Neymar’s transfer killed something great for me.

Matthew Pye
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

I’m not particularity outraged by the transfer fee of Neymar Jr. from FC Barcelona to Paris St Germain.

I think i have a particularly mature understanding of value. PSG are a club started in 1970 and they are currently owned by the Qatari government, who probably earn €222 million in about an hour. If they buy Neymar the value and status of their club rises, they can sell more season tickets, more Champion league tickets, the market cap of their club rises and so on. In all senses it’ll probably take them about a year to 18 months to recoup their investment.

So forget, is the transfer worth it type of patter. Becasue the short answer is..
“Yes it is…”

This transfer has killed my dwindling interest in professional football.

This has been an organic process that started with moving abroad and losing touch with the team i followed all my life Glasgow Rangers (other names are available). It was then compounded by the shit storm that followed as the afore mentioned club, what ever you want to call it,went into administration, then liquidation, then desolation. The reaction by the Scottish press, football community and it’s supporters baffled me, i guess it was my distance to it that made me not really ‘feel’ what was going on, or able to argue with anyone about it too. As the team formerly known as Glasgow Rangers fumbled around the lower leagues of Scotland i thought i would take on supporting Real Madrid seriously I lived in Spain, it made sense to me. So i bought a shirt, went to a match and got involved, but i was just going through the motions, i didn’t really give a shit.

Having 2 children in quick succession meant my time was spent away from sitting on my ass for hours on a Sunday watching highlights, goals, lowlights and live games and all in all in the 2016/2017 season the only game i watched, almost entirely,was the Champions League Final between Real Madrid and Juventus. Sure i was happy Real won, but if they had lost i wouldn’t have minded at all either.

During this summer i thought to myself i would start taking more of an interest. I have a son and if he likes football, i’m sure my encyclopedic knowledge of the game would come in handy if he takes an interest. So i started to follow the transfer sagas, looking at the fixture lists and even deciding what team i would try to take more of an interest in this season.

Now i know this is about as much of a snowflake attitude you can have to supporting a football team, especially when i think about the team i grew up supporting. But please keep in mind at this time i have about a 0.9% interest in following the sport, and thats only being kept due to an idea that my son, who is 1, might follow the sport in a few years time.

Then the Neymar transfer took place. And the bottom dropped out of it for me. If countries own football teams and the top teams in Europe suck in players like magnets paying incredible money, if the payout from being relegated from the Premier league is bigger than the total prize of the Scottish, Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, Polish and Russian leagues, then something is so far amiss that we really aren’t going to get it back and the playing field is forever skewed.

Why even bother European competitions if the same 8 teams are going to dominate it and the only way to challenge that dominance is to be bought by a oil rich state? The Europe League doesn’t seem to be taken very seriously by the teams in it until the latter stages and most domestic cup competitions are now rarely focused on, as they were when i was young.

Money brought the game to a wider audience, and that necessity to feed the beast has, in my opinion, led the beast to eat itself. Sure, football will continue to be entertaining and i guess i might come back to it one day.

But for now, it will do it without my interest.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade