The Financial Times is not slow to comment on football. It is big business, after all. In the Pink Un’s ‘culture’ pages one can find the likes of Simon Kuper writing about the broader implications of the game.
However, it is less common to find football referred to in the Saturday Money section which offers detailed advice on the likes of ‘structured products’ for more prosperous investors. After all, most investors lose money in football, Manchester United being a possible exception.
The Financial Times is not slow to comment on football. It is big business, after all. In the Pink Un’s ‘culture’ pages one can find the likes of Simon Kuper writing about the broader implications of the game.
However, it is less common to find football referred to in the Saturday Money section which offers detailed advice on the likes of ‘structured products’ for more prosperous investors. After all, most investors lose money in football, Manchester United being a possible exception.
Jonathan Eley neverthless comments on what he calls the ‘Torres effect’ in yesterday’s issue. He has evidently been to a Chelsea game as he notes that the player’s ‘loss of form has become the subject of countless rude terrace songs – one particularly inventive ditty is set to to the tune of Abba’s 1976 hit “Fernando”.’
Eley points out that Torres scored 81 goals in 142 games for Liverpool. In 2011 he was sold to Chelsea for a rumoured £50m and for him a reported £140,000 a week. Since then, he has scored 32 goals in 125 games, which makes his cost per goal eye watering.
The point that Eley is making is that companies that over pay their executives tend to under perform. Investors are advised ‘when it comes to picking your investment dream team, it’s best to avoid the Torres of the world, and look instead for the Bentekes and Michus (total cost £9m, 43 goals between them this season)’.
Good advice in principle, but in practice it may be more difficult to spot value players, although very high prices rarely deliver value (van Persie at United clearly has been). Incidentally, I’m still not sure I understand what a structured product is, although my bank sold me one.