Storyline: Sometimes, teams don’t know what they’re doing. They think it’s a good idea but, in actuality, they don’t realize how bad they’re hurting themselves. Written by Faisal Jalal, Sunnyvale, CA.
As another season starts for the EPL, I await with baited breathe and prepare to do some gnashing of teeth, along with some wailing with my fists clenched at the heavens, to the soccer gods at the state of my favorite club that is in such turmoil and disrepute. While true that Manchester United, labeled as the biggest club in the world and third richest valued at $3.1 billion has the history and pedigree but for some reason the top talents refuse to join the club. Indeed, most are using the club as intermediary contract negotiation tools to increase their value and vault to other clubs. This summer alone has seen many world-class players linked to the club with ridiculous offers being made but none have actually signed with the Red Devils.
This leads me to ponder what has happened that has made the brand so toxic in the first place and once the team brand is damaged, what are the long-term and short-term effects of this brand damage? I believe the answer to this question is the key to understanding all is not well at the biggest club on earth.
Brand damage is a little like brain damage – the effects can be both short term and long term. First of all, let us look at the short-term effects.
Short-term effects are caused by embarrassment to the club by a key player or management. Usually, they are the focus of the media – a flavor of the week but then people just get on with the business. An example of this is when Suarez was taking a bite out of the defense of other teams – it caused a ten game suspension and much embarrassment for Liverpool.
He went on to make Liverpool an incredible amount of money with his sale to Barcelona where he has been in sterling form. As long as he is scoring goals with his natural-born talent as a superb striker, people forget he can turn into the Uruguayan vampire anytime.
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Short-term brand damage can also be caused by unsavory club practices such as payment schemes, etc. This was the case for a club everyone thought was untouchable – the Catalonian giants Barcelona. With the likes of Spanish legends and one Lionel Messi, they were thought to be capable of no wrong until Neymar’s messy contract dealings came to light. The club was involved in some rather illegal payouts in order to obtain Neymar including a £33m compensation fee paid to his father to ensure he joined Barcelona; also added £2m to Neymar’s personal foundation.
Suffice to say, the Spanish government took notice as they were robbed of untold riches in taxes and charged the club £11m with defrauding the treasury of unpaid tax. After all that, the club went through some tough times before the results started to speak for themselves. Now, Barcelona is, yet again, the darling of the Spanish and indeed the world soccer media. Again, as long as the Neymar-Messi-Suarez trident keeps winning cups and breaking records, people will forget the short-term effects of brand damage.
This however, is not the case for the long-term effects of brand damage. The effects are longer lasting with the problems caused by them more severe.
First of all, after failing to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in 19 years, Manchester United took some corrective measures but were just a little too late. First of all, they fired their manager and replaced him with a recognized world-class, trophy winning Dutch legend, Louis Van Gaal. This did have some effect in righting the ship but the team was in a state of turmoil. This is when we started to see that the dynamics of the players and the spirit for glory become unhinged.
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Van Gaal tried to bring in players, with the help of the seemingly inept Ed Woodward, Vice-Chairman of Manchester United. One after another, he was responsible for a disastrous transfer window and negotiation failure with players refusing to sign with Manchester United. The list of players that refused to sign with Manchester United under Ed Woodward’s inept leadership are a who’s who of great talent: Gareth Bale, Cesc Fabregas, Leighton Baines, Thiago Alcantara, Mats Hummels, Toni Kroos, Nicholas Otamendi, Sergio Ramos and Pedro. This is a major effect of long- term brand damage. When players feel the club won’t be able to deliver the opportunity to play at the highest levels, they prefer to be bench warmers at the clubs that will play at that level rather than get solid playing times at Manchester United.
With the loss of the chance to play at the highest levels comes the loss of revenue from broadcast rights. Manchester United lost out on £50m already and it hurts, a lot. Revenue also affects how much is available for the manager to purchase needed talent. When clubs are backed by billionaire owners, this is not so much a worry; but as a publicly traded company, the purse strings are under more scrutiny. It’s a chain-effect. Deal loss equals revenue loss equals less spending money. Therefore another long-term damage to the brand are the monetary hits that come with the actions.
As a result of the two long-term effects, failure to get talent and budget issues, the combination of these are causing the club to almost look desperate and overpay players who are clearly not worth the value. In order to guarantee their services, they are being offered insanely ridiculous amounts of money to sign with the club. This leads to bad deals and long term unnecessary costs for the club.
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This was the case with the expensive experiment with Angel Di Maria, which ultimately cost the club £15m after his sale to PSG. This week, after what seemed like a done deal, Manchester United’s bid for Barcelona’s Pedro was hijacked with the player opting to go to Chelsea instead. Again, ineptitude shown by Ed Woodward, with the club being used to better negotiations with a club that has better results at home and abroad. This is the result of long-term brand damage.
Although Manchester United are not the only club to have had to go through this path, the lessons are there for them to take note. Clubs at the top of their leagues, such as Bayern, have also had to hit rock bottom before rising from the ashes. In Bayern’s case, it was a combination of great players coming together and solid management that lifted them out and shook off the effects of long-term brand damage – whether the biggest brand in world football can repeat the same is yet to be seen. So far, with the form of the present squad and the dynamics of the management, this, I am sad to report, seems unlikely but as we can always hope the long-term effects become short-term and soon they become a figment of our imagination.
