The impact of relegation and promotion in European football
At the end of May on the final day of the 2010-11 season, Blackpool FC traveled to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United. The game meant nothing to United, who had clinched the Premier League title a week earlier. The game meant everything to Blackpool, one of five teams trying to stave off relegation to England’s second tier.
Blackpool sat with 39 points, well above the average number needed to safely avoid the degradation of demotion. Not enough this season, though, when a win, draw or loss in this last game couldn’t directly decide their Premier League fate.
They enjoyed this season too much to go down, fans said, of their first season in England’s top division in 39 years. Playing free football without a care, enjoying every minute on the greener grasses of Premier League stadiums, they were tied for seventh in goals scored and dead last in goals conceded.
A win against United could help, a draw could suffice and a loss could even work for or against them. Blackpool’s fate rested in their hands, in the hands of fellow basement dwellers Birmingham, of Wolverhampton and Blackburn and Wigan; each combatant’s fate interconnected in this relegation battle, an unprecedented one point separating five teams.
Blackpool stared in the faces of the champions-elect as the game began. They looked at an opponent they hadn’t beaten in more than 40 years.
Old Trafford literally didn’t have a scoreboard to watch, just the game at hand. An early goal by Park Ji-Sung gave United the lead, forcing Blackpool to fight back as they always did – and they did again. Charlie Adam, their captain, curled the ball off a free kick past goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar and into his left corner. Tied at 1-1, Blackpool started the second half with the same attacking verve and scored again.
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At junctures of the game, Blackpool ranked as high as 16th place in the standings, looking like they could easily steer clear of relegation alley. Then two United goals and an own goal sunk them like a submarine, down into 19th place in minutes. If this game was a rollercoaster, every Blackpool fan would come off it hurling their lunch. The ride was over. Blackpool got relegated.
No one cared how United fared. Manchester United captain Nemanja Vidic was presented with the Premier League player of the year award. Manager Sir Alex Ferguson got manager-of-the-year honours. United hoisted their trophy after the game, but none of that really mattered. The real fight wasn’t for hardware. There’s no richer reward for European football clubs than survival in the top leagues. Relegation battles have become not only a spectacle to behold, but a focal point of the season in Italy, Spain and England.
The trip down can be heartbreaking, devastating to a club’s long-term ambitions, but the trip up can be a heart-warming and delightful story. In order for some of these smaller clubs to feel the agony of relegation, they must first experience the ecstasy of promotion.
When a club ascends to the Premier League from the League Championship, England’s second division, they reap more than just accolades, newfound respect and prestige. There are millions to be made and new responsibilities to keep.
From year to year, the amount of money a club receives upon their promotion varies, but a package of prize money – including TV deals and commercial earnings – can overflow their pre-existing revenue stream. Like a flash flood, the outcome of a single game can deluge a club with an influx of cash they may not know how to handle.
In late May, Swansea City beat Reading 4-2 in the League Championship playoff to become the first Welsh team to qualify for the Premier League. The win will also see them earn $152 million (all figures US) – almost half of that directly from TV revenue. That’s a hefty sum of money, almost double than the amount awarded to the winners of the Champions League, for a team that’s used to receiving roughly $2 million for its broadcast rights in the second division.
While this instant wealth and fortune may seem like winning the lottery, it isn’t. James Sharman, host of The Footy Show on The Score, says these promoted clubs are urged to spend prudently, not lavishly after their big payday. They’re not guaranteed to play more than one season in the top division and can’t afford to throw money at players.
“Any newly-promoted club will be fine as long as their finances are in order and they’re not overpaying players and going out signing guys for $10 million each,” Sharman says.
Of course, embracing millions of dollars is not meant to be a burden for newly-promoted clubs. Some teams who get immediately relegated after one season enjoy the financial boons of their one-off Premier League journey. Derby County, who got promoted in 2007, finished with one win, 29 losses and the worst record in English history a year later.
