By Tubal Páez Hernández on July 15, 2024
Artwork by Aristides Hernandez (Ares)
The Copa America and the Euro Cup are coming to an end and deserve a reflection, even if this is just a grain of sand in a wave that has moved multitudes on Planet Soccer. There is a new cartoon by the famed Cuban cartoonist Aristides Hernandez Guerrero (Ares), which shows a man with a newspaper in hand, and he lifts with his fingers the lines of text to find what is behind.
It is a brilliant synthesis of the importance of, without much effort, finding the truth of the world, beyond the surface of the surface where the rogue thinking of the prevailing world system moves, which half a millennium later insists on the barter of glass beads and mirrors for nuggets of souls.
Thanks to Cuban Television, in a hot reality in the northern hemisphere, beyond the thermometer and the activities “in summer mode”, the matches of the America Cup and the Euro Cup have been served for the pleasure of many, as main courses on the tables of homes. Good soccer and an opportunity to put on our Ares slippers and share what is really under the green grass.
We Cuban TV viewers have had to debate with ourselves, jumping from these soccer cups to the final stage of the Cuban National Baseball Series, to the substance of the expositions of the VIII Plenum of the Party Central Committee and to the images of a worrying international mosaic.
The United States and Germany ─ two examples of so-called consumer and wasteful societies ─ have been the venues for the formidable soccer spectacles these days, with the latest in technology and material development, where everything glitters.
Those impressive displays have included, of course, packages with ticket offers, accommodation services, air and ground transportation, souvenir sales, T-shirts and endless gadgets for the enthusiastic pilgrims, many coming from far away dragging their passions, excesses and prejudices.
Such scenarios are unthinkable for former colonies converted today into nations that are trying to get ahead with the burden of their debts, the condition of exporters of emigrants, raw materials, brains and muscles, as well as environmental deterioration and abusive extractivism.
America Cup in the United States, Euro Cup in Germany, Olympic Games 2024 in France; 2028 in the United States; and 2032 in Australia. Can we ignore that they are nations with shared values, even belonging to the dominant global strategic coalitions, in the economic, commercial, military and media fields?
In parallel, UNICEF has just revealed that 181 million children under the age of five worldwide face difficulties in accessing healthy and nutritious food. Sixty-five percent of these children live in just 20 countries; 64 million in South Asia and 59 million in Sub-Saharan Africa.
At the same time, more than one billion plates of food are wasted unnecessarily every day on this planet, according to a United Nations report, which also describes the phenomenon as an ecological tragedy.
But, let’s insist on the essences, what are the great soccer clubs of today? If we analyze the main European leagues, in England and Italy the 20 top-division clubs are joint-stock sports companies (SAD), in which the responsibility of the members, who have become investors, is limited to the capital they’ve contributed. The main objective of the SADs is to raise money from a large number of investors for speculation.
In Spain, 17 of the 20 top clubs are SADs, the only three that remain civil associations are Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao. In Germany, there is a law that requires that at least 51% of the total value of the club must belong to the shareholder base; however, there are already four exceptions to this law.
In the case of Latin America, soccer joint stock companies are allowed, with the exceptions of Ecuador, Paraguay and Argentina, although the Federation of the latter has declared itself against privatizing it, in view of the threat in this sense of President Milei.
In Chile, 42 out of 45 professional teams are private; in Colombia, 18 out of 20; in Uruguay, 6 out of 16; and in Brazil, 6 out of 20.
The richest groups in the world are (in millions of euros): Real Madrid: 6 600; Manchester United: 6 500; Barcelona: 5 600; Liverpool: 5 370; Manchester City: 5 100; Bayern Munich: 5 000; Paris Saint-Germain: 4 400 million.
Thirty percent of the clubs’ revenues come from advertising and there are already 24 clubs competing on the financial stock exchanges in different parts of the world. Manchester United is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but also on other stock markets such as those of Milan and Madrid. In Mexico, a few hours after entering the financial competition, Club América tripled the value of its shares.
As for inequality among clubs, at the end of the 80s, Silvio Berlusconi, the famous Italian multimillionaire and owner of AC Milan, began to buy the best players in Europe, not only to build what was at the time the best team in the world, but also to prevent rival groups from owning them.
Over time, that novelty became commonplace. Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and PSG do the same in their own leagues, increasing the asymmetries between the groups.
Lionel Messi injured in Copa America finals.
In contrast to the 1990s, players now play between 10 and 15 more matches per season in Europe, which means that on average each player has to play 70 matches per year, i.e. a maximum of every five days. This generates more and more injuries due to physical fatigue and stress. In a squad of 25 players, the average number of injuries per year is 50.
What does the renowned researcher Noami Klein tell us in her book No logo. The New World of Brands? She points out that through marketing and advertising the value of companies is increased above their assets and annual sales, therefore, according to her, advertising expenses are investments in pure value and explains the emotional character of the brand-consumer relationship.
“When brand diffusion is the objective shared by all, repetition and visibility are the only true measures of success”, added the author of this classic of communication, where she gives us the keys to better read this crazy market world where people try to put a price on everything.
Former minister of Culture, Abel Prieto recently summarized the phenomenon as follows. “The impact of this machinery extends far beyond art, he said; it comes to kidnap the subjectivity of millions of people and decisively influences emotions, behaviors, customs, hopes, goals, in the very meaning of life.”
In my opinion, the spaces dedicated to the narration or narration of competitions between nations are not well used when players are repeatedly identified by their membership and performance in this or that club-company. In this way, certain brands are involuntarily advertised and there is no room for the human interest info of the athlete, such as his origin, family environment or his homeland, and also the barriers, misunderstandings and even discrimination they have had to face – and still face – to deploy their exceptional talents.
The statements of French players in the face of the threat of the extreme right in the recent elections in their country, says many of young people who are not indifferent machines and know that their position is shared and weighs on public opinion. “The political situation is more important than soccer” said Kylian Mbappé, Real Madrid’s new signing, in line with similar expressions of Liliam Thuram and Ousmane Dembélé.
In the Spain squad, the lives of teenager Lamine Yamal, whose father is Moroccan and whose mother is Ecuadorian, and also of 22-year-old Nico Williams, whose parents, after overcoming the Sahara desert and the barbed wire in Melilla, arrived in the Iberian country from their native Ghana, make them mature French citizens devoted to the passion of sport and to the enjoyment and applause of their fans.
At a time when hatred is being promoted and even spread through the networks, the streets and even the stadiums, there is no choice but to reject the criminal logic of arms manufacturing on the monstrous assumption that thanks to this other merchandise thousands of workers find employment and the economy of regions and countries is stimulated.
The cups will put an end to the competitions between nations and the distribution of the amounts of dollars that will go to each one according to the results will be remembered, and the organizers of the events will draw up their accounts without failing to observe the figures of the stock exchanges for the coming matches.
The genocide in Palestine cannot be silenced by the shout of a goal being scored. And let us remember, finally, the validity of Fidel Castro’s thought when he made his historic warning at the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992: “Stop selfishness, stop hegemonism, stop insensitivity, irresponsibility and deceit. Tomorrow it will be too late to do what we should have done long ago”.
Tubal Páez Hernández is a Cuban journalist and past president of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC). He was the deputy director of Granma newspaper for 12 years and director of Bohemia and the newspaper El Habanero. He has been a deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power since 1993.
Source: Cubaperiodistas, translation: Resumen Latinoamericano – English