These are the players of the Uruguayan football club Montevideo City in their sky blue jerseys.
These are the Melbourne City players in their sky blue jerseys
and here the New York City players
and the Mumbai City players in their sky blue jerseys.
Sky blue rings a bell, doesn't it?
Of course, it's the colour of Premier League champions Manchester City. But wait!
All these teams not only share the same jersey colour
but also the same name and the same sponsor Etihad.
Is that a coincidence? Yeah no! Nice branding some might say,
I say, this might be the end of football as we love it.
We all know that football is not only captivating,
emotional, and completely bonkers
but football is also a business.
What's new, you ask. The news here is that business knows no end
and if there's more money to be made than today's football executives will go for it.
If rich football clubs are not going for more than someone else will.
They've got to, to maintain their position at the top.
Maybe for now they won't have their own league
- sorry, I had to go there -
but they have farms?
No, not this kind of farm.
This kind of farm, where they don't have pigs or poultry but football players.
The concept of farm teams as we know it today has its origin in baseball. It was conceived
by American baseball manager Branch Rickey at the Saint Louis Cardinals during the 1920s.
At the time young talent was fair game. Major league clubs
signed them from independent minor league clubs.
But Rickey got frustrated that talented players he was interested in
were so often snatched up by wealthier rivals.
So what did good old Branch Rickey do, you think?
He bought a whole set of minor league teams for his Cardinals
allowing them to promote developing players and grow their own talent.
During the 1930s the Cardinals had as many as 40 farm teams,
they won 9 national league titles and 6 world series championships between 1926 and 1946.
The New York Yankees would copy the concept to build their own dynasty. Fast forward to today
and farm teams are the norm. Every major league team has affiliate clubs in minor league baseball,
and the parent clubs have the exclusive right to sign players from these affiliate clubs.
Farm teams aren't just a baseball phenomenon,
they also exist in sports such as ice hockey basketball and Formula One.
But let's talk football again, shall we?
There are reasons that speak for a farm team system. F ootball is one of the biggest cash cows
in world sport. Few sports generate as much money. However clubs usually struggle to make a profit.
That's especially true for amateur clubs where many future professional
football players start out, many clubs even shut down for good.
That could change once they become a farm team.
Amateur clubs that affiliate themselves with bigger clubs don't have to worry about finances
anymore and they benefit on the pitch by receiving talented youngsters. The young
talents meanwhile gain valuable experience. The coaches are in constant communication with the
parent club's officials and get invited to workshops to further their education.
Appears to be a win-win for all, right?
It certainly made sense for German club SG Wattenscheid.
In 2014 they announced a collaboration with Turkish giants Galatasaray.
The club was playing in the fourth tier and the partnership seemed like a perfect solution to get
them back into professional football. The plan was for Galatasaray to send players to Wattenscheid
on loan where they would receive first team experience. Everyone was expected to profit.
Well, Wattenscheid did not succeed in entering professional football again.
They even filed for bankruptcy in 2019.
It was a nice idea but it didn't work out.
Too far fetched for you? Let's look at a current example.
Earlier this summer Bundesliga club Wolfsburg entered into a cooperation with Austrian second
division site Sankt Pölten. The best young players from the Wölfe academy
will make the leap into professional football via a loan to the alpine club.
Three players from Wolfsburg's youth academy have already gone on loan to Pölten this season.
The reason: in the last 10 years besides Maximilian Arnold
no talent has lastingly made the leap to the professional team.
Sounds like everyone will benefit from the deal, doesn't it?
Sankt Pölten gets top talents, Wolfsburg gets matured returnees.
And the young players get playing time for a professional Austrian team.
So there's really no shame in saying: yeah, farm teams can be a good thing and serve
a valuable purpose, right? The problem is, it's rarely as simple as you think.
The one catch is, both spokes under 23 team will be sacrificed for the cooperation.
The reserve team will be deregistered from the Regionalliga Nord.
Wolfsburg's sporting director Marcel Schäfer explained...
Sounds reasonable, but deregistering your youth team means that a lot of
players potentially don't have a job anymore, as do the coaches, and the rest of the staff.
If the wolves think that a player won't play for the first team at any given point
would they send them on loan to Pölten or let them train with the first team?
No chance!
And there is a major point that i haven't addressed yet.
Wolfsburg's owner Volkswagen is now also sponsoring Sankt Pölten. The company logo
will be on Sankt Pölten's kit, and Volkswagen will provide cars for the players and staff.
If you ask me, it might actually improve the Sankt Pölten jersey.
Rather than having the local cable provider ,and the mobile provider,
and the local bank ,and an insurance company on their kits.
It's one step away from big global corporations owning the sport, isn't it?
And if Wolfsburg ever lose interest, they can drop Sankt Pölten like a hot potato.
But there is of course another German-Austrian connection that's drawing way more attention,
and i'm sure you guys already know which one i'm talking about.
Everyone knows the Austrian beverage company Red Bull,
and most football fans know that Red Bull owns football clubs, namely RB Leipzig,
Red Bull Salzburg, the New York Red Bulls and Red Bull Bragancino.
The biggest fish is undoubtedly the Bundesliga team from Leipzig.
Since the start of Red Bull's investment in 2009
the company turned a club playing regional football into genuine Bundesliga title contenders.
