<h4>Chapter 569: The Business of The English Premier League</h4>
<strong>Trantor: </strong>Nyoi-Bo Studio <strong>Editor: </strong>Nyoi-Bo Studio
Real Madrid’s loss to Nottingham Forest was not considered an “upset.” It was normal for the two teams win or lose in a game with each other. After all, everyone could see the Forest team’s strength.
The next night, Twain brought the entire team to watch the game between AC Mn and FC Lokomotiv Moscow to study their opponents in the final. Twain decided to take it seriously, even if it was just an invitation tournament.
The poprity of the game was assured because of the host team’s participation. The stands were full of spectators, the vast majority fans of the FC Lokomotiv Moscow from Russia. The AC Mn fans were few and far between.
Despite the small number of people, they were generally optimistic that it was not a problem for their team to defeat FC Lokomotiv Moscow. Truthfully, the host team was not as strong aspared to the other three teams.
However, to state that elimination was certain?
The football was round. No one would know the oue of the game until it was over.
Eighty-five minutester, Twain stood up in the stands and stretched his back while he said, “go back and rest, guys. There’s nothing more to watch in this game.”
The score on the big screen was “2:0.”
The home team was listed first and the visiting team was second.
AC Mn was behind.
Ancelotti did not deploy all of their main yers, while FC Lokomotiv Moscow sent in its strongest lineup. One team wanted to train its yers and the other team wanted the honor. The result was conceivable.
AC Mn lost to FC Lokomotiv Moscow, and FC Lokomotiv Moscow wouldpete with Nottingham Forest for the Russian Railways Cup trophy a weekter. AC Mn would y against Real Madrid in a game to determine the third-ce team.
This result was a disappointment to many people. Originally, they wanted to see the rey of the Champions League final in Moscow. No one would anticipated that AC Mn would lose in the first round.
A weekter, Nottingham Forest took down the opponent with a score of 3:1 at the Lokomotiv Stadium and picked up the first trophy of the season.
Although it was only the title of an invitational tournament, their morale was boosted. Even after having just picked up the Champions League trophy, the Forest yers still looked excited at the awards ceremony.
Beckham, who assisted his teammates twice to score the goals in the final, was chosen as the best yer in the final.
David Beckham did not have to worry about fitting in with the team. After having yed in both games, he waspletely one of their own.
Furthermore, Beckham’s performance at the invitation tournament had shut some people’s mouths.
Previously, there had been talk that Beckham was no longer likely to achieve any more sess. His career had entered its final phase early due to his frequentmercial activities. Real Madrid’s decision to dump him was absolutely correct, because his final season as a champion was only a dying back. Having only won one title in his four years for a league like Spain, it had to be almost impossible for Beckham to aplish much if he went to a faster-paced and morepetitive Premier League on top of his frequent injuries.
Beckham had been surrounded by controversies since his debut. He had a deep awareness of it. Therefore, no matter what the outside world said about him, he just concentrated on training every day and yed at his own level in the games.
Twain did not buy him to help sell the jerseys. He valued Beckham’s right nk pass and precise long passes from the middle and back of the field. These were skills thatplemented the Forest team’s counterattacks well. With Albertini gone, the Forest team midfieldcked a yer with the ability for precise long passes. Van der Vaart’s short passes were inventive, but his long passes were far off. In that regard, Beckham’s ability was unparalleled. When he was at Real Madrid, he had used countless long passes from the backfield ranging more than fifty meters to urately send the football to his teammates’ feet.
Previously, the Forest team’s two nks depended on speed to prevail. However, once the opponentspressed the defensive space, the Forest team’s nk attacks would be blockaded. Now with Beckham, the Forest team’s nk attack routines would be more diverse, leaving the opponents unable to defend effectively.
In addition, thanks to his four years at Real Madrid, Twain could also allow Beckham to make the asional appearances as the defensive midfielder and use his long passes tounch attacks, which was much faster than dribbling the ball.
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Nottingham Forest, who had won their first title of the new season, ended their training in Russia and left for the United Kingdom to prepare for the impending English Premier League.
