The Godfather of Football

In the past two or three seasons, a large number of agents and club staff from all over the world gathered at the Hilton Park Road Hotel in the east of London Hyde Park every few days during the transfer period.

All of them came here for only one purpose, the Football Economic Forum!

The first Football Economic Forum only accepted English teams to participate. The second quickly spread to the five major European leagues, even including second-tier leagues such as the Netherlands and Portugal. This year, the third forum, because of the rich experience accumulated in the four grand events in the previous two years, finally decided to make a big one and open it to the public.

Hilton Hotel also took advantage of the cooperation with Moon Sports Services Company, so they also gave the maximum support to this football event held twice a year, because it not only attracted customers for them, but also promoted their popularity.

The scale of the venue has changed from the first floor to the current three floors, and there is another floor dedicated to the Football Association and club offices, so there are four floors in total, of which three floors are concentrated in the three banquet hall floors of the Hilton Hotel, which can be directly accessed by stairs, which is very convenient.

With the popularity of the Football Economics Forum for two consecutive years, more and more media and fans are also paying attention to this feast. They will care about who will become the protagonist of the transfer market on the last day, who will stage the last frenzy of the transfer market, and who will make a surprise move at the last moment?

With the popularity of the Football Economics Forum, the player database has also spread its business to the world in just three years. Although at first glance, it seems that the fee of 10,000 euros per user is very cheap, it is not enough to collect it, right?

Do you know? In the past three years, the player database has attracted more than 3,000 registered users in total, that is, the income from membership fees alone exceeds 30 million euros a year, because there are so many agents, so many professional clubs, so many sponsors and football practitioners in the world, they all hope to climb onto this platform.

It is difficult to calculate exactly what impact the emergence of the Football Economics Forum and the Player Database has had on the entire football industry, but everyone can clearly see that even if the summer transfer and winter break transfer are very popular, the Football Economics Forum can set off the last frenzy every three days before the end of the transfer period.

Moon Sports Services is very clear about its position, which is neutrality, transcendent neutrality, so it hardly participates in any disputes between any clubs, agents and players, nor does it participate in any transfer links. It just provides an information platform for all those who need it to find the answers they want.

And now it is just the first step. With the support of OPTA's huge and authoritative database, the sports service company will continue to move forward. While ensuring the user experience, it will continue to develop more tools that can bring convenience to users, so that everyone can find what they want faster and more accurately.

For example, attract more sponsors to enter, but not just top sponsors such as Adidas and Nike. After all, for some small teams, sponsors like Adidas are simply out of reach, so Moon Sports Services is also open to the outside world and accepts some formal commercial companies that are interested in investing in the football industry.

Of course, as Eliza Moon outlined back then, in order to ensure the privacy of users, there must be some special ones.

But in general, not only the Football Economics Forum and the player database are becoming more and more popular, but even the profit level of Moon Sports Services is rising steadily. As the company's largest shareholder, Ye Qiu naturally gains both fame and fortune.

At least, everyone knows that he has made a great innovation for the football world.

So, when Ye Qiu, accompanied by Peter Kenyon, Ron Gourley and the staff of the Sports Services Company, walked into the Hilton Hotel venue, looking at the chaotic flow of people on the scene, people kept nodding and greeting Ye Qiu along the way, and Ye Qiu maintained his signature friendly and polite response.

"How is it this year?" Ye Qiu had just returned from Monaco with his team, so he was not clear about the situation of the Football Economics Forum for the time being, but from what he saw in front of him, it should be good.

The CEO of the sports service company is Rob Newman, who was promoted and cultivated by Eliza Moon. He is considered an old servant of the sports service company. He is about 40 years old, has a set of skills and is very courageous. At present, Ye Qiu and Eliza almost leave all the big and small matters of the company to him.

Rob Newman always dresses like a standard British gentleman. The only regret is that he has a typical Irish head shape.

"According to my preliminary estimate, the venue will continue to expand next year!" Rob Newman said with a smile.

His salary is linked to the company's performance. If the company's performance is good, his salary will be high, so when he said this, he was very happy in his heart.

After hearing this, Ye Qiu, Peter Kenyon and others also laughed and understood the meaning of this.

"The biggest news this morning is that Juventus signed Grosso, and Fiorentina's Portuguese defender Da Costa and West Ham United winger Savio N'Sereke swapped clubs. In addition, there are some relatively important transfers in England, such as Aston Villa's introduction of Manchester City captain Dunne."

