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Very interesting programme on BBC Radio 4's File on Four last night:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/file_on_4/ (Listen Again or Podcast).
Very relevant to our own shambolic mess. One great story about a bloke who bought York City for a pound, then sold the ground for £400,000 and now cheerfully admits he lied to the fans.
I think you posted this in the wrong place.
As I said, I think it's relevant because of what's happened in our league this season: clubs overspending, cynical investors, players not being paid, money owed to Revenue. Interesting to see that it's not uncommonplace across the water either. It's a good analysis of what happens when ambition exceeds financial realities.
I suspect that it's the same for the game across the world.
Football is intoxicating, and causes otherwise smart people to do stupid things in pursuit of 'the dream'.
Ireland is by no means unique in this.
I suspect that it's endemic to the game, and that the only way it can be tackled is to legislate to control it, rather than hope to ever snuff it out. You can't snuff-out starry-eyed hope, and that is what is driving people to make silly decisions in football.
The fundamental mistake that everyone seems to make is that they believe there's profit to be made in owning a football club and there simply isn't. Not unless you own one of the biggest clubs in the world can you expect the bottom line to be out of the red every year.
Might be going off topic here. But I heard an interesting fact the other week. If the EFA and EPL had the same rules as we do over here, Man Utd, Liverpool, Newcastle, Chelsea, Spurs and Portsmouth would have been punished by now. I suppose we could add one or two more that list. I not 100% sure about this, just repeating what I heard.
Anybody with a working brain should be able to break even with a football club if they wanted to.
The problem, as DCFCSteve points out, is that plenty of otherwise functional brains seem to go a little haywire when thinking of the game...
Clubs trying to buy their way to the premiership are the biggest problem. It's fine when you have billions of pounds like David Sullivan or Dave Whelan but not so good for the 'mere' millionaires who try to take their club to the top. Point is, nearly every club in the Football League now has a sugar daddy, and there's only so many promotion places. It's inevitable that some will be disappointed, then the owners get disillusioned and leave the club with a load of debt. I'd like to say we're different, but I'm not so sure we are. At least we've spent our money on a stadium though, rather than players.