20/10/00
Athletes For Sale
Summary:
Sportspeople are on the move, and on sale to the highest bidder.
Two-hirds of the head coaches for the Australian Olympic team this year were brought into Australia from overseas. Conversely, the best soccer players Australia produces leave to play with European clubs. And the same is starting to happen with women's basketball.
What's the impact of this global migration of elite sports talent? MATTHEW HALL, author of "The Away Game", Socceroos coach FRANK FARINA, and LEEANNE GRANTHAM from the Women's National Basketball League discuss how the player exodus is affecting Australian soccer and basketball.
And JOSEPH MAGUIRE, British sports sociologist and author of "Global Sport", considers what importing large numbers of sportspeople means to ideas about national identity.
Details or Transcript:
THEME
Amanda Smith: On The Sports Factor today: athletes on the move. More than ever before, sportspeople are migrating around the globe, on sale to the highest bidder. But how is this changing the nature of sport?
Now, soccer is often referred to as ‘the world’s game’. But the story of this form of football in Australia has really become the flight of local players to the greener fields of the other side of the world.
SONG – ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’
Matthew Hall: Well if you look at the statistics, there’s around 125 Australian players playing outside of Australia. If that was to happen to any other sport in Australia, say for example the AFL or the Australian Rugby League, then the competition I guess you could say, would be weakened.
Amanda Smith: In Australia though, it’s not just a case of sportspeople leaving our shores in search of fame and fortune, as with soccer. At the Olympic Games last month, there were a number of athletes representing Australia who were originally from former Eastern bloc countries: the pole-vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva now being the most high-profile among them.
But what are the conditions that are bringing about this world trade in athletes? Joseph Maguire is the President of the International Sociology of Sport Association, and the author of ‘Global Sport’.
Joseph Maguire: What we’ve been witnessing over a long period, but it’s intensified more recently, is the globalisation of sport, and the conditions which seem to be propelling that globalisation are economic, political, social and cultural. Economic conditions of course, most people are aware of. The capitalist west has won the battle against the Soviet bloc and the economic processes which are at work are leading to the inter-connections and inter-dependencies of different economies and different nation-states. So there certainly is a worldwide sport economy, and that has grown more intense over the last two or three decades. But clearly also, political factors have played a part. With the decline of the Soviet Union, former East European athletes and coaches, sport scientists, have been able to migrate to the west, and the social and cultural dimensions of that process are also important to consider, because clearly, people have looked to different societies and have moved there either as migrants themselves and their sons and daughters now representing countries which formerly their parents would not have any direct affiliation to. So economic, cultural, political and social factors all help to explain this globalisation of sport and globalisation more broadly.
Amanda Smith: Are sportspeople increasingly operating and able to operate like mercenaries, for sale to the highest bidder?
Joseph Maguire: Well most certainly some of the very elite people are able to do that. The capitalist economy, the global economy, has become deregulated in terms of the movement of financial systems, and as part of that very elite performers, and I include here film stars, lawyers, doctors, but also sportspeople, are able to move from one country to another or from one club to another. It tends to be men primarily, but also women have their own global circuits in tennis and golf, and they don’t necessarily have a strong attachment to the local place or space, rather they’re more interested in securing with agents a very lucrative contract which they’re able to move onto or from, to another club or another nation who are willing to bid for their services. So in that sense they act as mercenaries in the global economy.
Amanda Smith: Sports sociologist, Joseph Maguire, who’ll we hear more from later in the program.
Now the National Soccer League season kicked off in Australia last weekend. Without much trumpeting in the sports media, it must be said. Australian Rules Football gets more press, even in its off-season in this country than our domestic Soccer League gets. And at least part of the reason for the lack of attention is that so many of this country’s best soccer players don’t play for Australian clubs. They’re creamed off to the big leagues of Europe.
Of course this means that when it comes to the national squad, the Socceroos, most of the players live on the other side of the globe. The Socceroos’ coach, Frank Farina, is charged with the responsibility of getting the team into the next World Cup in 2002. And he has the job of melding this disparate group of individuals into a team, which must surely be a challenge.
Frank Farina: Well it’s very difficult. And the first part of your question basically I believe the soccer coaching job is one of the most difficult of all the codes in this country, purely and simply for the facts you just stated, that all of our players, or a lot of our top players are playing overseas, so getting them together, it is difficult because you’ve got the distance they have to travel for starters; you know, certain problems that may arise with conflicting games with say their club commitments in Europe, and the other problem I suppose is that as a national coach you really only have your players together for possibly a month, two months per year. So it doesn’t give you a lot of time to really get them gelling, if you like, and working on a lot of things involved with playing the game basically.
