分类： sports

As criticism from global football fan groups continues to mount over the exorbitant pricing of 2026 FIFA World Cup tickets, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has stepped forward to defend the governing body’s policies, pushing back against accusations of exploitative pricing during his appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills this Tuesday.

The controversy surrounding World Cup ticketing erupted into a formal dispute earlier this year, when European fan advocacy group Football Supporters Europe (FSE) filed an official lawsuit with the European Commission, calling out FIFA for what it labels “excessive ticket prices” for the upcoming tournament. FSE has gone as far as branding the 2026 pricing structure “extortionate” and a “monetary betrayal” of the global football community.

Public anger reached a new peak last week, when four tickets for the 2026 World Cup final, scheduled to take place in New Jersey on July 19, were listed for more than $2 million apiece on FIFA’s official resale platform, FIFA Marketplace. The sky-high listing prices drew widespread condemnation from fans and sports commentators alike, who pointed to the stark contrast between 2026 pricing and the 2022 Qatar World Cup, where the most expensive face-value final ticket cost just around $1,600 — compared to the 2026 final’s $11,000 original price tag.

Addressing the backlash directly, Infantino pushed back against claims that FIFA is responsible for the exorbitant resale prices. He argued that the multi-million dollar listings do not reflect actual baseline ticket costs, and there is no guarantee any buyer will actually pay those extreme sums. In a characteristically blunt remark, Infantino joked that if any fan does actually purchase a $2 million final ticket, he will personally deliver a hot dog and a Coke to their seat to ensure they have an enjoyable experience.

Infantino defended the sharp rise in face-value ticket prices, framing the increase as a reasonable adjustment to market conditions. He noted that the 2026 World Cup is being hosted in the United States, the world’s most commercially developed entertainment market, where market-rate pricing is unavoidable. He added that U.S. regulations permit legal ticket resale, meaning if FIFA set lower original prices, scalpers would simply buy up large blocks of tickets and resell them for far higher margins, leaving FIFA with no revenue from the markup.

“Even though some people say our prices are high, the resale market still marks them up to more than double our original prices,” Infantino explained. He also pushed back on claims that all tickets are out of reach for casual fans, pointing out that 25 percent of group stage tickets are priced below $300, a rate that he argues is competitive for major live events in the U.S. “You cannot go to a U.S. college sports game for less than $300 these days, let alone a top-tier professional event, and this is the World Cup,” he said.

Infantino also highlighted unprecedented demand for the 2026 tournament as justification for the pricing model. He told the conference that FIFA has already received more than 500 million ticket requests for the 2026 World Cup, a figure that dwarfs the combined total of fewer than 50 million requests for both the 2018 Russia World Cup and 2022 Qatar World Cup.

For 20 long years, Arsenal football club has dreamed of a return to the biggest stage in European club football. On Tuesday night, that dream became reality, as a 1-0 second-leg semi-final victory over Atletico Madrid at the Emirates Stadium sealed the Gunners’ spot in the 2025 Champions League final — their first appearance in the showpiece match since a heartbreaking defeat to Barcelona back in 2006.

The decisive moment came in the first half, when winger Bukayo Saka tucked home a close-range finish to secure a 2-1 win on aggregate for Mikel Arteta’s side. The full-time whistle triggered wild celebrations: 60,000 cheering fans packed into the north London stadium, while a frenzied Arteta joined his players for an emotional lap of honour, his high-energy celebration matching the momentous occasion.

The win leaves Arsenal on the cusp of something no side in the club’s 140-year history has ever achieved: a domestic and European double. With three remaining Premier League fixtures against West Ham United, Burnley and Crystal Palace, three wins will hand the Gunners their first English top-flight title since Arsène Wenger’s iconic Invincibles side went unbeaten to claim the crown in 2004.

Once the Premier League title race with closest contender Manchester City concludes, Arteta’s squad will travel to Budapest on May 30 to compete for their first ever Champions League trophy. Their opponent will be either defending champions Paris Saint-Germain or Bayern Munich, with PSG holding a 5-4 aggregate lead heading into Wednesday’s second leg in Munich. Ironically, it was PSG who knocked Arsenal out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage last season.

