Football has sold its soul

Slowly but surely English football is being destroyed. Not by the fans, not by the players and not, for once, by the people who run the game.

English football is being torn apart by that rare and irritating species - billionaires.

This week Manchester City became the latest club to fall into the hands of super-rich investors when news broke that they are being taken over by the Abu Dhabi United Group.

Within minutes of that announcement the club made bids for a whole host of top players including Dimitar Berbatov and Robinho. Although they unsurprisingly missed out on the former they secured the latter in a British record £32 million deal.

Manchester City fans were over the moon as you would expect. In one swoop they had left behind the days of being perennial underdogs and gallant underachievers and become the world's richest football club.

And their mood will have got even better when they heard ADUG boss Salaiman Al-Fahim promise to deliver trophies and Champions League football by next season.

"Money is no object when it comes to buying players," Al Fahim declared. And with more £500 billion in the bank, you get the distinct impression that is true.

Essentially, City's new owners have a very basic strategy similar in every way to the cunning plan adopted by Roman Abramovich at Chelsea: use near limitless financial resources to buy your way to the top.

And, considering they are believed to be more than 50 times richer than Roman, I think we can rest assured they will be able to do just that.

But while this method of achieving success may be fun for those involved, it is changing the face of football and eating away at the very fabric of the English game.

Supporters of clubs without billionaire owners - and let's not forget they still make up the vast majority of English fans - are having to come to terms with the fact that their clubs will never, ever be able to compete at the very top of the game.

It doesn't matter how hard they try. It doesn't matter how well they perform on the pitch. It doesn't matter how sensibly they are run in the boardroom. These 'lesser' clubs will never achieve true greatness simply because they don't belong to some glory-seeking, bored billionaire with delusions of grandeur.

And, quite frankly, that makes me sick.

In the days before it became trendy for billionaires to buy their own teams, you did have an elite group of clubs who were able to snap up the best players - clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool.

But their spending power came on the back of prolonged success, massive support and shrewd management. When United made a big signing there was envy among other clubs and fans but, at the back of your mind, you knew they had earned the right to splash the cash.

Today's new breed of super club are not buying players they themselves can afford, they are buying players their owners can afford. Sugar daddies with thick cheque books and a desperate desire for popularity.

And that is upsetting the balance of the game. It's like 95 per cent of clubs are working hard for a living, while the remaining minority are living off lottery winnings. Acceptable, maybe, in normal social circles but a massively unfair advantage in competitive sport.

It would be nice to think that the football authorities are aware of the situation that these billionaires are creating. That right now they are working on ways of redressing the balance and making the playing field a little more level.

But you just know they aren't. The Premier League will be welcoming Al-Fahim with a red carpet and open arms as he fits in nicely with their objective of making their competition a global product.

The FA, on the other hand, may well be worried about what these billionaires are doing to the roots of football but will feel powerless to stop something that is common practice in other industries.

There was once, as I recall, a plan to introduce a wage cap on clubs: not allowing them to spend more than a certain percentage of their annual turnover on player wages.

And while that would not completely solve the problem, it would at least provide some small measure of restraint when it comes to these hideously wealthy clubs signing anyone and everyone that tickles their fancy.

When I expressed my concerns about the Manchester City deal to a friend on Tuesday he insisted it was just jealousy on my part. That I would have been happy if Al-Fahim had washed up on a wave of oil at Sheffield United.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I would absolutely hate it if my club were taken over by some billionaire and then bought their way into the elite of English football. Where's the magic in that?

At the end of the day, football is a way for billions of people to escape from their ordinary lives. Success is nice, yes, but it is more about having something to believe in, something to dream about. The eternal hope is that one day your club could be the very best.

Now, thanks to people like Abramovich and Al-Fahim, those of us who support lesser clubs no longer have that hope.

And for that we thank you so very much.

London's Olympic aims

If I were Seb Coe I would have spent the last few weeks sobbing quietly in a corner.

Having watched what was arguably the most spectacular and best organised Olympics of the modern era, the man in charge of the 2012 games in London knows he has a ridiculously hard act to follow.

From the superb opening show, to the meticulously organised events themselves, all the way through to the stunning closing ceremony, the Beijing Olympics was a winner.

All the doubts that hung over the games before they got underway - from security concerns to pollution - were slowly but surely dispelled over a fortnight of sporting excellence.

And while for most of the world that was both a relief and a joy, for Lord Coe it means he now has slightly less than four years to find a way of taking the games to a new level. And that won't be easy.

In terms of venues he can probably breathe easy. Although London's budget for the games is less than half the £22 billion China spent, shrewd planning combined with a better infrastructural starting point should see them through.

Pollution too should not be an issue. London fought and won the war against smog many years ago and at least there is no danger of the athletes leaving the 2012 games with an inexplicable desire to start smoking.

And on the organisational side, he shouldn't have too many problems either, as the British do like a bit of punctuality. Except when it comes to trains.

But those are the positives. On the negative side, he has three issues to address.

Firstly, and possibly most importantly, security. As England is a considerably more liberal state than China, there is much more scope for civil unrest in four years' time. In Beijing there were controlled 'protest zones' where you could go and say anything you wanted with only a slight chance of being shot or imprisoned. In London you could well be imprisoned for suggesting the setting up of protest zones.

Additionally Lord Coe will have to cope with the sad reality that, due to its international policy, England is a much more appealing target for international terrorism. Securing the safety of the tens of thousands of people who descend on the city for the duration of the Games will no doubt be high up on his list of things to do over the next 48 months.

The second issue Lord Coe faces is how Team GB will be able to improve on their unexpectedly good showing in China. Their 19 golds was their best haul in a century and it will be hard to beat.

But as home nation, Great Britain will be expected to increase on that tally which will mean he needs to find even more cash to be pumped into generating Olympic success stories.

The final issue facing Coe and his team is how to surpass the spectacle created by China. The opening and closing ceremonies in Beijing were awe-inspiring, jaw dropping events with choreography that made previous games looks like school plays.

No matter how many collapsible London buses they use and no matter how many times they wheel out David Beckham to kick a football, putting on a show that matches - let alone exceeds - the Beijing one is going to be tricky.

Of course, over the last couple of weeks Lord Coe and his team have gone to great lengths to insist they will not be trying to improve on China's display. The London games will be unique and it would be unfair to compare them with their predecessors, they have insisted.

But, whatever they say publicly, privately they will surely know comparisons are only natural and that is exactly what the billions of viewers will be doing when the Olympic torch makes its way to London.

The simple reality is that China has raised the bar. If London wants to be remembered for all the right reasons they will need to jump as high, if not higher, than their predecessors.

And that is going to be a pretty tall order.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com