2007 has started as a New Year of change in football. With a hiatus in the international game, attentions have been focused on competing domestic sideshows, with the goings-on as unusual and variable as the weather has been.
The most significant shift in the soccer status quo was Michel Platini's long-anticipated ascension to the throne of UEFA President, with his keystone intention to reduce the Champions League qualifiers to three per big country already drawing out the lines for another battle between the football authorities and the ever-growing influence of the big clubs.
The French playing legend was narrowly elected despite the vocal opposition of 'Kaiser Franz' (Beckenbauer) and the close challenge of incumbent Lennart Johansson, who had held the post for the past 17 years.
It is worth paying tribute here to the Swede, who despite his 77 years, endowed the position with a dignity and repute that Platini must strive to match. English football fans in particular should pay homage to Johansson, the man most responsible for helping English clubs back into the skeptical European fold after the dark days of the 1980s and the only big name beyond Beckenbauer who tipped Liverpool to beat Milan before the classic 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul.
Johansson surely deserved better from the FA than to be promised their support in his 1998 challenge for the FIFA presidency, only to find out the country whose football he had done so much to help, switched allegiances to rival Sepp Blatter when it came to the voting, England's association living under the deluded impression that the Swiss schemer who had done so much to promote South Africa's 2010 World Cup bid would actually deliver the tournament to England instead.
The major managerial change of January came when Bayern Munchen pulled a big punch in firing Felix Magath as punishment for FC Hollywood's fourth place in the Bundesliga, replacing him with former coach Ottmar Hitzfeld in the hope of resuming normal service.
UEFA's hectic transfer window swung into operation again and dominated the column inches but has once more raised questions about its efficacy.
Ronaldo's striking £5 million pound move to Milan was perhaps the highlight of the 2007 winter window, striking because rossoneri coach Carlo Ancelotti confirmed fans' suspicions in admitting the Brazilian legend was "not particularly fit" and between the lines implied agreement with the widespread consensus that there are better players out there than the double World Cup winner from Rio.
Ronaldo's quartet of big employers - Barcelona, Real Madrid, Inter and Milan, mirrors the career of another January migrant Edgar Davids (ex Barcelona, Juventus, Inter and Milan), who returned to his original club Ajax after a decade on the road.
That Davids and another European stalwart John Carew (who moved to Aston Villa from Lyon) should be among the most talked about transfers says something about the enforced deadline of January 31st.
Market prices have once more been artificially boosted to exploit the needs of clubs, particularly those at the wrong end of the table in desperate need of salvation, clinging to the dream of a share of next season's English Premiership TV bonanza for instance, which promises the club that finishes bottom a £30 million windfall, the same as the winners received in 2005/06.
West Ham, who have spent bucket loads already this season but find themselves in the drop zone after a torrid autumn, made a lunge for relegation rivals Charlton's Darren Bent (who would have been the eighth forward on their books), waving an absurd £18 million in the Addicks' faces, an action since denied by the East London club.
Whilst the soccer authorities doubtless had noble intentions in seeking to limit the season long circus of speculation, tappings-up and unsettled players to one month throughout the actual campaign, the obvious weaknesses of its replacement are manifest, not least the heightened desire to panic buy and the consequences that can bring to clubs with troubled finances.
One noteworthy absence in the January window has been Premiership champions Chelsea, who certainly have the dollars to compete, or rather outspend, any rival in the world when it comes to buying footballers and still face a six-point deficit to make up on a resurgent Manchester United.
The lack of movement from Chelsea will only further fuel the already burning rumours that coach Jose Mourinho and owner Roman Abramovich have fallen out for good, to the point that the Russian billionaire will on the one hand not entertain his manager's shopping lists anymore and on the other no longer dream of bringing players in against Mourinho's will, following the uncomfortable Andriy Shevchenko experience.
Only a few months ago when Chelsea plundered a galaxy of summer stars - Michael Ballack, Salomon Kalou and Shevchenko, to add to their existing arsenal, it looked like the Blues were unbeatable and unchallengeable. Now it has all changed and they look in danger of cracking.
Yet surely the most-reported football news of 2007 so far has been David Beckham's mega-dollar move from Real Madrid to the LA Galaxy, a milestone transfer in soccer history due to its breathtakingly commercial nature which eclipses anything Real Madrid tried to do with their galacticos.
Actually, it was Major League Soccer who signed the England legend, since MLS controls all transfers centrally and clubs get only a limited say over their squads, a situation complicated in European eyes by the labyrinthine draft, a feature of US soccer as much as any other pro American sport.
In November, MLS announced it was relaxing its salary cap (you see, it can work in football, at least for a while!) to allow individual clubs to field 'star' names on wages far above their teammates'.
David Beckham playing for EnglandThis concession was immediately dubbed 'the Beckham rule' by US soccer-watchers, to whom it came as no surprise when Goldenballs announced he was crossing the pond and equally when Peter Vagenas (annual salary £63,000) went public that there was resentment at the Galaxy over Beckham's yearly take of over £25 million.
It should be remembered that the American league had a wide variety of salaries in 2006 with some players on a minimum wage of £6,000 ($11,700), believe it or not, up to a peak of £692,000 ($1,360,000) for Chivas' Juan Francisco Palencia, a country mile short of the former England captain's astronomical remuneration.
For a league that has lost approximately $250 million in its first decade of existence, the Beckham deal seems an extraordinary risk, because they are paying him money they essentially don't have, in the hope they will recoup it down the line. The transfer guarantees Beckham percentages of profits and shirt sales to make it clear this transfer is an investment in the future, above all.
Becks is already a household name in the States, thanks to his wife Victoria's pop music career and the film 'Bend it Like Beckham', which was a big hit in America among the millions of soccer moms and their ball-kicking offspring.
The onus is now on the Leytonstone lad not only to convert the massive investment into long-term profit by sparking a flood of sponsorship, media coverage, season-ticket purchases and replica shirt sales, but also to justify his huge wages to his teammates and football fans in general, not just in MLS, through impressive on-field performances.
What may at first have appeared to have been a cosy retirement in the Californian sun for the Beckhams and their kids may in actuality be his biggest professional challenge yet, where the eyes of the USA will be trained on him with enormous, unrealistic expectations of greatness given his incredible salary.
As sure as night follows day, once given the chance, the media will waste no time in labeling Beckham as a enormous error by MLS, an expensive has-been whose waning fitness levels and skills are being exposed by players on a fraction of his money.
We should all wish Beckham well in Los Angeles, but it is hard to escape the feeling that this is the kind of high-profile mistake that eventually collapsed the NASL, a lesson it seemed MLS had learned not to repeat again. The NASL was about growing soccer from the top down with fading stars but until now MLS has been grassroots up with young Americans so this represents a real sea-change.
It will be super-tough for Beckham in America, make no mistake.
2007 has certainly not had a smooth opening. With football's global marketability increasing exponentially by the day, expect it to continue as such.
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