To be honest, the transfers that can appear in the Football Economics Forum are not likely to be big transfers, because the transfers of superstars such as Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo are unlikely to be formed in the Football Economics Forum, because such transfers often involve very complicated and tedious business negotiations and interest negotiations.

Just like when Messi wanted to transfer to Manchester City, he had more than 20 commercial sponsorship contracts, and Tottenham Hotspur had to settle them before the transfer, otherwise, the club would have to bear the losses of the first and last ones who stayed, so this destined Messi's transfer to be a protracted and long-term battle.

Of course, Messi later announced that he would not leave, and Ye Qiu agreed without saying anything. But behind the scenes, the staff of Tottenham Hotspur's administrative department had done useless work for several months, and many marketers even had boring negotiations with sponsors for several months, which caused Tottenham Hotspur a lot of losses and troubles.

It was also because of this that Messi was so unsure before, and even worried that Ye Qiu would force him to sell.

The Football Economic Forum is not a big business, but it can bring together small businesses worth millions into a vast ocean.

"This year's market conditions are generally very good. The Premier League's spending on buying players this year is nearly 600 million pounds, about 100 million more than last season. A lot of them came from West Ham United and Manchester City, and now they have basically stopped moving, or in other words, only selling."

Rob Newman is now gradually mastering the market conditions of the entire transfer market. After all, he has been observing in this position for two years. If he hasn't observed some tricks, then his work as the CEO of a sports service company is in vain.

"So, there won't be any big deals?" Ron Gourlay was a little disappointed.

Rob Newman laughed and shook his head, pointing to a British man in a suit in the distance, "Everton's HR manager has been here for three days. Do you think Moyes can leave such a large sum of money in his hands and not spend it?"

This season, Manchester City introduced local defender Lescott from Everton, spending 24 million euros for it, and Moyes has not yet come up with a decent signing, and Everton's start in the new season is not very good, so now is the time for him to spend money to hit people.

Once, Ye Qiu discussed this topic with Platini, that is, whether it is necessary to cut down on the lavish spending of super-rich people like Abramovich, Abu Dhabi Consortium, and Rebolovlev?

Because in his opinion, the super-rich entered football and invested a lot of money to attract attention, wanting to build a strong team in the shortest time. This is understandable, and if you want to say that he disrupted the market rules, this is also a bit wrong, because the so-called market rules are that some people buy and some people sell, which is understandable.

Platini feels that the super-rich's big spending may lead to the rapid decline of talents in the middle and lower teams, forming a situation where the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker, just like the situation where Barcelona and Real Madrid dominate in La Liga, and other teams will find it difficult to compete with them.

But Ye Qiu feels that football is always pyramid-shaped, and the giants are always very few, otherwise they are not giants.

All the middle and lower teams are not stupid. On the contrary, teams like Everton and Aston Villa have their own way of survival. You can poach people from them, but it doesn't matter. They take your money and go to poach other people's corners, one by one, layer by layer.

What is the final result?

Youth training teams get money!

For teams like Ajax, Porto, and Lyon, they are just for money. They are crazy about developing youth training for only one purpose, that is, to keep the club alive.

Therefore, Ye Qiu has always disagreed with Platini's financial restriction policy, because he thinks that this limits the vitality of the transfer market. He thinks the real problem is not who is willing to pay for signings, but the financial health.

What is financial health?

For example, suppose Chelsea's market value is 100 million, and Abramovich wants to introduce Shevchenko. He uses some means to lend Chelsea 50 million euros and introduce Shevchenko. Then when the player comes in, Chelsea is in debt of 50 million euros, and Chelsea's total market value is 150 million.

There is another way. Suppose Chelsea's market value is 100 million, Abramovich wants to introduce Shevchenko, but he injects 50 million euros into Chelsea through some means and introduces the player. Then at this time, Shevchenko's arrival makes Chelsea's total market value reach 150 million euros, but because Abramovich's 50 million is an injection, it is not considered a debt and the finances are healthy.

So, what is the difference between these two?

The difference is that if one day Abramovich doesn't play football anymore and wants to leave Chelsea, then if he uses the former method to invest, he will automatically become Chelsea's creditor, and he can get a certain percentage of recovery from Chelsea's bankruptcy and liquidation.

If he uses the latter method, he is investing and is a community with Chelsea. Once Chelsea goes bankrupt, he will get nothing.

In other words, although it looks like a financial game, the twists and turns inside are very interesting. Ye Qiu is reminding Platini that instead of controlling how others spend money, it is better to control others' financial health and debt. If all of them use capital injection, I don't care how many hundreds of millions you invest, right?

