Source: Telegraph
Manchester City's vision has life after Kaka
Sadly, "humanitarian potential factors" were not enough to lure Kaka "on a journey" with Richard Dunne and Darius Vassell, but what was he thinking accusing Milan of "bottling it"?[LNB] However frustrating it must have been to have seen 14 weeks of hard work ruined by one meeting, there was no excuse for publicly undermining the credibility of Milan and insulting Kaka's father and adviser. [LNB]Never mind good manners, there are pragmatic issues at stake. Will they really never try to sign Kaka again? Do they not expect to do business with Milan in the future? Bridges have been burned, which is different to getting burned on Wayne Bridge. [LNB]In the grubby world of football, Cook comes across as naive. As I understand it, the football agents were excluded from the disastrous meeting with Kaka's father, Bosco, Cook feeling he could sell the move on his own. [LNB]There is something endearing about his belief that if you are just direct and honest, people will buy into your project. It is just desperately unrealistic. Agents, as unpopular as some are, are skilled at translating complex deals into terms that players and, just as importantly, their families can understand. [LNB]While it is easy to give Cook a kicking over the whole farrago, underlying all his management-speak guff and spoilt petulance is an essentially sound theory. Yes, painful to admit, but he is right. Cook's big idea has legs. [LNB]The very elite footballers have not realised their market potential (infectious this management stuff, no?). In Forbes's 2008 survey of sports highest earners, only David Beckham and Ronaldinho featured in the top 10. [LNB]Football has far greater global appeal than basketball, golf or tennis. If you were considering just the potential market, footballers should be the richest sportsmen on the planet. [LNB]This is the disparity that Cook has seized on. If you can crank up the marketing potential of someone like Kaka – handsome, clean-cut and, above all, talented – to the level of a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods, then it changes the stakes. [LNB]This was not about blowing huge sums of money. It was a different way of thinking about how footballers are promoted. While the initial fees were exorbitant, City would have taken control of his image rights and milked them like image rights have never been milked before in football. And once you have done it with one superstar, you move on to the next. [LNB]At Nike, Cook helped Jordan become a multi-billion-dollar industry. One City source, close to the Kaka deal, told this paper that Jordan's autograph rights alone cost $12 million; Kaka's total earnings from merchandise tie-ups were between seven and eight million euros. The top handful of footballers are behind the curve. [LNB]Cook will eventually get his global star and put his system to the test. Perhaps it will fail. Perhaps football is, in some mysterious way, immune to the hype and marketing of other sports. I doubt it. [LNB]While everyone is having a laugh at City's expense – it might be worth enjoying it while we can – it is worth asking the question about who is planning the future of your club. Chief executives or their equivalents have never mattered more to football clubs. Players care about the next five minutes; managers about the next five games; the chief exec cares about the next five years. [LNB]That is why the mess at Liverpool is so worrying. Rafael Benitez has no faith in Rick Parry, hence his efforts to seize control of transfers. Tom Hicks, one of the club's co-owners, thinks Liverpool have stagnated commercially compared to their rivals. With George Gillett backing Parry and the future ownership of the club undecided, Liverpool lose ground by the day. [LNB]At Chelsea, Peter Kenyon has been charged with making the club sustainable while David Gill has a firm grasp of the rudder at Manchester United. Arsenal, after an interminable search, have finally installed Ivan Gazidis as their chief executive. [LNB]Across the leagues, clubs are desperate to find individuals who possess not only management skills and vision but also a football sensibility. Sheikh Mansour is sold on Cook's vision.[LNB] Maybe he has a particularly laconic translator. Cook's problem, aside from an excess of hubris, is that the kind of player he wants is exactly the kind of player least likely to be moved by money alone. Robinho's cavalier attitude to his team-mates shows why he is clearly not the man. [LNB]Cook needs an authentic footballer, an exceptional talent, a star with charisma, a role model. Kaka was exactly that – as Jose Mourinho has said[LNB], by signing him, credibility would have come "in two seconds". [LNB]There aren't many others, maybe Cristiano Ronaldo, Cesc Fabregas, Lionel Messi, Fernando Torres. But if he gets it right, and snares one, schadenfreude could well turn to envy. [LNB]
