Column
Culture
Football
Sport
4 min read

Football transfers are just cheat codes to success

Not every problem in the game, or life, can be fixed overnight.
TV presenters stand eith side of a large screen showing football team badges.
Pundits prognosticate.
Sky Sports.

A couple of years ago I bought a Nintendo Switch and waved goodbye to my productivity. I’ve recently been playing Balatro, the breakout indie success of 2024 that is essentially the lovechild of poker and heroin, it’s that addictive. I now dream in playing cards. It’s a miracle this column managed to get done, frankly.  

However, as all-consuming as Balatro is, one game I simply can’t allow myself to play again is Football Manager. I know that, if I do, the next few months of my life will be a blur as I try to make my team that little bit better.  

It’s not that I especially love tweaking tactics or managing a team of plucky underdogs. No, for me, Football Manager may as well be player transfer window simulator punctuated unhappily by the occasional season of actual football. 

Like most football fans, I love transfers. Sometimes more than I like actual football. As the January transfer window opens, I’ve found myself wondering why this is. The January window is normally a slow one, with little happening. Clubs challenging for titles and trophies, or scrapping to avoid relegation, (or, in Manchester City’s case, somehow both?) are generally unwilling to sell important players mid-season (FAO: Trent Alexander-Arnold and Real Madrid). 

And yet. If you are one of those clubs pushing for a title, or desperately fighting to stay up, a new signing or two can be just what’s needed.  

Transfers are, of course, never guaranteed to succeed. Antony (£85 million), Paul Pogba (£89 million), and Nicolas Pépé (£72 million) should put that discussion to bed. But it’s hard to argue with the results sometimes. Liverpool sign Van Dijk, Salah, and Alisson and go from bridesmaid to bride almost overnight. Nottingham Forest is promoted and decide to buy Literally Every Footballer in the World (okay, 31 players, but still that’s basically a whole academy). They currently sit level on points with Arsenal.  

Transfers are all potential, and potential is always exciting. The grass is always greener. The next transfer might just be the one to take your team to that next level. 

But football’s obsession with transfers also speaks to the tempo of modern life and our need to slow down. 

We have become somewhat incapable of thinking long-term or living slowly. I don’t think it’s as simple as our attention span decreasing. The thought of watching a three-hour film seems completely impossible to me, but I would very happily watch episodes of Brooklyn 99 for about 5 hours straight, given the chance. It’s almost as though I have to micro-dose content now (yes, hello again, Balatro).  

And so it is in football, too. Fans want success now, not next season. And in this context transfers become the cheat code to success. 

Does your team struggle to score goals? Transfer. 

Is your team incapable of keeping a clean sheet? Transfer. 

Does your life generally feel meaningless and devoid of purpose? Transfer.  

The solution very rarely seems to be, you know, better coaching or better tactics. It’s always transfers. Transfers are simply the micro-dosing of the footballing world and speak, a quick hit with the promise of instant result. 

 

Not every footballing problem can be fixed with a transfer or a sacking. Not every cultural or social problem can be fixed overnight or without pain. 

Of course, we don’t just see this in transfers: manager turnover is a symptom of the same phenomenon. Want an instant improvement outside of a transfer window? Sack the manager. The speed with which a manager’ status can change from being the Second-Coming-of-Christ to drive-him-out-with-pitchforks is alarming. Ange Postecoglou at Spurs sometimes gets both in the same week. 

But the most successful managers in Premier League history – Ferguson, Wenger, Guardiola, Klopp – were all ones who were afforded time. Even when the case could be made for them being sacked. By contrast, Watford have had more managers than the Catholic Church has had Popes and look where that’s got them.  

Like so much of society, football is enraptured with a short-term, win-now approach to the sport. But humans are not built to live at this tempo constantly. They are built for rest, and for ebb-and-flow.  

 Not every footballing problem can be fixed with a transfer or a sacking. Not every cultural or social problem can be fixed overnight or without pain.  

Society is often reticent to learn anything from football. But footballing success shows us that short-term quick-fix solutions can only go so far. The promise of transfers is often a false one. True stability and true flourishing come from slow thought and long-term work.  

We are creatures, made to live in time. No good comes from trying to cheat this basic fact of human existence.  

Right. Time for Balatro.  

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Column
Creed
Football
Grace
Sport
8 min read

Manchester City and the surprises of Grace

What a footballing dynasty's dominance tells us about the problems of meritocracy

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A football team wearing a sky blue kit leaps for joy holding a trophy.
Celebrating winning the English Premiership.
Manchester City.

So Manchester City didn’t quite win the double double. Manchester United, against all the odds, spoilt the party and created their own by winning the FA Cup. But City won the Premier League yet again. That makes six times out of the last seven seasons. It would take a brave person to bet against them doing it again next season. Supporters of other teams look on with a mixture of resentment, admiration and envy. Despite losing the Cup Final, Manchester City fans are basking in the time of their lives.

When our team wins, we football fans gloat. Especially over our rivals. We all do it. We assume it means our team is superior, that victory is deserved, that there is some kind of moral credit involved in winning. Football fans are meritocratic to a tee.  

In 2020, Michael Sandel, Harvard Professor of Political Philosophy published The Tyranny of Merit. In the book, he traced the rise of the idea of meritocracy, the notion that if you succeed in life it is to your credit, and if you fail it is your fault. We talk about “going as far as your talents take you”, “getting what you deserve in life” and so on. Speaking from the American context in particular, he argues, it means a belief that we are masters of our own fate, that achievement is to our credit and failure due to our fault.  

He also sheds light on the dark side of meritocracy. The most important factor in whether people voted for Trump or Brexit was educational background. Getting into college or university meant you stood a much better chance of landing a good, well-paid job and rising through the rungs of society. And if you did so you tended to end up more liberal in political and social outlook. If you didn't go to college, you were more likely to stay in manual or blue-collar work, looking at a distance at the educated class of people who ran the government, the economy and the legal system, and feeling they didn't represent you.  

Meritocracy, Sandel argues, generates on the one hand hubris and on the other hand shame. It makes the successful feel proud in their own achievements, looking down with a secret smugness at those who didn't get the big jobs with the big money, and on the other, generates resentment and a sense of shame in those who missed out on the educational and financial gravy train.  

A meritocratic society makes parents more and more obsessive about getting their kids the advantages that will set them up for life. Yet such obsessive parenting for success has so often led to an epidemic of teenage depression and distress. College life becomes increasingly competitive, aiming to build an impressive CV to land the big jobs when you leave university for the big wide world of competition. 

Yet the reality is, he argued, that most of what made for ‘success’ was fairly random and the result of chance. If you happened to be born into an educated family with a reasonable income you are more likely to get the education that would keep you within that class. Without that origin it is much harder to break through the social barriers. Of course, there are plenty of examples of people born into disadvantaged circumstances who rose through the ranks to get good well-paid and high-profile jobs. Yet such stories fit neatly into the meritocratic story, as these people are held up as the poster boys and girls of meritocracy - exemplars of precisely the kind of moral virtue and character that is needed to succeed.

Some would say beautiful brand of football that out-passes and outplays virtually everyone else. 

Aristocracy by contrast, may have contained many flaws and inequalities, but at least the poor didn't feel that their poverty was their fault. We talk about our talents as ‘gifts’, which implies they have been given to us rather than earned by us. If we happen to have a talent for numbers, for writing, an instinct for strategy, reading people well, or managing stress, that is not really to our credit but something we have inherited in our personality. Of course we can and need to develop these skills, but again society has a fairly random way of rewarding certain talents and not others - we pay people skilled at football far more than people similarly skilled at netball, and hedge fund traders far more than nurses.

So what does all this have to do with Manchester City?