The electric atmosphere began hours before kickoff, when thousands of Arsenal supporters gathered outside the Emirates to greet the team bus, waving red flares, unfurling club flags and roaring defiant words of encouragement for the side. In the aftermath of the win, Arteta said that energy had shifted the entire mood around the club, and he urged his players to channel that momentum across their final four matches of the season.

“Everybody can feel a shift in energy, in belief, in everything,” Arteta told reporters post-match. “Let’s use it in the right way and understand that the margins and the difficulty of what we are trying to achieve are huge, but that we have the ability and the conviction to do it. I’m really going to enjoy it tonight, everybody is enjoying this moment now. But the high is not too high and the low is not too low. My job is to be quite stable. We have an incredible game against West Ham, a really tough one, and we’re going to have four days to do that.”

It has been more than two decades since Wenger’s Invincibles cemented their place in English football history, and in the years following the 2006 Champions League final defeat to Barcelona, the club drifted away from the pinnacle of the sport. But Arteta, who took over as the club’s first team manager in 2019 for his first senior managerial role, has spent six years rebuilding the bond between players, fans and the club’s historic identity — a project that looked uncertain during a four-year trophy drought that followed Arsenal’s 2020 FA Cup win.

This season, the rebuilding work has come to fruition, putting Arsenal on the brink of erasing the pain of three consecutive second-place finishes in the Premier League. Arteta hailed the contribution of the club’s supporters, who he said created an unmatched atmosphere that pushed the team over the line against Atletico.

“It was an incredible night. We made history again together and I cannot be happier and prouder for everybody that’s involved in this football club,” he said. “The supporters were with us for every ball. They made it special and unique, and I have never felt it like that in this stadium. We knew how much it meant to everybody, we put everything on the line, the boys did an incredible job.”

Looking back at his tenure at the club, Arteta admitted he never could have imagined getting this close to such historic glory when he first took the job. The side didn’t even qualify for European competition when he first arrived, making their run to the Champions League final even more remarkable.

“They are the ones that have to make these kind of performances. I didn’t really imagine it because we weren’t in Europe at the beginning. This is a big achievement,” he said. “We have been building little by little. We believed in what we wanted to do. Now we have to maintain it.”

Just months after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) confirmed it would end its massive financial backing of LIV Golf at the close of the 2026 season, the breakaway tour’s chief executive Scott O’Neil says he is optimistic about the circuit’s long-term future, pointing to growing early interest from a wide range of potential new investors.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday ahead of this week’s LIV Golf tournament hosted at Trump National Washington in Virginia, O’Neil revealed he has already held preliminary discussions with prospective financial backers as he drafts a sustainable long-term business plan to present to both tour players and potential sponsors. While he declined to share specific details of the upcoming strategy, O’Neil confirmed the 2027 season will bring substantial, meaningful changes to the tour’s operating model.

Most notably, the era of LIV Golf players earning inflated salaries for competing in fewer events than their counterparts on the PGA Tour is set to end once PIF pulls its support in August 2026. Despite that shift, O’Neil said he remains confident that the tour’s top athletes will choose to remain with LIV once the new business model is finalized.

“Do I believe that when we have a business plan and we raise money, that this is the place the players will choose? I do,” O’Neil told reporters. “I have a lot of confidence this is a place players want to be.”

That confidence stems from early outreach from potential backers: O’Neil says he received roughly a dozen unsolicited inquiries from interested parties over the previous weekend alone, split evenly between private equity firms, private family investment offices, and high-net-worth individuals with a history of investing in professional sports and sports franchises. O’Neil added that he has also held productive conversations with existing broadcast and marketing partners about continuing their partnerships with the tour under new ownership, leaving the leadership team with a clear sense of the circuit’s future direction.

Under O’Neil’s proposed framework, LIV Golf would retain its current 14-event annual schedule, while pushing for reciprocal agreements with other major global golf tours that would allow LIV athletes to compete in outside events. The goal, O’Neil explained, is to create more opportunities for the world’s top golfers from across different circuits to face off against one another in head-to-head matchups throughout the year. Currently, the PGA Tour bans LIV Golf players from its events, only offering a limited reinstatement path that has allowed just a small number of athletes, including major champion Brooks Koepka, to return in 2026.