Amanda Smith: It kind of reminds me of the flow of artists out of Australia in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Frank, who felt that there wasn’t enough support and encouragement for them to stay in Australia. Do you think there’ll be a time when our top soccer players will feel less of a need to be drawn overseas?
Frank Farina: I’m not sure. I can’t see it happening in the near future, because not only is it the money, but I think it’s the attraction of the competitions in Europe. You’ve got the Premier League which is most probably the most popular competition over there at the moment; you’ve got the Italian League, you’ve got the Spanish, the Dutch, so I think it’s the desire of the players to match themselves or pit themselves against the best players in the world, and unfortunately we aren’t at that stage in Australia where we’re importing the top players. So we’re one of the best exporters I suppose, going round at the moment. And I don’t think you’re going to really stop that in the next, say, five to ten years.
Amanda Smith: Well Frank, what do you see in your crystal ball as the future for Australian soccer? Obviously you’re working towards the 2002 World Cup campaign, but beyond that?
Frank Farina: Well I’m hoping to see a fully professional league in Australia, heavily sponsored if you like, or very financially well off, and I think that’s where we’ll see the better players tending to stay at home, especially if they’re earning a bit more money, and it’s a very professional competition. And hopefully that Australia will continue to qualify for World Cups every four years. Because that’s the key, if we can do that on a regular basis I think you’ll see the game kick on even more and more, especially at grassroots level all the way through to the national league.
Amanda Smith: Yes, well the signs are certainly very good at grassroots level at the moment, aren’t they? in terms of the number of youngsters taking up the game in preference to other football codes.
Frank Farina: Definitely. I think soccer has got the highest participation rate of all codes in this country, of all sports at junior level. And as I said, children reach the age of 16, 17, there’s not a real career path in Australia, and we tend to lose a lot of them.
Amanda Smith: Socceroos coach, Frank Farina. And under his leadership, Australia’s 2002 World Cup campaign begins in earnest early next year, with the Oceania qualifiers. All being well, the Socceroos will then play off against a South American team, to see which of them makes it to the World Cup finals.
Now, Matthew Hall is the author of a new book called ‘The Away Game – the Inside Story of Australian Footballers in Europe’. Matthew believes that this Aussie soccer player-drain is actually a double-edged sword. While it disadvantages the domestic league, there are ways in which it does advantage the national team, the Socceroos.
Matthew Hall: The great thing for Farina is that the squad is playing at the highest level they can, week in, week out, playing up to two high pressure games in top European leagues. And when it comes to a sudden death playoff for example, against South America, or position for qualification for the World Cup finals, that experience is going to go a hell of a long way. On the negative side, it can be difficult for Frank Farina to get that team together, because of the demands of club football in Europe.
Amanda Smith: Well should Frank Farina actually be based in Europe, not Australia? I mean I know it seems a preposterous suggestion, but would it work better for the success of the national team if he were?
Matthew Hall: Well it’s not actually that preposterous, and it’s an idea that has been mooted, and it’s also mooted that we play all our games in Europe as preparation. The main difficulty that Australian players have is travelling, and unfortunately Australia is on the other end of the world from where all the action happens in international football, which tends to be Europe. So if a player has to travel 24 hours to Sydney or Melbourne for a game, and then 24 hours back, that takes a lot out of him, not just in travelling, but in time zones. So if Farina can get his team together for a one-hour flight from London or Paris or Amsterdam, somewhere in Europe, then it’s going to be advantageous. So it’s not preposterous at all, and it is a unique situation for an Australian international sporting team to have so many players playing away from Australia. So it could well be the future.
Amanda Smith: What about the impact of this player-drain on the National Soccer League, Matthew?
Matthew Hall: Well if you look at the statistics, I think there’s around 125 Australian players playing outside of Australia. If that was to happen to any other sport in Australia, say for example the AFL or the Australian Rugby League, then the competition I guess you could say, would be weakened. So that has contributed no doubt to the state of the National Soccer League at the moment.
Amanda Smith: Well you say that Australian soccer has a heart of darkness. What does that mean, and that the National Soccer League is in the Dark Ages.
Matthew Hall: Well the situation is that while our players have become incredibly successful overseas, the administration of the game is still held back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s part-time, it’s run by people with good hearts, but not with really the necessary skills. There’s only a couple of clubs in the NSL who are run professionally, and in a way that can take the game forward from the part-time basis.
Amanda Smith: To what extent are Australian soccer clubs using the trade in local players to overseas clubs to secure their financial viability? That is, making big transfer fees that can bankroll the club by selling their best players to overseas clubs.