They could not participate in the FA Community Shield since the Premier League champion was Manchester United. The English FA Cup final was a game between Manchester United and Chelsea. Both teams tied at 0:0 in the 120-minute civilpetition, which Chelsea eventually won in the penalty shootout. Consequently, the FA Community Shield in the new season would repeatst season’s FA Cup final — Manchester United versus Chelsea.
The Forest team had nothing to do with the game. They were just spectators. Their first major championship title game for the new season was on August 31st, to vie for the UEFA Super Cup against the UEFA Europa League winner, Liverpool.
Twain had scant interest in this opponent. It was clearly the UEFA Super Cup, and yet, because the opponent was a team from the league, it felt more like the “Football League Super Cup,” nothing novel about it.
He preferred to y against Sevi.
However, it was a pity that the team, selected by FIFAst year as the best football club, had wanted to defend its title, but was beaten by a goal from Liverpool in the final instead and lost the title.
Nothing could be done about it. If the team did not win a credible title again, Benítez might be dismissed. Other than helping the team magically win the UEFA Champions League in his first season since his arrival at Liverpool, Benítez aplished little else these few years. Benítez was not good atpeting in the league tournament. Following the sudden rise of the Forest team, they further lost their eligibility to enter the Champions League for two years in a row, which made the club’s board of directors and fans extremely unhappy.
If he lost the game in the UEFA Europa League as well, the only thing Benítez could do was to admit his responsibility and resign.
Fortunately, the title saved his coaching career at Liverpool.
Liverpool recruited new yers in the new season and vowed to return to fight for the title again.
After the signing of the new Premier League televised broadcast contract, more money was given to the Premier League teams. Under the new broadcast contract, the Premier League champion could receive a 50-million-pound bonus, while even the bottom-ranked team could get 30 million pounds, catching up to the Premier League champion bonus a few seasons ago. No matter what level the Ennd national team was at, the English Premier League remained the most lucrative league in the world.
Against that backdrop, with the exception of Nottingham Forest, who was building a new stadium, the other clubs had only two options: either spend money or be left behind.
No one would choose thetter.
Liverpool spent 11.5 million pounds to buy Ryan Babel, 5 million pounds to purchase Yossi Benayoun from West Ham United, and signed Andriy Voronin on a free transfer from Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Theirrgest sum was the purchase of Fernando Torres from Atlético Madrid, which took 21.5 million pounds.
The amount of money spent on transfers was an indication of Liverpool’s ambition. Twain had reason to believe that with so much money spent, if Liverpool still could not break into next season’s Champions League, then a dismissal was the only way to go.
Life was full of all kinds of surprises.
The Liverpool people would not be quick to forget the humiliation that Nottingham Forest gave them in the final moments ofst season — kicking them to fifth ce in the league tournament and taking their Champions League qualification for two years in a row.
Now their chance for revenge hade.
Benítez’s team could rob Nottingham Forest of its first credible title for the new season at Monaco’s Stade Louis II. Did Twain not always say that “he is a manager who seeks only the championship title”? Taking away his trophy was the best revenge against him.
Even though the English Premier League had not started yet, the Liverpool media began to hype up the game on thest day of August. For many Merseyside people, they had never longed for the victory in a game like that — to defeat Nottingham Forest.
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ording to thepetition schedule for the new season, the first round would be fully rolled out on August 11th. In the final friendly match before the start of the season, Manchester United and Chelsea tied again in the FAmunity shield. They relied on a penalty shootout to determine the winner.
This time, it was not Mourinho who got thestugh but Ferguson.
The two teams had a Premier League history of ying against each other for thirty games. Out of which, Manchester United was at a slight disadvantage with eight wins, thirteen draws and nine defeats. They were neck in neck with four wins, seven draws and four losses at home. Mourinho had a lot to do with this. When he came to Chelsea, he made the team perform well in their encounters with the Premier League’s strong teams, except for Liverpool.
The FAmunity shield loss to Manchester United was just a small part of the feud between the two men.
Mourinho congratted Manchester United on getting the FAmunity shield because that implied that they would lose the league title and Chelsea would win again.
Conversely, Ferguson mocked Mourinho for bringing up an old wives’ tale. The curse of the FAmunity shield was a thing of the past. He added that Chelsea would not have won the league title even if Manchester United had not win the league.
