It’s the nature of the beast.
I worked for more than one American hedge fund manager/owner in an earlier incarnation.
I discovered they are much smarter than the average bear, extremely analytical, and have an ability to focus like chess players. But the one overriding characteristic they share is that they are insanely competitive.
When Henry took over Red Sox he said he would make them winners. When he took over LFC – same. He delivered on both counts.
But one thing I also discovered is that they many of them lack what is referred to as social intelligence or emotional intelligence. They don’t know how they appear to others. They lack self-awareness.
I doubt Henry harbors an iota of ill will or contempt towards LFC fans. He would have been genuinely bewildered at the reaction to this breakaway plan. Because people like Henry live to compete with others, not to commune with them, or understand them.
I don’t know what type of owner fans are looking for. But if they are looking for someone who “just gets us”, the billionaire hedge fund manager set is probably not the dating pool you need be fishing in.
LFC is probably of the top four football clubs in the world. So we can find the money.
But the money can’t buy us love.
That's a very good post.
I think it's a valuable insight, because I'm not sure many of us realise just what kind of people we are dealing with here.
Your insight into their psychology is telling, and something I notice myself too. I also see borderline psychopathic tendencies with such people. Some are outright psychopaths. It's what helps them step on others. It's what helps make them ruthless and efficient. They are also very tunnel-visioned. They will never 'get us' because they aren't like us, they do not share our social outlooks, do not understand them, and don't really want to understand them anyway. Ruthless in business? yes, but social conscience and awareness? No. Empathy? No. Emotional maturity and intelligence? No. Most of them don't even understand why their actions enrage others. As you said, it's a lack of self-awareness and wider awareness.
Without realising it, our society values psychopaths. It's no surprise that the job title that has the biggest proportion of psychopaths in it are company CEOs. Behind them we have Lawyer then media and sales people. People who get to the top in those things have to step on a lot of people, and you can't do that if you have much of a conscience and a lot of emotional maturity and awareness.
We have to remember that FSG are sharks swimming in a pool with other sharks. At some point, bigger sharks will eat the smaller ones, so you have to decide if you are that bigger shark or not. From the point of view of those who own the biggest clubs, the ESL move was inevitable at some point. If we can put ourselves momentarily into their mindsets, we'd see that. Thing is, their mindset is alien to ours. I doubt FSG and the other owners believe they've done anything wrong. I doubt Abu Dhabi, Abramovich or QSG feel they are doing anything wrong either. It's what they do. It's all they know. Social conscience, empathy etc are alien concepts they neither understand or want to understand. They see those qualities as weakness to be exploited rather than cherished values.
However we dress it up, FSG are sharks, but they've been tolerated because they've been
our sharks and have brought with them improvements in the ground, the management, the team and the success on the pitch. Maybe that made them feel a lot more cuddly than they actually are, but this week has lifted the veil. Thing is, if we are to compete in what the modern game has come to, we either stick with this lot or we settle for another, unknown quantity of a shark because, let's face it, we aren't getting an owner with anything like the predominant values of the fanbase. They aren't out there. I doubt they exist anywhere. I know fan ownership has been put forward, but I'm not clever enough to even begin to understand how that might work or how viable it is, so I won't go down that road in this post.
All this was inevitable once the real money men moved into football. Football has been slipping away from what most of us know as reality for a long time. Sky were opportunists who saw a way of taking the working class game away from the working class, repackaging it, then selling it back to us at an inflated price. Sportswear manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and change kits every season and charge £100 for the privilege of wearing our own club shirt that was knocked up in a sweatshop for peanuts. The football fan became an exploitable resource to be milked dry, and all the sharks moved in for their piece of flesh. All ruthless businesses headed by ruthless people looking to extract as much cash as they can from the cash cow before it pops its cloggs. Sky sell our own game back to us with expensive viewing packages. They probably feel they've reached the ceiling of what they can milk out of the fanbases as they currently are, so looked to reach out to fanbases further afield via this ESL idea. It's just the search for another exploitable resource to tap into.
In some ways, these people are like a plague of locusts. They move in, strip resources bare, then move on. It's their way. It's what they do. It's also why we will never really understand them and they'll never really understand us. Both want sporting success on the pitch, but for very different reasons.
