A2 · Elementary
7 min
sports businesseuropean footballmedia rightsinvestment
A Trophy Worth Two Hundred Million Pounds
La copa es solo el principio
Aston Villa lifted the Europa League trophy last night in Istanbul, but the most interesting story isn't the scoreline. It's the financial transformation that follows. Fletcher and Octavio dig into the economics of European football and what Champions League qualification actually means for a club like Villa.
El Aston Villa ganó la UEFA Europa League anoche, pero la historia más interesante no es el resultado del partido. Es el dinero que viene después. Fletcher y Octavio hablan del fútbol como negocio global y de lo que significa entrar en la Champions League.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| cantera | youth academy (also: stone quarry) | Es un jugador de la cantera del club. |
| ganar | to win / to earn | Villa gana la Europa League. |
| dinero | money | La Champions League tiene mucho dinero. |
| aficionado | fan / supporter | Los aficionados de Villa están muy contentos hoy. |
| negocio | business | El fútbol es un negocio global ahora. |
Aston Villa won the Europa League last night and I'll be honest, my first thought wasn't about the football.
¿No?
No?
¿Y cuál fue tu primer pensamiento, Fletcher?
And what was your first thought, Fletcher?
Money.
Specifically, how much money just changed hands because of a 3-0 scoreline in Istanbul.
Sí.
Yes.
El dinero es importante.
The money is important.
Muy importante.
Very important.
Right.
So before we get into all of that, what actually happened on the pitch last night?
Give me the short version.
Villa gana tres a cero.
Villa wins three-nil.
Freiburg no juega bien.
Freiburg doesn't play well.
Buendía marca el segundo gol.
Buendía scores the second goal.
Emiliano Buendía, the Argentine winger, gets player of the match.
And Villa claims their first European trophy since 1982.
That's forty-four years, by the way.
Cuarenta y cuatro años.
Forty-four years.
Eso es mucho tiempo para los aficionados.
That is a long time for the fans.
It really is.
But here's the thing I want to pull on today: winning the Europa League isn't just a sporting achievement.
For a club like Aston Villa, it's a financial event.
Sí.
Yes.
Ganar significa entrar en la Champions League.
Winning means entering the Champions League.
Eso cambia todo.
That changes everything.
That's the key point right there.
The Europa League prize money is one thing, somewhere around fifty million euros for the winner.
But Champions League entry next season is a completely different scale of revenue.
La Champions League tiene más dinero.
The Champions League has more money.
Mucho más.
Much more.
Dos veces, tres veces más.
Two times, three times more.
We're talking about a club that could realistically see a hundred and fifty to two hundred million pounds flow through because of last night's result.
TV rights, UEFA distributions, matchday revenue, sponsorship premiums.
The trophy is almost secondary.
Para los aficionados, el trofeo es lo más importante.
For the fans, the trophy is the most important thing.
Para los dueños, es el dinero.
For the owners, it is the money.
That tension is exactly what makes modern football interesting to me as an outsider.
And Aston Villa's owners, Nasef Sawiris and Wes Edens, are a perfect case study in what I'd call the financialization of European football.
Sawiris es egipcio.
Sawiris is Egyptian.
Edens es americano.
Edens is American.
No son ingleses.
They are not English.
Exactly.
And that used to be unusual.
Now it's almost the norm at the top of English football.
Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal.
American and Gulf investment, mostly.
En España también.
In Spain too.
El fútbol es un negocio global ahora.
Football is a global business now.
When did that shift happen, in your view?
Because I have a theory but I want to hear yours first.
Para mí, los años noventa.
For me, the nineties.
La televisión paga mucho dinero.
Television pays a lot of money.
Todo cambia después.
Everything changes after that.
The BSkyB deal in 1992, when Rupert Murdoch's company paid a then-staggering three hundred and four million pounds for Premier League rights.
I remember covering that era as a young journalist and people genuinely thought it was insane.
Y ahora los derechos cuestan miles de millones.
And now the rights cost billions.
Miles.
Billions.