While O’Neil would not share a firm timeline for rolling out the finalized business plan to players and investors, he emphasized that the LIV leadership team is working with urgency to lock in new funding ahead of the 2027 season. When discussing long-term value for potential investors, O’Neil highlighted the tour’s team-based format, which has been adjusted in recent months to feature more nationality-aligned rosters. O’Neil argued that once the tour establishes a stable revenue and cost structure, individual LIV teams will hold significant long-term value for owners.

Notably, O’Neil said current LIV players have already volunteered to help court private equity investors, joining meetings to make the case for the tour’s sustainability. The circuit has already proven its ability to draw massive live crowds in key international markets, he noted, pointing to 115,000 attendees at its 2025 event in Adelaide, Australia, 100,000 attendees in South Africa, and 60,000 attendees at its 2024 UK event. Those turnouts, O’Neil argued, demonstrate that the LIV brand and its team model are gaining traction with fans globally.

“I’m feeling good. I’m feeling an appropriate amount of pressure. I’m feeling inspired and I feel like we have a clear path to a win,” O’Neil said.

Ahead of Essendon’s upcoming clash with GWS at Engie Stadium this Saturday, two off-field controversies have dominated headlines surrounding the AFL club, but head coach Brad Scott is framing both as opportunities for growth rather than causes for division. At the center of the first talking point is star third-year forward Nate Caddy, who sparked widespread fan and media speculation last weekend after opening up about his frustration with the Bombers’ recent on-field performance. Following a lopsided loss to reigning premiers Brisbane Lions, Caddy told 3AW in a post-game interview that he refused to accept what he called Essendon’s ongoing “mediocrity”, a blunt assessment that quickly ignited debate over whether the young forward would seek a trade to another club in pursuit of premiership success. Across 34 career matches, Caddy has been on the winning side in less than a third of his outings, a stat that adds context to his public call for improvement.

Far from criticizing Caddy for his candid comments, Scott has welcomed the young star’s hunger for victory, describing the forward’s “explicit desire” to lead the club to success as exactly the kind of attitude the developing Bombers need. In a recent media briefing, Scott spoke enthusiastically about the growth Caddy has shown throughout the 2024 season, noting that the forward has shifted his focus from simply establishing his place in the AFL lineup to taking responsibility for driving the entire club forward. “I loved what he said,” Scott explained, wearing a visible smile during the briefing. “I talk to Nate constantly about his competitiveness, and how he’s stepped up as a third-year player to lead our forward line. He’s clear about his goal to get this club into a sustained period of success, he’s hungry for it, and he’s impatient – that’s exactly what excites me. He’s the ultimate competitor, he loves this club and the environment we’re building here. I’ve watched that growth in him week by week this year, it’s been remarkable.”

Scott also pushed back firmly against speculation that Caddy or any of Essendon’s young core are considering leaving the club to pursue success elsewhere. Throughout more than a decade of leading young developing teams as a head coach, Scott says he has seen no indication that Caddy or any of his recruited teammates are looking to exit. Instead, he argues that Caddy’s comments are proof that the club’s young leaders are taking ownership of Essendon’s future, rather than shying away from responsibility for poor results.

The second controversy to hit the club this week has been dubbed “whiteboard gate”, after Brisbane Lions’ internal player-by-player scouting analysis of the entire Essendon squad was leaked to the public. Scott acknowledged that the leak has been an unexpected talking point for his squad, but he is choosing to frame the incident as a valuable learning opportunity rather than a distraction. Scott noted that the Lions conduct this kind of detailed opposition analysis for every club they face, and Essendon was just unlucky to have the internal document made public – a problem that ultimately rests with Brisbane, not his side. For the Bombers, however, the leak gives Scott a chance to reinforce the club’s internal evaluations of players, and to confront any gaps between how the club sees its players and how opponents perceive them. “You can either choose to ignore external opinions and pretend they don’t exist, or you can sit down, analyse them, and if that’s the perception people have, you go out and change it,” Scott said. “Our own view of our players is what matters most, but that doesn’t mean we should just dismiss what an opposition who studies us closely has to say.”

All off-field discussion will be put aside this weekend when Essendon takes on GWS at Engie Stadium, in a match that will test whether the club can turn its growing hunger for improvement into a much-needed win.

In the high-stakes world of Australian Football League (AFL) competition, off-field drama rarely stays out of the headlines, but Melbourne Demons interim head coach Steven King is pushing back against any narrative that recent front-office upheaval has thrown his playing group off course.

