, now administered the league themselves.
Today, the EPL is considered by far the highest-earning (and best!) football league in the world. To illustrate the league's success, I first look at the last years before the Covid 19 pandemic. Not that anyone is suggesting the league only benefited from the turbulences of the Corona years.
In 2018/19, the Premier League’s revenue was €5.9bn excluding transfer revenue, with La Liga (Spain) and the Bundesliga far behind at €3.4bn and €3.3bn, respectively [2]. Nine English clubs were among the world's top 20 in terms of revenue, compared to two from Germany.
The English league benefited from the higher willingness to pay for its "product" in the domestic market. The EPL clubs received about €1.8 billion (£1.59 billion [3]) from national TV companies, while Bundesliga clubs had to make do with about €1.15 billion. Another 20 per cent had to be ceded to the second league. And I can say from my own experience, the ticket prices are also much higher in England.
Moreover, no other league is as popular internationally as the Premier League. As a result, it makes more money with foreign TV rights than any other football league. While the Bundesliga could only generate just under €250 million before the Corona crisis, the Premier League distributed around €1 billion to its clubs in 2018/19 (£863.7 million [3]).
In order to increase revenue the league has not only heavily fragmented the match-day schedule but also some TV- and streaming-providers are allowed to select the games for a specific time slot. As a result, attractive match-ups are often scheduled at Saturday 12:30pm, when it is prime time in East Asia. Never mind that the time-slot is much too early for Britons and increases the risk of injury for players of top teams, because regeneration time after European Cup matches is reduced.
Financially, the English Premier League has established itself as the best football league in the world. However, in international competitions the expected success did not materialise for a long time. In the first 20 years of the new millennium, English clubs were able to win eight Champions League and Europa League titles, enough for a good second place in a country comparison. But the gap to the number one is huge. Spanish clubs won 19 titles. German clubs are in third place with 3 titles, along with clubs from Italy and Portugal.
However, in the last years the number of triumphs increased. From 2017 to 2019, EPL clubs won three titles. It's just that one can hardly call these clubs English anymore. The EPL has the highest proportion of foreign players among the top leagues. It was 71.0 per cent for the 2018/19 season [4]. In the Bundesliga it was 56.6 [5]. The situation was similar for coaches and club owners: at the start of the 2019/20 season, 11 out of 20 coaches were foreigners and a majority-British ownership was true for only eight clubs (as far as I could find out since ownership is not always clearly shown). The rest were controlled by non-UK individuals, conglomerates or even state-controlled organisations, ranging from the USA, Russia, China, Italy, Thailand or the United Arab Emirates. The ruling family of Abu Dhabi de facto controls Manchester City.
The advertising space on the players' chests was almost entirely without British contribution. Only one UK-based company was represented for the 2019/20 season (Standard Chartered at Liverpool FC). Some of the remainder were so international that most British fans would not even know them. The jerseys of Burnley, Southampton or Crystal Palace had large Chinese characters on the chest. The company names in tiny Latin letters underneath were quickly overlooked.
At the top of the league, internationalisation is particularly advanced. Of the Big Six clubs from Manchester, Liverpool and London, only one was owned by British citizens (Tottenham) and only one coach was English - who was then sacked the following year (Chelsea). In general, good home-grown coaches seem to be in short supply. Since the EPL was established in 1992, no English coach has won the championship (Sir Alex Ferguson is Scottish).
At the end of the 2018/19 season, when all finalists in the Champions League and Europa League were Premier League Clubs, only one ownership was British. In the starting line-ups, just 18 per cent of the players were from England. None of the coaches were from the island. And the goals were scored by players from Belgium, Spain, France, Nigeria and Egypt.
The pandemic accelerated these developments. Especially financially, the league has widened the gap between itself and its competitors. But it also became more successful on the pitch and more international. Annual TV marketing revenues increased by over one billion pounds, with those from the international market exceeding the domestic market for the first time [6]. The Bundesliga, on the other hand, is taking in less in the current exploitation period than it did before Covid [7], and word in the press is that an increase in the next round is unlikely.
In 2021-23, four of the six Champions League finalists where Premier League Clubs and three won European titles (excluding Super Cups). While the number of minutes played by foreign players in 2022/23 had declined minimally by just under 2 per cent [8] and the number of British sponsors on players' chests in 2023/34 increased slightly (+2 [9]), the number of foreign coaches and owners has continued to grow. At the start of the 2023/24 season, there are only seven domestic coaches and only six clubs are owned by a British majority (again: as far as I could find out).
Despite the low proportion of English players, the English national team is benefiting from recent developments. Foreign know-how at all levels, right down to the youth academies, has given the FA a small selection of excellently trained players who also behave more professionally off the pitch than their predecessors. This development has led to the English national teams reaching historic heights. Half of the semi-final appearances have been recorded in the last 5 years (2018 and 2021) and winning a title in the near future seems realistic. (The women's team are European champions and finished the World Cup second. The success came, of course, with a foreign coach).
The successful performance of the English national team is a positive side-effect of the development of the Premier League, which, as described, is currently the most successful football league in the world, not only economically but also in sporting terms. However, in my previous posts, I describe British society as troubled by several crises. Why this contrast, when football is supposed to mirror society? Perhaps English football is not doing as well as it seems? Or was I wrong about the society? Maybe football is just changing faster and pointing the way to Britain's (golden) future? I will take a closer look at this topic in my next post.
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[1] Peter J. Beck: Scoring for Britain, F. Cass (1999)
[9] More might come, as e.g. Chelsea FC starts the season without a shirt sponsor
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