The Premier League has just kicked off another season awash in cash and glory, but how long will the party last?
While England failed to qualify for the summer's big show, Euro 2008, three of the semi-finalists and both of the finalists in last season's UEFA Champions League were from its top flight, and expect this season to be little different.
Soccer stars like Deco are still alighting on the cash-cow of the top flight with its fat salaries, bloated media coverage and glistening stadia. But there are hints in the air that the tide, at long last, may be turning.
The first sign of Premier League hubris finally meeting its maker
Nevertheless, the ghost of Game 39 refuses to perish and the latest proposal doing the rounds is to play a Carling Cup tie overseas, with proposals due to be launched early in 2009. Yet once more, it is hard to see how the inevitable swathes of empty seats for, say a Wigan v Bolton game in Thailand, will do much to boost the already strong international profile of the FA's beloved 'product'.
Tougher times could be ahead. Football is not immune to the global credit crunch, however much it might wish to be. This summer, the transfer fees in the top flight have totaled £230 million less than last summer.
Only Chelsea out of the top three Premier League sides have spent big. Persisting with Peter Kenyon's world domination plans, the Blues have snapped up Deco for £8million and Bosingwa for twice as much, leaving them £15million the poorer.
Arsenal by contrast have tightened their belt. The Gunners captured Samir Nasri for £12 million and talented Welsh youngster Aaron Ramsey for £5m, but sold Mathieu Flamini and Alexander Hleb in return, with a cumulative 'loss' of £3.2m. European club champions Manchester United meanwhile have not splashed out at all, perhaps a result of the debt-inducing takeover by the Glazers finally biting.
Although Tottenham Hotspur have hit the headlines for shelling out more than anyone, their sales leave them only £11million down compared to Manchester City's loss of £17.7million.
It should be added that City's financial deficit is of nothing compared to their loss of honour at having such a shady character as Thaksin Shinawatra in charge of them. With a dossier of accusations of human rights abuses and now an arrest warrant against his name, Shinawatra is anything but the 'fit and proper' owner the FA insists each club must have.
The evidence of the money well drying up goes on. 20% of pubs have cancelled their Sky contracts in the past five years, while the latest football finance report from the PKF Business Advisory Group shows 89% of clubs intend to use 90% of their overdraft facilities this year, up from 46% last year. The title of PKF's survey of clubs' financial directors is hardly encouraging:
The report shows that 17% of clubs spend more than 65% of their turnover on player wages alone and while 59% of clubs have budgeted to spend more on salaries this season, 67% of Premier League clubs plan to trim their squads at the same time.
It should be added that PKF's statistics are directors' opinions; their actions in reality may differ, yet tellingly 44% reported they were feeling the squeeze from banks this season, up from 31% last time.
Abramovich's millions are still a fly in the game's ointment. Allowing one club with bottomless resources and no rush to make a profit outbid all others for every player makes a mockery of the Premier League and UEFA Champions League as a competition, and forces all other clubs into perilous financial straits in an effort to keep up.
When previously a local millionaire might have invested his fortune in the football team, now nothing less than a Russian oligarch or Arab oil sheikh with billions to burn will do.
If more proof of the unhealthy Chelsea were needed, look no further than Frank Lampard signing a bumper £140,000 a-week deal, while rivals Arsenal fretted over paying Emanuel Adebayor £80,000.
Stipulating a minimum number of home-grown players is a start but no panacea. Rich clubs already poach talented youngsters from around the globe and will only double their efforts if FIFA insist on a quota.
The irony of it all is that English football teams do not need more money, especially by hawking themselves around the globe. They just need to do their books better, stop paying such crazy wages, and agree to a cap on wages or redistribution of TV money.
Still only 15 years old, the Premier League has ridden a buoyant UK economy growing for the last ten years, but with recession imminent across the nation, the Premiership is now sailing into uncharted waters.
As house price increases have slowed, so have football's ticket prices, up 14% from last season as opposed to 32% and 48% in the previous two seasons.
While player wages rise and the current boom looks good for another big TV deal in 2010, there is as yet no guarantee of renewed sponsorship, media and season ticket money in the long term.
Just like the American sub-prime mortgage collapse is now hitting European high-street spending, falling sales of football merchandise throughout 2008-09 could well knock on to the other sectors of the soccer economy.
78% of football directors report that it is increasingly hard to find new revenue streams, while PKF's Stuart Barndall summed it up politely thus, although his words could well have applied to English football at any time over the past 20 years:
"The pressurised climate is here for some time to come, so it is imperative for the long-term stability of the industry that clubs tackle their money concerns with a matter of urgency."
At any given time, roughly half a dozen English clubs are in dire straits with the banks, but overall it should be stressed there is no cause for immediate alarm, though the attendance and merchandise sales figures at the end of the season will make interesting reading.
If clubs continue with their current business model of excessive spending, the best-case scenario is a Premier League dominated exclusively by three teams for the foreseeable future, with smaller clubs in a semi-permanent risk of going bust as they desperately, but futilely, try to keep up.
Salary caps work in other sports, so there is no reason UEFA cannot apply one to football, too. If this does not happen, the current downturn in the global economy may accelerate a reformation in England of the dangerous mess that is football's financing.
It may appear to operate in its own time and space, divorced from the usual rules of business the rest of the world follows, but this season the Icarus that has been English football for a decade could begin a welcome fall back down to earth, and reality.
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