The club sent shockwaves through the local footy community last week when it terminated chief executive Paul Guerra just seven months after he stepped into the top administrative role. Sources close to Guerra indicate he is currently reviewing potential legal action following his unexpected dismissal. In a swift move to steady the off-field ship, Melbourne’s board moved quickly to name former Stan chief executive Dan Taylor as Guerra’s permanent replacement.

Despite the swirling public speculation and front-office turnover that followed the sacking, King maintains the separation between the club’s football operations and administrative division has kept the disruption from touching the playing group. “To be honest, not really,” King told reporters when asked if the off-field chaos had pulled focus from the team’s on-field preparations. “Obviously there is noise around it externally, but the football department operates entirely on its own track. What we do as coaches, and what our players need to do to prepare for game day, that doesn’t change. It hasn’t taken too much focus off what we’re here to do. Externally there might be a lot of chatter, but for us day-to-day and week-to-week, the goal of winning matches stays exactly the same. Our job doesn’t shift – it’s still to build an environment where our players can improve every day, and walk onto the field confident they can get the win. The great thing, and the great challenge, of this game is you just focus on the next week and move on from everything else.”

The off-field shakeup came just days before Melbourne’s clash with ladder leaders Sydney Swans at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where the Demons turned in a gritty performance but fell short of an upset victory. The result broke Melbourne’s recent momentum, which had seen the side secure four wins from their previous five outings. King, who is in his first season leading the Demons and has already overseen a clear on-field rejuvenation, praised his side’s fight against one of the competition’s top sides but refused to celebrate a narrow, brave defeat.

“At the end of the day, it was a bad loss because we lost,” King said. “We went up there to win, so of course it’s disappointing. I was really proud of the way the boys fought it out for four quarters, but you don’t get any bonus points for just competing hard – you walk away with nothing. Looking back on it, we played three really solid quarters where we stuck to our game plan and played with courage, but the second quarter got away from us. To give credit where it’s due, Sydney is a fantastic side that capitalized on that lapse. It was a good chance for us to look back at that quarter and identify clear areas where we can improve moving forward.”

After two decades of near misses, unfulfilled potential and long-suffering fan expectation, Arsenal Football Club has finally punched its ticket to the UEFA Champions League final, with homegrown star Bukayo Saka delivering the decisive goal in a tense 1-0 semi-final second leg victory over Atletico Madrid at a sold-out, electric Emirates Stadium on Tuesday.

The result sees Mikel Arteta’s side advance 2-1 on aggregate, after the two sides played out a 1-1 draw in the first leg in Madrid last week. Saka’s clinical finish in the 44th minute of the first half proved enough to hold off a late Atletico push, ending the north London club’s 20-year drought since their only previous Champions League final appearance in 2005-06.

Arsenal now set their sights on the May 30 final in Budapest, where they will face either defending champions Paris Saint-Germain or German powerhouse Bayern Munich. PSG carry a narrow 5-4 aggregate lead into their second leg tie in Munich on Wednesday, and have already knocked Arsenal out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage last season.

For a club that has not lifted European football’s most prestigious prize in its history, the milestone marks a cathartic turning point. Arsenal’s only previous major European honours date back to the 1970 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and the 1994 Cup Winners’ Cup, and their most recent continental final appearance ended in a 4-1 defeat to Chelsea in the 2019 Europa League. This run to the final is already the highlight of decades of European effort for the Gunners.

What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that the club is on the cusp of an unprecedented domestic and European double, sitting atop the Premier League table with just three matches remaining in the title race. Just 24 hours before Saka’s match-winning strike, second-placed Manchester City dropped points in a draw at Everton, handing the Gunners a critical advantage in the title chase. If Arteta’s side can close out wins against West Ham United, Burnley and Crystal Palace, they will claim their first English top-flight title since the iconic 2003-04 ‘Invincibles’ season – and could cement this as the greatest season in the club’s entire history if they go on to win the Champions League.

