Bale deal might seem bonkers, but football's a business like no other

It has been a bad week to be a fan of Tottenham Hotspur football club.

It's been a bad week to be a fan of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
First losing to the detested enemy Arsenal on Sunday, then having to endure the sight of the once-adored hero Gareth Bale walking out in the "Fly Emirates" shirt of Real Madrid after his ?100 million world-record signing. (Nothing against the airline, I hasten to add, apart from its long association with Arsenal.)
The atmosphere late on Sunday night at the poshest sports venue in Dubai, possibly the world - the Rooftop Terrace at the glitzy One & Only Royal Mirage hotel - was sombre. The 1-0 defeat for Spurs was hard to take, and while we were already prepared for the loss of Bale, final confirmation that he had signed for the Spanish giants just put the seal on it.
It should have been some compensation that Spurs had squeezed an eye-watering fee out of Real, I guess, but the fact that we had already spent it on the players who had just lost ignominiously to the Gunners robbed us even of that.
Some fans decry football's ever-growing commercialisation. If young Bale - who has never won a major trophy and has only played irregularly at the highest level - is worth ?100m (Dh483.9m), the world does seem to be going just a touch bonkers. But I think that misunderstands the nature of the game. Just because it involves large sums of money does not mean it's a business, in the sense of making money for its owners.
Many if not most football clubs - Real Madrid included - are relatively small corporate entities that rarely turn in any significant profit for their owners. Usually, they bring debt and losses, while only a tiny few ever compensate those who bankroll them via the "glory" of winning big trophies.
In some extreme cases, for example Glasgow Rangers (another club, like Arsenal, several million light years from my heart), the relentless pressure to invest extravagant sums in the team leads to the collapse of the club altogether.
Then, of course, the fans do begin to worry about finances, but only because it has impacted directly on the team.
The crowd that gathers at the Royal Mirage are all business-savvy people: entrepreneurs, financial advisers, asset managers, even one shadowy globe-trotting deal-maker whose precise business has never been properly ascertained.
But in their heart of hearts as Spurs fans I reckon every one of them would have given ?50m of the Bale money for an equaliser. And the rest for a last-minute winner.
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It's not often a local expat playwright makes it to the London stage, but that's what Nikki Schreiber has done with the play Cheese set for a curtain raising in the British capital next week.
Cheese is an allegorical look at the financial crisis, and the circumstances that created it, through the eyes of a well-off couple who suddenly have to face the unthinkable: there is no more cheese on their table, nor indeed in their world. It has all become toxic. Think cheese-crunch rather than credit crunch.
The production is certainly innovative. Staged at a disused office in London's Oxford Street, it will be powered by electricity generated by exercise machines in local gyms. Think green cheese - or maybe you would rather not.
Nikki, who has had plays staged in Scotland before, spent the duration of the financial crisis in Dubai, and learnt a few lessons from that. If you are in London next week, it would be a good opportunity to support local talent.
 
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