Dave’s Football Blog

So I had this brilliant idea at the beginning of the year.

AOL never took any taxes out of the checks they sent me for my work at FanHouse, which resulted in a $2,000+ tax bill from the IRS last April. So in an attempt to avoid such a tax bill for 2008, I decided to put more money from my day job into my 401(k). That would give me a nice big tax break. Combined with a full year’s worth of mortgage interest from two fix-rate home loans — thankfully, I never bought into the ARM hype that’s ruining everything now — I might get that tax bill pretty close to zero.

Yeah, take a look at how brilliant that plan was:

Every penny I put into this 401(k) from the start of the year? Gone. Every penny my employer matched? Gone. I’ll probably lose more before the market hits bottom. I might as well have kept the cash, given the IRS the twenty Bens and bought a nice HDTV. Meanwhile, the government just passed that stupid bailout package, which will cost me another $2,500 as a taxpayer.

Some people are looking to spread blame — hilariously, in some cases — but I’m not going to sweat this too much, because when it all comes down right to it, I’m doing a hell of a lot better than the clubs in the Premier League.

Various sources have reported that Premier League clubs have racked up a whopping £3 billion in debt in the last few years. The clubs in the most debt? The Big Four, of course. With all that Champions League cash coming in, they could secure plenty of banks loans on their future success.

All those loans, however, have left many clubs on very shaky ground — so much so that UEFA is considering banning clubs from the Champions League for carry too much debt. This is a policy that will enrich nobody but the lawyers that the most heavily leveraged clubs will hire to have it struck down in the courts. After all, UEFA created this environment in the first place. The Champions League is so huge that clubs will risk everything to chase European glory, and the free market economy will let them. Now Michel Platini wants to take that away on a whim in an effort to “save football?” Kitteh not goin back in bag, Mr. Platini.

Liverpool and Manchester United clearly have the most to lose from UEFA’s attempt to hoist fiscal responsibility on clubs. Roman Abramovich could sneeze away Chelsea’s £765M debt at any moment if he wanted, and Arsenal’s shiny new stadium is bringing in an extra £3M per match, so they’re having no trouble paying down those bonds they issued to finance it. Liverpool and Man United, however, are heavily leveraged on future success. Take away the filthy UEFA lucre, and where are they?

I suppose it’s no coincidence that both Liverpool and Man United are currently owned by Americans. We’ve all bought into the notion that debt is inevitable in America, especially if we want to own a home, buy a decent car or go to a decent college. The ease at which we willingly walk blindly into debt, though, is horrifying. Who cares if we can’t pay for that HDTV, that iPhone, that new stadium or that military occupation right this minute? Deficits don’t matter, dude. We’ll have the cash for it later. No worries.

(Speaking of iPhones, Apple Inc. has zero debt and almost $20 billion in cash reserves. Think about that the next time you pull out your Visa to get your updated iPhone…)

Well, guess what? Some people don’t have the cash right now, and as a result some of my tax dollars are funding that logo on Man United’s jersey. It was bad enough that I stopped to wonder how much of my weekly gas tank fill-up paid for Robinho’s move to Man City. Now I’m wondering when someone will twist all this into saying I must support the Red Devils now, or else I hate America.

Some Premier League clubs will fail because of this current marketplace. One of them might be a Big Four club. One of them won’t be Hull City. In fact, it could be the fiscal responsibility of Hull chairman Paul Duffen that keeps the club viable in the top flight for a long time to come — or at least until Greenland melts.

Of course, the irony of all this is that we American soccer fans wanted MLS to open up and be more like European football in terms of freedom of movement. Hearing the FA talk of salary caps now, though, makes me wonder if English football is going to strive to be more like MLS. The grass is always greener, especially when our bank accounts aren’t.

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