In recent years Nottingham Forest has become a trivia question. Although the club was still active in the Championship, the second division in England, it came to mind mainly as the only club that won the Champions League and does not play in the top league in its country.
Forest was one of the biggest teams in England in the 80s and won the Champions League twice in a row with Brian Clough on the lines. The term of the colorful coach lasted between 1975 and 1993, a year that ended with relegation and his retirement from coaching. After that, the team changed coaches and owners, saw many players go through it and even went down to the third league.
Nottingham was left behind. A team that was at its peak in a different era of English football, an era of long balls, standing stands and grumpy Brits on the lines. It felt like the modern era, that of the Premier League and the stars coming to the best football league in the world, was big on Forest. They haven’t played in the Premier League since 1998/99. Therefore, the immigration this season was, on a certain level, a story from the movies.
Sports movie
Those who advance to the Premier League are the teams that finish in the first two places in the Championship and the winner of the playoff for places 3-6. Forest have not participated in it since 2010/11, and last season finished in 17th place and started the season with one point from the first seven games.
At this stage, Steve Cooper, a coach in the youth teams of England in the past who made a difference in Swansea, arrived and brought the team back to its greatness. Forest collected 79 points from 39 games, finished fourth and knocked out Sheffield United on penalties in the Championship semi-finals.
A former Parr club that was safely on the way to the third division found itself playing for promotion to the Premier League at Wembley. And an amazing 0:1 small-big over Huddersfield on the way back to the top after 22 years.
On paper this is one of the best stories that English football can provide. A small team that manages to change the season, and without stars in the squad to amaze bigger teams all the way to the top league. The material that used to be used to make sports movies and today make popular docu-series on Amazon or Netflix. The story of Nottingham, and what makes this team so interesting, only started at this point.
Gangster movie (allegedly)
The Premier League announced immediately after Forest’s promotion that it would begin an investigation into the owner, Evangelos Marinakis. The latter also serves as the owner of Olympiakos and is considered one of the richest men in Greece, but also one of the most dubious. He was accused of selling games in 2015, had to be released from prison on bail of 200 thousand euros and stop being involved in football. In the end, six years later, he was fully acquitted by the court.
Close to the explosion of the games sale scandal, Marinakis was accused of drug trafficking in Greece after a ship connected to him smuggled 2 tons of heroin in 2014. In January 2021, after 10 key witnesses in the case died, the court decided not to press charges. Marinakis is innocent until proven otherwise, of course, but these cases raise a number of question marks. The EFL, the body that manages the English leagues other than the Premier League, approved him to manage Forest at that time.
These revelations raise questions about Marinakis’ intentions and even suspicion of sports-washing, in which Marinakis allegedly serves as the owner of the teams to “cleanse” his image while he is involved in things that are not so legal, to say the least. It is important to emphasize that as long as he has not been convicted, these are only doubts, but this puts the whole romantic light in a slightly different angle.
Big Short
Then came another twist to the Cinderella story. As of the time of writing, Nottingham ranks fourth in Europe in terms of the amount of money they bought players less the amount they sold in the last transfer window. Yes, not in England, on the Continent. The list is amazing: Chelsea, Arsenal, Barcelona, Nottingham Forest, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain in the top six.
This amount does not include, of course, the free transfer signing of Jesse Lingard, who will earn 235,000 euros per week, an amount similar to Harry Kane’s salary and significantly higher than Trent Alexander-Arnold, Bruno Fernandes and Jamie Vardy. Lingard, let’s remember, started the lineup in two games last year.
Besides him, Nottingham paid 20.5 million euros for Taiwo Avenue and 20 million for Neko Williams, two who played for them as loans last year. She paid another 10 million for Moussa Nikata from Mainz and loaned Dean Henderson from Manchester United, a player who earns 130 thousand euros per week (an amount which Nottingham will pay in full). This is a lot of money.
The sport-washing, if indeed this is what Marinakis is trying to do in Forrest’s case, is one part of the story. The more significant part, certainly in the case of a team like Forest that started the season in a very bad way and maybe even was a kind of overachiever in the promotion to the English league, reminds many other upstarts.
As soon as a team is promoted to the English league, it receives, according to Deloitte, at least 167 million euros. The amount can reach up to 328 million depending on the team’s place in the English league. The teams also receive “parachute money”, a partial payment for the broadcasting rights of the Premier League after the team is relegated.
The victory in the playoffs, in fact, guarantees the team hundreds of millions of euros. That is why a situation of yo-yo clubs has arisen, those that move up and down the league with high frequency. Watford and Norwich, who were relegated from the Premier League this season, and to some extent also Fulham and Bournemouth (which came back up after two years).
Teams take advantage of this, especially those that come up for the first time in years. Leeds United “lost” €106m on player sales after promotion in 2020/21, Aston Villa invested €156.5m in 2019/20 and Fulham €111m before 2018/19. In all cases, these amounts were among the highest in Europe. Forrest is no exception. You need talent to survive in the English league, and talent costs money. Fulham was relegated after one season, Villa survived in the last round and Leeds impressed with ninth place led by Marcelo Bielsa.
A philosophical film
Not sure it will work for Forrest. The combination of many new players in one team is prone to disaster, certainly in such a competitive league. Every team that gets promoted faces the dilemma of selling the “soul” of the club in order to survive, and does the best actions for it.
This whole crazy story raises a lot of questions. On the one hand, a group that radiates a romantic atmosphere like those before it, on the other hand, a husband who got involved in very serious affairs and huge sums of money. This contrast between the passion of Forest fans and the cynicism and players like Lingard who receive 200 thousand pounds a week creates a complex picture, which will be interesting on the field as well, but no less off it. Modern football, go figure it out.