The most recent Premier League domestic TV deal was around five billion pounds over four years.
That's before you count international rights.
The product being sold to Sky Sports viewers in 1992 and the product being sold globally now are almost incomparable.
Pero hay otro momento importante.
But there is another important moment.
El caso Bosman, en 1995.
The Bosman case, in 1995.
Jean-Marc Bosman, Belgian footballer, sues his way to a European Court of Justice ruling that fundamentally changes how player contracts work.
Players become free agents at the end of their contracts.
Labor market, overnight.
Sí.
Yes.
Los jugadores tienen más poder.
The players have more power.
Y los salarios suben mucho.
And the salaries go up a lot.
Which feeds back into the Champions League money question, because clubs need that revenue to compete for players.
It's a kind of arms race.
Y si no entras en la Champions League, pierdes jugadores buenos.
And if you don't enter the Champions League, you lose good players.
Se van a clubes más ricos.
They go to richer clubs.
That's the brutal part of the calculus.
There's a phrase people use in English football: 'the parachute payment.' When a club gets relegated from the Premier League, they receive a financial cushion for a few years.
But there's no equivalent safety net for missing out on Champions League football.
Para Villa, este año sin Champions League es muy diferente a este año con Champions League.
For Villa, this year without the Champions League is very different from this year with the Champions League.
Night and day different.
And here's a wrinkle I find fascinating: Aston Villa were actually relegated to the third tier of English football in 2016.
They were playing in the equivalent of the minor leagues just nine years ago.
Now they're in the Champions League.
Sí, ese es el poder del dinero.
Yes, that is the power of money.
Con inversión nueva, todo es posible.
With new investment, everything is possible.
Which raises a question I genuinely don't know how to answer: is that good for football?
Because part of what made the old First Division romantic was unpredictability.
Any club, theoretically, could rise.
Now it costs a billion dollars to genuinely compete at the top.
Para mí, el fútbol es mejor con historias como Villa.
For me, football is better with stories like Villa.
Un club grande con historia.
A big club with history.
They were English champions seven times.
Won the European Cup in 1982.
There's a real club there, real supporters, real history.
It's not a vanity project.
That does make it feel different from, say, a state-owned club built from scratch with sovereign wealth.
Claro.
Of course.
Pero el problema es que el dinero decide todo ahora.
But the problem is that money decides everything now.
No el trabajo, no los jóvenes del club.
Not hard work, not the club's young players.
The academy question.
Growing your own versus buying your way.
Aston Villa have actually invested pretty heavily in their academy, but you're right that in the transfer market they can also just spend.
It's a hybrid model.
Oye, ¿intentas decir 'cantera' en español?
Hey, are you trying to say 'cantera' in Spanish?
I did say cantera, actually.
Accidentally.
One of those words that just landed.
Bien hecho.
Well done.
Pero 'cantera' también significa una mina de piedra.
But 'cantera' also means a stone quarry.
Las dos ideas son similares, ¿no?
Both ideas are similar, aren't they?
Wait, actually that's interesting.
The word for a football youth academy and a rock quarry is the same word?
That's a better metaphor than anything an English copywriter ever came up with.
Sí.
Yes.
En una cantera de piedra, buscas material bueno.
In a stone quarry, you search for good material.
En una cantera de fútbol, también.
In a football academy, also.
Buscas talento.
You search for talent.
You quarry for talent.
That's genuinely one of the better etymological connections I've come across in a while.
So when a Spanish commentator says a player 'viene de la cantera', he literally came from the quarry.
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Es un jugador de la cantera' significa que el club lo forma desde joven.
'Es un jugador de la cantera' means the club trains him from a young age.
No lo compra.
They don't buy him.
And in a world where Champions League money is reshaping which clubs can buy which players, the clubs with deep quarries, real academies, might actually end up with an edge that money alone can't replicate.
That's maybe the most optimistic note I can leave this on.
Sí.
Yes.
Y Villa gana hoy.
And Villa wins today.
Eso es lo más importante esta noche.
That is the most important thing tonight.