Tottenham's Greatest Asset: Levy, Bale and a History of Transfer Excellence

There are no two ways about it, football is now as much a business as it is a sport. Without the sponsorship, ticketing and branding rights the game would cease to operate on a financially-viable level.

From the days of amateurism, football has grown into a behemoth almost eclipsing the thin perimeters of the game it once was. Results now transcend boundaries, pressures are elevated beyond all proportion, there is a lot to win and even more to lose.

All clubs therefore have business men involved in the club hierarchy to oversee the operation of the club as more than simply a sporting enterprise.

Last year, the Glazers, Manchester United's owners, took the decision to float the club on the New York stock exchange. Back in 1878, when the club was formed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Rail depot as the original Newton Heath, the stock exchange had only a century of history.

A relatively formulaic concept, finance and sport, especially those on the other side of the Atlantic, were entirely separate.   

Yet, as the popularity of the world’s most popular sport has snowballed, finance has become entwined with the very core of the sport. The players' astronomical wages and extraordinary transfer fees are facilitated entirely through this commercialism. 

The imminent world record transfer deal that looks set to take Welsh flyer Gareth Bale to Real Madrid highlights just how far the game has come.

Although the fee is shrouded in confusion, a muted price of an astronomical £100 million looks likely. To put such a fee in perspective at the start of the 20th century, the £100 fee taking Willie Groves from West Brom to Aston Villa was the British transfer Record.

As recently as 1990, the world transfer record that took the mercurially talented Italian Roberto Baggio from Fiorentina to Juventus was just eight million.

You could get twelve and a half Roberto Baggio’s for the price of one Gareth Bale...

It is undeniably true that even in the last twenty years the commercialization of football has been warped out of all recognition. Wages, transfer fees, sponsorship deals and ultimately, ticket prices have multiplied exponentially.

Yet, there is something about the Bale deal that appears a misnomer, an outlier, despite the ridiculous financial boom.

When Cristiano Ronaldo broke the current world transfer record in moving to Real Madrid, back in 2009, eyes were widened and cheeks were puffed, but it was widely sanctioned as an almost justifiable fee for the Portuguese star’s signature. 

This was Ronaldo, FIFA World Player of the Year, riding high on a dossier of three years of evidence for his top-level excellence. He was the poster boy of the generation and undoubtedly the finest realistic transfer target available to usher in the next Galactico revolution.

The Gareth Bale deal is different.

Three years ago Tottenham were fresh from almost considering a £3 million sale, such was the spectacular failure of Bale’s early Spurs career.

This is a man with essentially only one and a half years of truly exceptional attainment, since he burst onto the scene that night in the San Siro.

Gareth Bale is undoubtedly the English Premier League’s most marketable asset, and his departure will only serve to persist an unerring precedent of losing its stars abroad.

Yet he is yet to be consistently tested at the highest level, having only participated in one Champions League campaign. Wales, Bale’s national side, also have a scarce history of major tournament participation, meaning that he spectacularly lacks experience that Ronaldo was accustomed to back in 2009.

This is supposedly a financial system governed by rules of financial expenditure that were not enforced in 2009. The fact that, despite Financial Fair Play, Real Madrid look set to smash the world transfer record for a player of huge potential but relative inexperience can be attributed to one man.

The financial acumen Daniel Levy exhibits in his stewardship of Tottenham transfers is nothing new, but the Bale deal will be the piece de resistance.

Tottenham are a financially stable club, with one of the most promising club managers in world football. They do not need to sell Gareth Bale.

Levy has used this one critical fact to his absolute advantage in playing quite possibly the world’s biggest club to the Spurs tune. Earlier lesser bids that, if truth be told, probably just about represented Bale’s true value, were rejected out of hand.

It was not his or Tottenham’s concern if the club missed out on the huge windfall as they would keep Bale.

As the day’s ebbed away, and fans irked for the superstar acquisition by which their transfer policy has become defined, Madrid became desperate. Real Madrid, with an almost open cheque book had identified their target and Tottenham and Daniel Levy knew this.

With an irritation bordering on the contempt Levy has dismissed approach after approach, before seemingly accepting the astronomical new bid in irritation.

£100 million could buy almost anything in football. It could have got you three Robin van Persie’s last year, or how about two Luis Suarez’s this year? 

In Bale’s stead, Tottenham have set about assembling an exciting new team that will not just cope, but thrive without its star. With funds reimbursed, more acquisition will be imminent, and Levy will have secured Tottenham’s imminent transition to life beyond Bale.

Tottenham’s transfer policy is one to be admired. From the overinflated sale of Dimitar Berbatov to Manchester United (still the club’s record purchase), to the huge profits made on the resale of players such as Luka Modric, Tottenham thrive in what is a difficult market.

Atop it all, cold and calculating, sits Levy; a businessman in the truest sense of the word.