When Football and Money didn't meet... thankfully so.

If you are a football fan, and you haven’t been living under a rock, then you have most certainly heard about the transfer drama surrounding Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, better known as Kaká. It ended yesterday with the man reportedly deciding to stay at Milan rather than be lured by the obscene wages the EPL club were offering.

Now I am not a Milan fan, nor is Kaká my favourite player in the world, although I do like him (even have his jersey). But I am a football fan, and I was praying all along that he doesn’t go to City? Why? Because for however financially sound the move would have been, all my footballing sensibilities were against a former World Player of the Year moving to a relegation threatened club. It is also heartening to see players showing some loyalty (even if the club doesn’t reciprocate, like the current case) while most others follow the money trail. But that is beside the point.

Money has governed the game ever since one can remember, and there is nothing wrong with it. For all the romanticism associated with the game, it is still a business and money will make it go round. It is no coincidence that all of the ‘big clubs’ across Europe have the most money and there is nothing wrong with a lower club spending its way to the top. The football fan’s mind is short term, and the post Abramovich Chelsea is comfortably regarded as a big club now even though it was never one before the money had started pouring in. No doubt Manchester City would be regarded as the same a couple of years from now.

However, there lies a difference between Chelsea and Manchester City. Chelsea didn’t obscenely start waving its money as soon as Abramovich bought the club. They first built a solid squad of players which could challenge the top, and once their status was assured, did they actively try to buy ‘stars’. It is an interesting point that Chelsea’s first real star signing – Andriy Shenchenko, turned out to be the biggest transfer flop this side of Walter Samuel. Manchester City, on the other hand, lie just four points above the drop zone and yet they have tried to buy one of the biggest players of the world, purely on the temptation of money. While I do not buy elitist arguments that clubs without a winning history have no business challenging at the top purely due to their spending power, I do take offence as a football fan to see a rich club having nothing to offer by way of footballing ambitions and yet going for the big guns simply because they financially can. It would have probably disgusted me to see Kaká try to save a team from relegation rather than help it reach the top. City would do well to first improve and consolidate their status before they start approaching the best players.

Interestingly, I have otherwise taken heart by the fact that City have shored up their defence considerably in this transfer window, which was clearly their problem area. They really did not need an attacking player like Kaká (although a player of his talents certainly would not hurt) since they have the second best attacking record in the league; their troubles lied in the back. They have already made one shock signing in Robinho in the summer which signals their intent to challenge the big guns, but they need to follow it up with performances on the field, before stars like Kaká would even contemplate going there and fans outside their loyal base could start accepting it.