It is fitting that it was Saka, the face of Arsenal’s youth-driven rebuild under Arteta, who delivered the decisive moment. The academy graduate, who has been a consistent standout for the Gunners throughout this historic campaign, reacted fastest to a parried shot to slot home from four yards out. The sequence started with a clever run from Viktor Gyokeres that stretched Atletico’s defense, pulling defenders out of position and creating space for Leandro Trossard to fire a low effort toward goal. Atletico keeper Jan Oblak could only push the shot weakly into the path of Saka, who made no mistake from close range.

The opening 15 minutes of the match had been fraught with tension for Arsenal, with Atletico carving out two dangerous early chances on the counter: Julian Alvarez dragged a shot just wide, before Giuliano Simeone’s close-range effort deflected past the post. But Arsenal stabilized after those early scares and seized control of the half, ultimately earning the reward they deserved with Saka’s goal.

After the break, Atletico threw everything forward in search of an equalizer to force extra time, but Arsenal’s defense held firm. Gabriel Magalhaes produced a last-ditch tackle to deny Simeone a certain goal, while keeper David Raya made a key save to turn away a powerful strike from Antoine Griezmann, preserving the clean sheet and the aggregate lead.

In the stands, and long before kick-off, the emotion was palpable. Thousands of jubilant Arsenal fans gathered outside the Emirates Stadium, greeting the team bus with flares, flags and deafening chants, turning north London into a sea of red and underlining how much this milestone means to a fanbase that has waited a generation for a return to the Champions League final. Only weeks earlier, the side faced heavy criticism after a four-loss dip in form that sparked old fears of another late-season collapse, with fans and pundits alike labeling the Gunners ‘nearly men’ and questioning their mental toughness. Those doubts are now all but erased, as the club stands 90 minutes from a domestic title and one win from a historic European crown.

Arteta, the Spanish architect of Arsenal’s rebuild, celebrated jubilantly after Saka’s goal, punching the air in front of the delirious home crowd. The manager has revealed in recent weeks that he visualized this exact moment even during the difficult, early stages of his tenure, when the club was fighting just to qualify for the Champions League. Now, his long-held daydream is just one win away from becoming a glorious reality.

As the Fremantle Dockers gear up for a Thursday night blockbuster against Hawthorn at Optus Stadium, head coach Justin Longmuir has pushed back against any concerns over star midfielder Caleb Serong’s dipping disposal numbers, framing the statistical dip as a sign of the vice-captain’s game-changing team-first mindset.

Amid the Dockers’ current seven-match winning streak — a run that has lifted the club to second place on the AFL ladder — Serong has posted his lowest average disposals per game since his rookie debut season. Where many supporters and analysts might flag this drop as a cause for worry, Longmuir says the shift reflects a deliberate, selfless choice by Serong that benefits the entire starting lineup.

Opposition teams have increasingly focused on tagging Serong to neutralize his influence on the field, a strategy that Serong has leaned into to create space and opportunity for his teammates. Longmuir highlighted this underrecognized contribution in press comments ahead of the clash, noting that while Serong’s personal stats are down, his on-field impact remains as critical as ever.

“The selfless nature of Caleb when he gets tagged and what that opens up for other players is something that probably hasn’t been picked up enough,” Longmuir explained. “His numbers might be down, but I think his impact is still at a really high level. He’s all about the team. It’s great when two of your vice-captains — Serong and Andrew Brayshaw — are leading the way in that aspect.”

Longmuir specifically name-checked Hayden Young, Shai Bolton and Murphy Reid as players who have reaped the benefits of opposition attention shifting to Serong, unlocking more space and possession for the Dockers’ other playmakers. A win against Hawthorn on Thursday would not only extend Fremantle’s current winning streak to eight matches, a feat the club has not achieved since a red-hot opening to the 2015 season, but also solidify the club’s hold on second place on the ladder, creating a crucial buffer over chasing sides.

Despite the stakes of the clash, Longmuir rejected framing the match as a chance for the Dockers to prove they are legitimate premiership contenders. “We don’t have to prove anything to anyone,” he said. “We just need to see where our footy stacks up. It’s another opportunity for us to try and improve our footy. We understand the opposition, we understand their strengths, we understand what our footy is about. Last year we played our better footy against the better sides. I don’t feel like we need to go out there and prove anything to anyone.”

Both clubs head into the Thursday night match at Optus Stadium with unusually healthy injury lists, with Hawthorn captain James Sicily confirmed to take the field for his side. The showdown is set to be one of the most high-profile matches of the AFL round, with a historic winning streak and ladder position on the line for the in-form Dockers.