Football clubs are actually like people. Everyone has their own different will to survive and lifestyle. Whether as a manager of a country or as a manager of an industry, the most important thing is to respect the individual's will to survive and lifestyle, provided that fair and just laws are formulated for them as the standard bottom line.

In the field of football, as long as you have the ability to not be in debt, it doesn't matter if you buy players from all over the world!

Anyway, you can't afford it in the future and go bankrupt, and your players will have to be sold at a low price, and all teams will get the advantage!

In fact, Rob Newman's guess was not wrong at all.

In the last few hours of the last afternoon of the last day of the transfer market, the miser Moyes finally made a move.

He brought in Dutch defender Heitinga from Atletico Madrid for 6 million pounds, Bjarrettino from Lokomotiv Moscow, Russia for 10 million pounds, and central defender Distin from Portsmouth for 6 million pounds.

Moyes is so good at spending money and calculating!

Aston Villa, another team that was poached by Manchester City, also made extraordinary moves, including Collins, Dunne, Downing, Warnock...

Martin O'Neill is also a guy who is deeply thrifty and frugal. After landing in the Premier League, he managed Aston Villa in an orderly manner. From this point, it is not difficult to see that this guy is not a good person.

However, the last frenzy of the transfer market happened to Bayern Munich. The Bundesliga giants got Robben from Real Madrid at the last minute of the transfer market, bringing the Dutch flying man to the Bundesliga smoothly. This transfer should be regarded as the biggest transfer transaction in the Football Economic Forum for three consecutive years, with a transfer fee of 25 million euros.

The biggest transfer in England was a big upset. The Black Cat Sunderland introduced Hull City captain Michael Turner for 12 million pounds. This transfer was also finalized at the last minute of the transfer market.

Ye Qiu witnessed the whole process of Robben's transfer from Real Madrid to Bayern Munich with his own eyes, because he happened to be talking to Rummenigge at the time. After the two sides reached an agreement, Ye Qiu personally called to congratulate Robben. He wished Robben a good development prospect in Bayern Munich.

Back then, the three stars of Ajax moved to Real Madrid with great fanfare. Now, after a while, Sneijder went to Manchester United, Robben went to Bayern Munich, and Van der Vaart almost went to Manchester City, but in the end, he failed to leave. It must be said that it is a very sad thing.

However, there are joys and sorrows. Although Ye Qiu feels sorry for the transfer of his former disciples, everyone is excited about the successful conclusion of the third Football Economic Forum. This event is getting more and more prosperous, so much so that now there is still a trend of copycats in European football.

Not long ago, an Austrian company also founded a so-called football forum and player data platform. In Italy and Portugal, there are also people doing the same thing, which is obviously copycatting the business of Moon Sports Services.

For such a copycat object, Moon Sports Services did not give the slightest blow, because business is like this, there is only open conspiracy, no conspiracy, because conspiracy cannot last long, only open conspiracy can go all over the world and remain unbeaten.

The most important thing in this business is connections and data. Moon Sports Services currently has an absolute overwhelming advantage in these two aspects, almost 99% of the market share. What can the other small companies use to compete?

Therefore, Ye Qiu told Rob Newman that as long as Moon Sports Services does not make mistakes, others will not be able to defeat them.

And all things are nothing more than a rule. The one who walks in the front gets the crab, and the ones who follow closely may not even get the crab shell. The early bird catches the worm, that's the truth.

But just as the transfer market fell, the next day, UEFA immediately sent a message.

Because Chelsea had serious violations in the transfer of young player Kakuta, it was banned from acquiring players in the next two transfer windows, and Kakuta himself was suspended for four months. Chelsea was fined 780,000 euros.

This news immediately caused a stir in the European football world. Chelsea's poaching tactics, led by Pini Zahavi, have been common in the European football circle. Many people are very dissatisfied with this Israeli. The controversy about Ashley Cole and Ledley King was also a hot topic.

Now, there is another transfer controversy involving Kakuta. Chelsea has always given people the impression that they don't remember pain.

When Ye Qiu was coaching Chelsea, he had told Abramovich many times that tyranny is hard to last. If you want to run a team for a long time, you must follow the kingly path, but he didn't listen and continued to follow the underworld path. Ye Qiu had no choice.

But Ye Qiu didn't have too much energy to interfere in other people's affairs, because he still had a lot of things to deal with.

The biggest thing in front of him was that in September, after two weeks of national team matches, Tottenham Hotspur welcomed Manchester United and Chelsea in the fifth and sixth rounds of the Premier League respectively.

This is simply the rhythm of Tottenham Hotspur's death!