They were clearly not ready to compete in the Premier League, but still got lots of prize money they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten in the Championship – not to mention parachute payments, which afford relegated clubs roughly $33 million in relief over two years.
“I think it’s important for fans to enjoy their success, however short-lived,” says Kristian Jack, football analyst on The Score. “Sometimes you are what you are in life and Derby are a Championship club. Unless they get significant investments, then that’s probably what they’re going to be.”
Administrators of some lower-league clubs like Watford, who got relegated from the Premier League in 2007, try to delay any possible promotion until they’re financially equipped to manage the climb up the tiers.
“Relegation could break clubs. They’ll make that drop and it will perish that club into administration and bankruptcy. Clubs that come back up are very conservative,” Sharman adds. “If you have a lucky season and you win promotion, great. But you’re financially unprepared for it. You’d go straight back down.
“For the long-term benefit of the club, it’s smarter and more advisable to wait a couple of years. You can’t get promoted too soon.”
Blackpool did it the right way. Winning one of their first six games in 2009, they didn’t dream of making the jump up to the Premier League. A surprising sixth place finish in the Championship earned them a playoff spot, making it to the final and securing promotion.
Realizing the need to recompense their players for their shocking and historical promotion to the Premier League, Blackpool did double their players’ wages. They essentially put the money they earned as a promoted club into their pockets.
“It won’t stay in their pockets if they get relegated a year after promotion,” Jack warns.
Because Blackpool got immediately relegated, however, these same players now face a dilemma: to stay with them and take a pay cut or seek employment elsewhere.
A player like Charlie Adam, reputedly worth $10 million for his corner kicks alone, will be sold for a premium price to a top club after proving himself in the Premier League with 12 goals. Blackpool will profit greatly from the sale of a star they nurtured, and Adam can further his own career.
For other clubs like West Ham United, the transition into the second division won’t be as smooth and profitable. Having spent six straight seasons in the Premier League, West Ham got accustomed to authorizing extravagant wages, some players making as much as $147,000 a week. These huge, undeserved salaries make players believe they’re top quality when they really aren’t.
“It’s a fallacy,” Sharman says. “The previous ownership – real morons – spent all this money on obscene contracts. You got to be so careful when you’re giving players contracts.”
They blew all their prize and TV money on players and now realize they can’t afford to pay them. Overspending can destroy a club’s wage structures, a side effect of relegation that can take years to wear off.
“It’s important that teams like that don’t spend beyond their means,” says Jack. “Otherwise, you end up being like the giants of the past such as Leeds United and Sheffield Wednesday.”
The giants of yesterday have crashed heavily and clumsily, too; clubs that won domestic championships, featured in Champions League finals and took on the world’s best teams. In Spain, Deportiva La Coruna – the only team other than Barcelona, Real Madrid or Villareal to win the La Liga title in the past 15 years – fell into the second division for the first time in 20 years despite garnering 43 points, a league record for a relegated team.
In France, AS Monaco – a team that fielded the likes of striker Thierry Henry, defender Patrice Evra and former world player of the year George Weah – got relegated seven years after reaching the Champions League final.
In Italy, Sampdoria followed up a 4th-place finish last year with an 18th-place finish this year. All these clubs were victimized by gross cases of mismanagement, all clubs with glorious pasts who played like they had none.
For Sampdoria, a petty row between owner Riccardo Garrone and star Antonio Cassano forced the sale of the 28-year-old striker to AC Milan. Then, Garrone peddled his other goal scorer Giampaolo Pazzini, cashing in on the club’s prized possession instead of treasuring them.
Selling two pairs of feet was more costly than profitable for Sampdoria, especially considering those feet kicked in 10 of the club’s first 16 goals and that the club struggled to score in their absence. Owners have actively ruined their clubs’ ability to play competitively by stripping their team of talent and then watching them suffer. Other owners irresponsibly handled their clubs’ finances. The Premier League deducted nine points from Portsmouth after they sought bankruptcy protection in 2009, a result of overspending, and that contributed to their eventual relegation.