Matthew Hall: Well that again: a lot of the clubs in Australia, on a, if not a week to week, then definitely a month to month viability situation. The sale of a player for example like Simon Colosimo who plays for Carlton in Melbourne, is intrinsically linked to the future of Carlton. Carlton are undergoing some financial difficulties, shall we say, there’s no secret in that, and if Simon Colosimo is to move to Europe where he could perhaps be sold for between $AU1-million and $AU2-million then Carlton is safe financially for the next one to two years. Carlton are by no means alone in that situation. You could probably point at least 12 of the clubs in the National Soccer League, who if they sell a player overseas, then they can look forward to a very healthy year.
Amanda Smith: Well what do you think of that practice? I mean aside from it being a kind of trade in human flesh, is it in the best interests of Australian soccer?
Matthew Hall: Well it’s better that the clubs receive money for the players than the players just go off at an early age when they’re not contracted to the clubs and we have no kickback. Harry Kewell joined Leeds United I think, the New South Wales Soccer Federation received $3,000 for all the development and effort they put into developing his career. So it’s better that there is a kickback and an injection of funds into Australian soccer.
The elite players are not going to stay, they’re going to go, and if we can make some money on the elite players, that’s a good thing.
Amanda Smith: Well it seems to me, or it’s pretty obvious Matthew, that through the Australian training system, we’ve got top quality soccer players, so we can produce them but we can’t yet keep them in this country. What does need to change to stem the talent drain and to improve the standard of the National League?
Matthew Hall: One great model to look at is major league soccer in the USA. They started from scratch after the ’94 World Cup that was held in the US, and the US has gone on to make the World Cup Finals ever since then, and have also got a fairly strong and viable League over there. It’s attracting good players from Europe, it’s attracting good players from South America, and it’s also managing to retain a lot of the local players. The result of that was seen in the Sydney 2000 Olympics where the US made the semi-finals for the first time in their history, and it was a great performance. But that was because all the players except for one or two, were home-based and playing in the major league over there.
Amanda Smith: Well Matthew, we’re still I guess, basking in the warm afterglow of our Olympic successes, and Australians know they are among the world’s best in many sports, but with soccer being the mega-popular world sport, do we have to be much more competitive with the world’s best soccer teams, do you think, to truly cut it in the world of international sport?
Matthew Hall: What Australia needs, and I’m not just talking about Australian football but Australia as a nation, is to be able to qualify for the World Cup finals. We saw recently in Sydney what it means to hold a big international sporting event, and how that can actually transfer to the national psyche, and how we all go round feeling great about each other. I was at France ’98 and was amazed at how you can find at the opening of the little football match, if you like, the fact that all the world leaders are there, and I remember being at the opening ceremony to France ’98 and looking round and seeing all these people, and just wondering, ‘Wow! Imagine if John Howard could be here and be enjoying this football match.’ And qualifying for a World Cup Final for Australia would be a great thing, not just on the football field but for the country as well. Especially for our businesses; the fact that Australian businesses can then jump on the back of the Socceroos would be a great thing.
Amanda Smith: Matthew Hall, who’s the author of ‘The Away Game – The Inside Story of Australian Footballers in Europe’.
Well, if the reality for Australian soccer these days is the regular exodus of players to the cashed-up European clubs, what about the situation with other sports? In women’s team sports, basketball is the one where Australian players can get overseas contracts and earn a lot more money than they do playing here. A number of Australians over the past couple of years have played with the American League, the WNBA. This runs at the opposite end of the year to the Australian League, the WNBL, so it is actually possible for players to compete in both. But the European basketball season clashes with the season here, and it’s starting to lure players away from Australia. Is this the beginning of a trend that will be detrimental to Australian basketball?
Leeanne Grantham is the Chief Executive of the Women’s National Basketball League.
Leeanne Grantham: Obviously we really would not like to see all of our players troop off to Europe. Nothing against the European League whatsoever, but they have a lot of countries and a lot of people to choose from. Some of our players have chosen to do that this year; many of them didn’t go to the WNBA so obviously they are down somewhat in their financials, and they see an opportunity in Europe to perhaps line their pockets a bit more, but I understand most of them are going for the one season. They’ll then go to the WNBA and then be back to us next year. And as it’s turned out, it’s not the 20 or 30 that everyone seemed to be talking about, it’s more like a half a dozen players, which is great for us.
Amanda Smith: So that the WNBL’s transition over the past couple of years from a winter to a summer competition, that was in direct response to avoid clashing with the American women’s league, the WNBA, so that the Australian league wouldn‘t be deprived of players who could get gigs with an American club?
