Paying Attention: The bet here is this: you’ve never heard of Jean-Marc Bosman.
Why should you? He was a not-big-time soccer player for a not-big-time Belgium soccer club. But he revolutionized the sport. It cost him his career, but he changed the economics of European Soccer by winning the right to freedom, i.e. the ability to play for another team. Free agency, in other words. Without a penalty to the team who signed him up. This weekend, as we head into the final rounds of FA Cup, and the Euro Cup, remember that all that multi-national talent running around on the field and the huge payrolls that glamorize the big European soccer clubs came about as a result of the determination of one soccer player: Jean-Marc Bosman. He was the one with the nerve to really change the game. Here’s his incredible story, via this link to bloomberg.com .
http://www.gettyimages.com/
The Fine Print: With this post, we are starting the process of using Getty Images. They make it easy to use them, have a huge archive, and the price is right for a non-commercial blog. Naturally, they own all the rights but they are sharing and that’s very appreciated. If you have not tried Getty…do it. ..highly recommended.