“Relegation as a form of punishment is extremely harsh. If you’re fixing games like Juventus, then it isn’t,” Sharman says. “When I see teams mismanaged and lose points and get relegated, I feel really bad for the fans. That’s not the fans’ fault. You can fine a team, sure, but when you put them in a lower division, that’s a crushing blow.”
No one team in the history of football has ever been unfairly relegated. Neither has a team been unfairly promoted, no matter how obscure the market, how small the city, how surprising the story. No league is an exclusive club. So here is AFC Wimbledon, a fan-owned club created in 2002, a club that’s earned five promotions in eight seasons, a club climbing the rungs of England’s football leagues.
Because the club isn’t helmed by a single owner, they only spend what they earn on players and their wages; a refreshing model of ownership in an age of rich owners and spoiled teams. They’re now in the fourth tier, and while the days of witnessing a small club winning a major championship are gone, this Wimbledon team demonstrates a will to prosper under the tightest of budgets and to break through the most obtrusive barriers.
“Even though the finances have changed, I don’t think it’s impossible for smaller teams to emerge,” Jack says. “As the Championship has shown in the past, it has sent teams up to the Premier League who haven’t had the money, but their style of play on the field has got them promoted and noticed.”
Even Blackpool, a team that hadn’t reached the summit of English football in almost four decades, provided an incredible story. They captured the imagination of the fringiest of fans. Tyler Dellow was one of them.
Before the 2010 World Cup, Dellow didn’t watch many football games. He found himself watching this team in their famous Orange jersey, saw them win their first Premier League game 4-0 in their first Premier League game. He had no knowledge of their history, no expectations. A string of heavy losses to Arsenal and Chelsea followed, but a historical 2-1 win against Liverpool caught his attention.
“I cheer for bad teams in other sports and resisted but, watching the first Blackpool-Liverpool game, I realized that I wanted them to hold on. I was stuck,” he says.
Dellow, so enamoured by Blackpool’s fighting spirit, ventured from Canada to England to specifically watch his new team play for their Premier League lives in the month of May. He joined hundreds of Blackpool fans at Old Trafford to watch their final game. Dellow didn’t watch Blackpool slog through the lower divisions and couldn’t measure the magnitude of the moment. But he could sense it.
“Most of the people in the section had been season ticket holders for at least five years and many of them for far longer,” he says. “It was an incredibly big deal for them to go to see their team playing at Old Trafford.”
Blackpool took the lead and lost it just as fast, silence fell among Blackpool supporters. “There was still a feeling of emptiness that you don’t get when your team gets knocked out of the playoffs,” Dellow says. “If you lose in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, it sucks, but you’ve probably still got a great team and you can reasonably hope for a chance in the future.
“If you get relegated, you know that you’re going to lose players and that you’re at least a year away from having a similar chance.”
Even on the last day, Blackpool put on an entertaining show. Some teams do whatever it takes to remain a Premier League team. Others light up fireworks, win games, get burnt, lose games.
“The ending was not a lot of fun,” Dellow says, “but the ride was great.”
So by the end of the year, a champion was named in leagues across Europe. But that wasn’t the main event. The main event was no championship bout. Just survival, as Darwinian as it gets in sports.
“The battle for relegation isn’t something Premier League fans think about in April. Teams who finished eighth or ninth this season were involved in this relegation race,” says Jack. “Because it captured so many people and so many teams, it ended up being a massive storyline for the season.”
Blackpool went down in England. Blackpool stared in the faces of the champions as the game ended. They looked at an opponent they couldn’t and hadn’t beaten in more than 40 years. They now go back to where they came from.
“For these clubs,” Sharman says, “the chance to play Manchester United, Chelsea or Liverpool on a weekly basis is incredible.”
The chance to play Preston North End isn’t.
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