The much-anticipated war of words between the two sides had begun even before the start of the league tournament, which gave the best publicity to the English Premier League in the new season.
This was a brand-new Premier League season with new ways to sell its televised broadcast rights, new televised broadcast contracts, new yers, new teams, as well as... a new champion.
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On August 11th, Nottingham Forest would travel to Liverpool, but their opponent was not the “infuriating” Liverpool. Instead, it was Liverpool’s nemesis in the same city, Everton.
Moyes and Twain had been friends for years and the game would not be too explosive. The special thing was that it was the first league game the former Forest yer, Arteta yed for Everton and he would encounter his former owner, Nottingham Forest.
Meanwhile, the game was chosen by Sky TV as a live broadcast. There were two reasons. One was because it was the European champion’s first game in the new season; the other was because Beckham was back. It was the first game for Beckham since his return to the English Premier League after four years, which would be in the spotlight. The live broadcast of the game would also bring more advertising revenue to Sky TV.
When Beckham left Manchester United, there were the economic experts who said that it was not just a loss for the Manchester United Football Club, it was also a loss for the English Premier League. There was even an exaggerated suggestion that Beckham’s departure meant the decline of the most lucrative Premier League and that the world’s top league was going to be La Liga.
Before this season, the Premier League re-auctioned the Premier League’s television rights for the next three years, with the broadcast rights divided into six parts. Each part contained twenty-three games, four of which were sold to Sky TV for 1.31 billion pounds! Furthermore, the Premier League’s coverage rights of all tournaments over the next five years were shared by Sky TV and Irnd’s Setanta Sports, with a total value of 1.7 billion pounds! That did not include the cost of broadcasting rights sold by the Premier League to the foreign television broadcasting corporations — with the television channels in more than two hundred countries paying 1.23 billion dors to the Premier League for the next three years to broadcast the Premier League, which was about 617 million pounds. The figure put the NBA to shame. Their annual overseas broadcast revenue was only 130 million dors, which was slightly more than 50 million pounds, equivalent to the bonus for the new Premier League champion team in the new season.
It could not be said that there was no rtionship with Beckham’s return at all. Beckham’s return to the Premier League had given many big corporations the confidence to continue to invest in the Premier League and good for the Premier League’s promotion to the world. It was believed that in the next five years, based on the previous results, the Premier League broadcast rights would be offered at higher prices.
Tony Twain was the one to bring him back, but the benefits were shared among the twenty clubs.
It had only taken 191 million pounds for Murdoch to first buy the five-year broadcasting rights for the Premier League games. Five yearster in 1997, the amount became 670 million pounds. And in 2004 after the Serie A economic bubble burst and the copse of KirchGruppe in Germany, the Premier League’s broadcast rights still sold at a sky-high price of 1.02 billion pounds. The English Premier League remained the most lucrative league in the world.
An and Evan were in a hurry tounch the new stadium development n this season. In addition to the Forest team’s historic Champions League victory after twenty-seven years, it was also due to the new televised broadcast contract was signed before this season. The twenty clubs had a lot of money at their disposal. The Premier League almost allocated all of the 1.7 billion-pound money alliance to the Premier League teams. With that funding, all the clubs could n and build their futures, including Nottingham Forest.
Twain and An might have had a lot of small frictions in their daily work, but they were still responsible for their own areas and did not interfere with the other person’s job. However, when it came to the matter of signing Beckham, An was so delighted that he could have kissed Twain.
The television broadcast fee in the Premier League was unlike NFL (National Football League), wherein the thirty-two teams received an even distribution. Instead, it was set ording to the number of times a team’s games was broadcasted and the team’s eventual ranking in the season. Teams with good results and more star yers would get more live broadcast opportunities, which meant more bonuses when the time came.
As the European champion, they would secure more televised broadcast opportunities. On that basis, because the team had a world-ss star yer and a popr idol like Beckham, their number of broadcasts would only increase, especially given the vast audience in Asia and the Americas.
Sky TV’s decision to broadcast all of Nottingham Forest’s live games in the new season was proof that hismercial appeal was impossible to resist
In the 2007-08 season, Nottingham Forest would be the star team that would hold the focus of the world. If they could obtain the results that matched that focus, the goal that Evan had been looking forward to would be achieved ahead of time.