Employee, financial asset, investment: what exactly is a footballer these days? Let’s talk football... without talking about sport!
today we’re talking football. Now, you may ask, why talk about a sport (one I only vaguely follow) in a newsletter about cash and bullshit? Well, precisely because football is stuffed with cash. And the way it has been financialised is astonishing.
Monaco? The Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev. Lille? A Luxembourg fund. Lyon? The holding company of an American who owns several clubs. Toulouse? An American pension fund. And we could go on: Caen (Oaktree), Sochaux (Ledus) and plenty more.
But it isn’t the clubs as businesses that caught my interest, it’s the players. Between the wages, the transfers and the speculation: have footballers quietly become financial assets like any other?
A note before we start: yesterday I published a numbers-based review of my presence on LinkedIn and of my newsletter. If you’re interested, it’s here (in French).
