Fair play Villa

[shaneker]

Read in the Times today that Villa are looking to forgo their shirt sponsor and publicise Acorns, a childrens hospice. If they go ahead with it they would lose about two million quid a year.

Fair play to them, was impressed when Barca did the same for Unicef but for an EPL side to do it (the league where clubs spend 16 million on Darren Bent) deserves credit - if the plan goes ahead!

[Sheridan]

Fair play indeed, but I'm not sure their feat is any more laudable than Barcelona's. Barcelona could have raised hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of times what Aston Villa would have accrued by using a commercial sponsor.

[shaneker]

Didn't mean to sound like I was comparing the two, just saying that the English league is perhaps where money speaks louder than the other European leagues so its an admirable gesture to give up even small (in top-flight footballing terms) amounts of money to help a childrens hospice. To be honest, I was very surprised when I read it as I couldn't see any club in the EPL voluntarily giving money away like that, it is the greed-is-good league after all.

[NeilMcD]

Fair play indeed, but I'm not sure their feat is any more laudable than Barcelona's. Barcelona could have raised hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of times what Aston Villa would have accrued by using a commercial sponsor.

So Villa raise two million and you reckon that Barca can raise 100 by 100 by 2 million on shirt sponsors.

So Barca can raise €20000000000 from Shirt Sponsors.

[Sheridan]

I'm a patient man, Neil, I've seen enough of human folly to develop calluses over my sensitivities. Read it again and tell me what you come up with the second time.

[geysir]

Real Madrid's shirt sponsorship is worth about €20m p/a.
Wouldn't Barcas be about the same value.

It doesn't demean Villa's gesture.