In September 2008, Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, who is currently the vice president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, completed the purchase of Manchester City, a club that had finished ninth in the Premier League the season before and was without a trophy in 32 seasons. From that moment they had the financial resources of virtually an entire Arab state at their disposal. Since then, they have spent a net amount of £1.4 billion on transfers. They hired the best manager and the best striker in the world, and play the most finely-tuned, relentless, some would say beautiful brand of football that out-passes and outplays virtually everyone else. In a recent match against Tottenham, they lost their number one goalkeeper Ederson to injury who was then replaced by Stefan Ortaga, who played a blinder and effectively won the league by keeping Tottenham from scoring. Ortega would walk into almost any other Premier League club. City’s strength in depth is such that they could almost turn out two teams that could win the Premier League on their own.

If the mind of Sheikh Mansour had gone in a different direction, Reading fans might have been celebrating a treble by the M4, or Wigan could be playing Real Madrid.

Back in the 2008 season, presumably the group from Abu Dhabi looked at the Premier League table for clubs they might buy, presumably discounting the already successful ones like Manchester United (who won the league that year), Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal. Looking just below City, they would have seen Blackburn Rovers in 7th (who had won the league as recently as 1995, Portsmouth in 8th, or a little lower, Middlesborough in 13th or Wigan in 14th. Sunderland, Bolton, Reading, Birmingham and Derby made up the numbers further down the table.

Of these teams, this past season, Portsmouth, Derby, Bolton and Reading played in the third tier of English football, struggling to make ends meet before small crowds against small clubs such as Stevenage, Burton, Fleetwood and Bristol Rovers. Birmingham were relegated into the third tier. None of the others were playing in the Premier League, let alone the Champions League.

Manchester City, by contrast, in their spanking new stadium, fresh from a season where they had won the treble (Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League), were winning the World Club Championship, marching towards another League title, only just missing out on the Champions League on penalties in the semi-final.

Did the rulers of Abu Dhabi consider buying Reading? Or Blackburn Rovers? Or Portsmouth? Whether they actually did or not, in theory they might have done. In other words, picking out Manchester City has a high degree of randomness. If the mind of Sheikh Mansour had gone in a different direction, Reading fans might have been celebrating a treble by the M4, or Wigan could be regularly playing Real Madrid.

Maybe they can teach us the humility of knowing that our success or failure is much less to our credit or fault than we think.

Manchester City is a prime example of the element of randomness in success.  Now of course it's not all random. Many other clubs have spent huge amounts of money but without the success of Manchester City. You have to say their owners know how to run a football club, unlike the shambles of the owners of clubs such as Chelsea or Manchester United in recent times.

Yet there is undoubtedly an element of sheer chance, luck, or to put it in Christian terms, undeserved Grace about it. Manchester City’s being chosen by Abu Dhabi is a strange worldly echo of the Christian doctrine of Election (no - not that election!). This is the idea that in the Bible, God chooses a part out of the whole, for example choosing Humanity out of all the species of animal life on the planet to look after and care for it, choosing Israel out of all the nations of the world to bear the message of God's care and love for that world, and choosing the Church as God’s chosen people, to bear witness to Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world.

The difference in this Christian notion is that election is never for success. God does not choose humanity, Israel or the church so that they can outstrip all the others and bask in their own superiority, even though all three have fallen into the trap of thinking that way many, many times. God chooses them precisely so that they might be a blessing to the rest of the world, the channel through which God desires to pour out his goodness to everyone, the bearers of a message of good news that everyone needs to hear. Election therefore breeds not a sense of superiority, but a deep sense of humility at having received a status that was not earned, undeserved, but that carries great responsibility.

So Manchester City's triumphant progress is perhaps an object lesson for the rest of us, that any success we may have achieved in life, anything we are tempted to boast about, whether privately or publicly, is not as much to our credit as we think. Just as they were plucked from mid-table obscurity to become one of the great teams of recent times, while the likes of Reading and Wigan languish in mediocrity, a large part of any success that may have come our way, is not down to our credit, but derives from a gift, something bestowed on  us, so that we might use whatever good comes our way to raise up others and be a blessing to those who don’t have such fortune.

While Manchester City win everything (and it won’t last, as we Manchester United fans know only too well) maybe they can teach us the humility of knowing that our success or failure is much less to our credit or fault than we think. We can learn generosity to those less fortunate than we are, contentment when things go badly, and gratitude for the grace that we have neither deserved or earned.