Widely regarded as the most commercially successful soccer league on the planet, the English Premier League is facing a growing financial paradox: even as total revenue hit an all-time high of £6.8 billion ($9.2 billion) for the 2024/25 season, cumulative losses across top-flight clubs have surged to nearly $1 billion, driven by an unrelenting spending war to secure on-field success that has overridden long-term financial sustainability.

The root of the deficit crisis lies in skyrocketing costs across three core areas: player transfer fees, first-team wages, and agent commissions, all of which have grown far faster than the league’s record income gains. No club exemplifies this trend more starkly than Chelsea, which logged a new unwanted Premier League record pre-tax loss of £262 million for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2025. The west London side’s aggressive strategy of snapping up young talent from around the globe makes it an outlier, but its overspending is merely the most extreme example of a league-wide pattern.

Even clubs with robust revenue streams and on-field success are not immune to the red ink. Tottenham Hotspur, a club ranked as the ninth-wealthiest in the world and fresh off a Europa League title, still finished the season £121 million in the red, despite strong returns from its modern, multi-purpose stadium. Financial analysts note the overall league deficit would be even larger if not for creative accounting maneuvers, where many clubs have sold key assets to entities controlled by their own ownership groups to paper over losses. For example, Saudi-backed Newcastle United sold its iconic St James’ Park stadium to a sister company owned by the club’s shareholders to claim a paper profit, while Everton and Aston Villa generated one-off income by monetizing their women’s football divisions.

“The problem with the Premier League is that clubs are so incentivised to overspend,” football finance expert Kieran Maguire told Agence France-Presse. “It’s an arms race at the end of the day in terms of competing for players on transfer fees and wages.”

The published 2024/25 financials do not even capture the full impact of the record-breaking 2024 summer transfer window, when Premier League clubs spent a combined £3 billion on new signings—£650 million more than the previous all-time high. Liverpool’s £125 million capture of striker Alexander Isak marked the most expensive signing ever by an English club, and that transfer was part of a £450 million total spending spree for the defending league champions, which has yet to deliver on-pitch results matching the outlay.

Player wages have also continued to spiral upward, hitting a total of £4.4 billion across the league last season—a 9% increase from the previous campaign, outpacing the 7% growth in total revenue. Spending on player agents also reached a new peak, stoking widespread fan frustration at the growing amount of money leaving the sport even as ticket prices for matchgoers continue to climb.

In the modern hyper-competitive Premier League, on-field success is no longer measured only by trophy wins. For the second consecutive year, at least five English clubs will qualify for the UEFA Champions League, a competition that delivers massive guaranteed financial payouts, creating even more pressure to spend to secure a top league finish.

Starting next season, the league will implement new financial regulations designed to cap squad-related spending as a percentage of club revenue. Under the new rules, total spending on wages, transfer fees, and agent commissions cannot exceed 85% of total revenue, with a tighter 70% limit imposed on clubs competing in UEFA competitions. However, analysts warn the changes are unlikely to meaningfully reduce overall losses, as rapidly rising operating costs— which hit £1.9 billion across the league last season—are not included in the cap.

Despite consistent heavy losses, top Premier League clubs remain highly sought-after assets for wealthy investors and sovereign wealth funds, thanks to their scarcity value and the league’s massive global audience. British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe acquired a 27.7% stake in Manchester United in 2024 for £1.25 billion, valuing the 20-time English champions at £4.5 billion. Chelsea was sold to a US-led consortium in 2022 for a total deal value of £4.25 billion, while Manchester United’s domestic rivals Manchester City have dominated English football since an Abu Dhabi royal family-backed takeover, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund purchased Newcastle in 2021.

Former Manchester United captain Gary Neville has argued that the scale of Chelsea’s record losses could signal a coming cool-down in the booming market for English club ownership. But Maguire says that for the ultra-wealthy owners who now control most top Premier League sides, these nine-figure losses remain manageable. “With billionaire owners and sovereign wealth funds in charge of clubs, whilst the losses seem high, for those people they are deemed to be affordable,” he explained. “Unless there’s a mindset change from club owners in terms of controlling your core costs, which are player-related in transfer fees and wages, we’re going to continue in this vein for some time.”