Leeanne Grantham: That was one of the main reasons. We held lengthy discussions with the WNBA when they were planning to start. We wanted to work around that but at the same time the other reason that we did it, was that we knew here in Australia there were no other women’s team competitions at the elite level happening, in summer. So it opened up a window of opportunity to us.
Amanda Smith: Well I understand that it’s been a precondition of qualifying for the Opals, the national team, that players have to have played with a league club in Australia, which has effectively stopped players with Opals aspirations from playing in that European season. I’m not sure whether I think that’s a good way of keeping the WNBL strong or a kind of restraint of trade on the players. What do you think, Leeanne?
Leeanne Grantham: It’s actually there’s no ruling about that whatsoever. All that occurred was leading into the Sydney Olympics, obviously there’s been an enormous amount of government funding, an enormous amount of work and effort and even sponsorship dollars that have gone into the preparation of the Australian team from Atlanta to now, as there has been for the Cathy Freemans of the world and everyone else who participated at the Olympic Games. And the coach, Tom Maher, and Basketball Australia sat down with the players and said ‘In your interests as a player, and if you wish to compete with the Opals and have a lot of court time and have the best possible preparation, and acknowledge that our aim is to go for Gold at the Sydney Olympics, then in the interest of all of us you need to all be here to participate.’ But at the same time there is no ruling, that would be restrain of trade, and there’s no question Basketball Australia or Tom would ever do that. At the same time it was about a team, and to perform at the best, and achieve your goals, their recommendation was, ‘Guys, we want you to be here.’ And 90% of them did that.
Amanda Smith: How much money can our Australian female basketball players earn playing overseas compared to here?
Leeanne Grantham: Well I guess with the Australian dollar like it is at the moment, quite a bit! (laughs) No, look, there’s lots of money touted around, and I will honestly say that in a number of cases the money that is offered is quite often not paid. Shane Hill will tell you that he is still owed money from Europe. I know Michelle Timms is still owed some money from Europe from years ago. Sandy Brondello was not always paid out by the German club she plays with. So there’s lots of big dollars talked about, but there’s not always big dollars paid up, and we’ve warned our players that if you go to Europe, fantastic, but make sure it’s on a per game basis or a per month basis, and if you aren’t receiving your money when you deserve it, then you shouldn’t play. Obviously in Australia as I said before, there’s not the dollars. But some of our top players, in fact probably the top players in our league, earn $30,000 from their club for a six-month period of time. If they then go to the United States and play in the WNBA and possibly earn $60,000 or more US dollars, then that’s a very nice income, thank you very much. So really, there’s some terrific opportunities for them just to play in our league, and to play in the WNBA.
Amanda Smith: Is there any kind of danger though that women’s basketball in Australia could become like men’s soccer has become here, where the brightest and best are constantly leaving to play overseas?
Leeanne Grantham: I guess in short, that is a possibility. If we don’t address some of the issues constantly, then that could happen, and I would hate to think that would happen, having been a past player myself for Australia, I’m very passionate about this sport, and I would hate to think that we did become like soccer, and I certainly will be working very hard to make sure that that doesn’t occur, and I think a part of that exercise needs to be communicating with the players. The other issue of course is some of our clubs are financially struggling, and the WNBL is only as strong as its weakest club, and right now, we are teetering on the edge, and we need help from the corporate sector and we need help from the government. And a lot of the arguments I have with government officials is, ‘Well you’re a professional sport; we don’t put money into professional sport.’ We are professionally run, but at the end of the day we aren’t exactly an AFL or a Rugby, we are women’s sport, that is really trying to keep young kids playing sport, stay fit and healthy and participate, given the opportunity to participate at the highest level.
Amanda Smith: I guess the interesting thing that occurs to me is that these days you actually can’t run a national league, in this case women’s basketball, in Australia without regard to the global scene, whereas I guess back in the ‘80s, in the early days of the WNBL, it could operate in much more of a vacuum. It’s a much more complex, international jigsaw puzzle now, isn’t it?
Leeanne Grantham: Absolutely. No different than any business, and I mean at the end of the day we are in the entertainment business. And if we don’t keep up with the times, then of course the players will want to keep up with the times and go to the best opportunities that are offering to them, and we have to make sure that we have the entertainment package here right, and the business package right, so that the players feel that they are playing in the best competition they possibly can, and hopefully earning reasonable money to be able to survive.
Amanda Smith: Leeanne Grantham, Chief Executive Officer of the Women’s National Basketball League. And the WNBL season gets under way in two weeks’ time.
