Sure they can...loans. They can buy whoever they want at a young age and use the loan system to their advantage. The rich only get richer the way things are set up.
Before replying to this, I would just like to say Gareth Barry is a good player.
Now, as usual Cheese, you are bang on. The rich own all the assets and the rest of us rent/loan. It has been this way for 99% of man's history. There was a strange notion of even playing field, democracy, egalitarianism, upward mobility etc entertained by the elite for about 2.5 generations (post WWII)...that little period is now over. We are headed back to serfdom.
And all this has occurred because the ability to create something out of thin air, which everybody wants and needs (namely money) is in the hands of the elite (The US Federal Reserve is a private central bank...not public). They can print an infinite amount of the stuff....and swap it for useful things like land, resources, commodities...and at their whim, dalliances like football teams.
They got us by the family jewels.
If I printed money I would go to jail for 20 years...cause counterfeiting steps on their monopoly...and they aint having that.
The system wont change anytime soon. Who will change it? The associations running the game are all bought and paid for. World Cup in Qatar anybody?