And one could argue that the other three Red Bull clubs serve as farm teams for Leipzig,
but while New York and Braganchino only rarely exchange players with Leipzig,
Salzburg has done so quite often.
Since the first transfer 18 players have found their way from Austria to Germany,
including the likes of Dayot Upamecano, Naby Keïta and Péter Gulácsi.
Meanwhile only six players went the other way around, five of them on loan.
And it doesn't stop at the players. Leipzig's new coach Jesse Marsch
already coached both New York and Salzburg before joining Leipzig as head coach this summer.
I mean...
And that's not all. Red Bull Salzburg, the New York Red Bulls and Red Bull Bragancino
also have their own farm teams, all owned by Red bull, too. FCLiefering, another Salzburg football
club and Red Bull Salzburg have a similar cooperation as Sankt Pölten and Wolfsburg,
aside from the tiny difference that Liefering is owned by Red Bull.
If you check out a Bundesliga player who used to play for Red Bull Salzburg
chances are that he also played for Liefering at some point
So in the case of Red Bull system it's obvious what's at stake.
Salzburg dominate the Austrian league and Leipzig benefit by having direct
access to promising stars at arguably low costs.
Upsides for these two clubs, but downsides for their competitors who don't have a sugar daddy.
It's a bit like an independent bookstore trying to compete with Amazon.
And is that really what we want in football?
But the most important thing to take away from Red Bull's investment is that success
is not necessarily the main aim. It is merely a
means to make players more valuable in order to sell them at a high profit.
And if you don't have to pay top dollar for some of the biggest talents because
they belong to an affiliate club you'll be doing pretty well.
And your opponents are left wanting.
Now the Red Bull system appears to be the best functioning model on the market,
but the most aggressive example of a farm team strategy comes from the City Football Group.
Basically the City Football Group or CFG is a british-based holding
company that administers association football clubs and...blah blah blah.
78% of the company is owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group.
If you want to find out more about this connection you should watch our
episode on sportswashing. But let's get back to farm teams.
The City empire contains a number of clubs all over the world. The
first club the investment group bought was Manchester City, no surprise here.
Since then five clubs have been already fully branded with blue shirts and the same name.
Besides Manchester there is NYFC, Melbourne City, FC Montevideo City FC and Mumbai City FC.
Since 2020 the city football group is also the
main shareholder of Lommel SK in Belgium and Troyes FC in France.
Then there's Girona FC in Spain and China's Sichuan Jiuniu.
That makes nine club under the wings of the holding company, not to mention the two partner
clubs of the most successful Bolivian top team Club Bolivar and French fourth tier side Vannes.
At the end of 2020 the Japanese football club Yokohama F. Marinos ended their six-year
cooperation with the city football group, and in the past they were linked to a bunch of
other clubs as well, most recently with the likes of Egyptian side Pyramids FC in 2020.
Lastly take the company's subsidiaries such as City Football China,
India, Singapore or Japan as well as City football youth academies in Manchester,
Melbourne, New York city and Montevideo.
You have to say that compared to the Red Bull talent network
player movement between the City Group clubs has so far been fairly limited.
Only Girona and Manchester City have had a regular exchange of players.
Mostly young talents would join the current second tier club in Ppain on loan,
11 in the past four years.
But the city football group has big plans
and it looks like they will be the leading farmer in the near future.
Since they own or cooperate with multiple clubs on basically every continent,
they can expect to land the best national talents at basically no cost.
FIFA does not allow international transfers of players under 18,
which doesn't matter if you control a club in the player's country.
Brilliant but very competition distorting.
Because if you aren't part of a, let's call it football cartel, it gets quite difficult.
What good is the best scouting network and trips to the end of the world
if the talent there already belongs to your big competitor.
And it gets even more confusing. Manchester City has also invested more than 1 million
Euros per year in the African 'Right to Dream Academy' in Ghana since 2010.
Meanwhile the 'Right to Dream Academy' bought - yes,
you heard right - "bought" Danish club FC Nordsjaelland back in 2016.
Simple system really. The academy scouts thousands of young African players from West Africa,
trains them, and the best might get a shot to prove themselves in Denmark.
What's in it for city, you ask?
Well, whenever Nordsjaelland want to sell a graduate of the right to
dream academy to another club, Man City first have to agree.
In addition 25% of the transfer fee goes to the big brother in Manchester.
Again, brilliant! But I'd say that makes Nordsjaelland at least half a farm team
of the city football group. Or what do you think? Let me know in the comments!
Now look, I know I'm a football romantic,
but the farm team system is killing traditional football as we love it.
It's certainly ending the days when local stars would become heroes at their hometown club.
Try to find a player in Leipzig's squad who's from the region.
Yeah, there are none, and if you look at City, Phil Foden is hosting a party of one.
I know, it's no surprise to anyone because it's no new development.
But the farm team system has definitely put the final nail into the coffin.
So let's quickly look into the future. The
group that manages to build the best network of clubs will be the winner.
Can big clubs afford not to do what Red Bull and the City Football Group are doing?
Maybe someday clubs won't simply face other clubs, but investment groups will play each other.
The Red Bull network will face the Global Citizens.
Hope remains that national associations will find a way to stop the favoritism
between parent clubs and their farm teams,
but if you ask me it's already gone too far and that hope is dying.
This might be the end of football as we know and love it.
What do you think of the farm team system?
A necessary next step for top teams or just a massive distortion of competition?
Let us know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe to our channel.