Well so far, we’ve been talking about the impact that large numbers of athletes leaving their country may have on the sport they leave behind. But what about the impact of large numbers of imported players on the sport in the host country? What’s been the effect on various European sports leagues, for example, where there’s lots of movement of players between different European countries; as well as players coming in from Australasia, Africa and the Americas.
According to British sports sociologist, Joseph Maguire, this is not unproblematic.
Joseph Maguire: No, not at all. In fact both with soccer, ice hockey, basketball, what we see is in fact over the last two or three decades, an intensification of the recruitment of overseas players. In ice hockey and basketball it’s reached a stage where almost without exception, the first five or first team players are either Canadian or America. In the case of soccer in the premier league, the number of Europeans, non-British players from Africa and also from Australasia have increased dramatically too. And that has an impact in relation to the game. Clearly it’s used as a marketing device by the clubs, by the media and by the advertisers and sponsors, but it actually has a negative impact in terms of local player development.
Amanda Smith: Obviously players are imported into a competition because they’re really good and they enhance the standard of play. If a league sport in a particular country, as you say is recruiting from a global marketplace, what does that mean for the nurturing of home-grown talent?
Joseph Maguire: It has an impact. If we examine the balance between those who migrate out and those who migrate in, in some European countries such as in Holland, Sweden and Denmark the recruitment inwards is matched by the migration outwards. However in a country like England, in terms of its league system, the number of elite players playing overseas is very few. But the level of inward migration, the recruitment of overseas players, is very high. That means of course that the opportunities for local players are less, there’s less spots available on the teams or in the clubs, but furthermore, it has an impact in terms of player development at the youth level. Managers and coaches are under pressure to gain instant success. Therefore they recruit overseas, it’s cheaper to do so, rather than actually spending their time and energy in developing young players who take a much longer time to come through, and indeed who actually require an elaborate system of identification and talent nurturing and development. So the consequence is that local players get marginalised, and overseas players increasingly dominate the teams, particularly in certain positions. The impact that has upon the national team is fairly self-evident. You can see this in relation to English soccer, which has been undergoing a long-term process of decline, but their performances are even more marked in terms of their inadequate level relative to other European teams.
Amanda Smith: Does that create a situation where club teams with players that are drawn from around the world, play a higher standard than the national team and therefore become more important, and that is similar I guess to the way in which transnational corporations are becoming more powerful than nation-states in a globalised world.
Joseph Maguire: I think you’re absolutely right. There is a power struggle going on in global sport between the owners of particular clubs, the national federations and the international organisations. And this is at the heart of the matter in terms of globalisation of transnational corporations, and nation-states themselves. Clubs want more and more control over the use of their players, over the playing of matches and over the scheduling of events, and so what we see are pressures on national team competitions, either in the qualification stages or indeed at the final stages of a world event, whereby the clubs are saying that they don’t want to release players and that the calendar has to be shifted in relation to the interests of the clubs themselves. Some club owners have in fact argued for the abolishment of European national teams, that they’re remnants of the past, and that European soccer should be reorientated around clubs such as Barcelona, AC Milan and so forth.
Amanda Smith: Possible consequences of the globalisation of sport. And that was Joseph Maguire, the author of ‘Global Sport’, speaking to me there from Loughborough University in England, where he’s Professor of Sports Sociology.
And that’s The Sports Factor for this week, which is produced by Michael Shirrefs. I’m Amanda Smith. As always, it’s been a pleasure to have your company.
Guests on this program:
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Professor Joseph Maguire President of the International Sociology of Sport Association, Professor of Sports Sociology at Loughborough University in the UK and author of the book "Global Sport: Identities, Societies & Civilizations". |
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Frank Farina Coach of the Australian national men's soccer team, the Socceroos. |
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Matthew Hall Author of the book "The Away Game: The Inside Story Of Australian Footballers In Europe". |
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Leeanne Grantham CEO of the Australian Woman's National Basketball League, the WNBL. |
Publications:
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Global Sport: Identities, Societies & Civilizations Author: Professor Joseph Maguire Price: $AUS47.20 Publisher: Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 1999 ISBN 0-7456-1532-5 http://www.polity.co.uk |
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The Away Game: The Inside Story Of Australian Footballers In Europe Author: Matthew Hall Price: $AUS27.44 Publisher: Harper Sports, Sydney, 2000 ISBN 0-7322-6441-3 http://www.harpercollins.com.au |
Musical Items:
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Leaving On A Jet Plane Time to Air: 0830 CD Title: Armageddon: The Album Artist: Chantal Kreviazuk Composer: John Denver Label/CD No: Columbia/Sony Music 491384 2 Copyright: Cherry Lane Music |
Presenter:
Amanda Smith
Producer:
Michael Shirrefs
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