FEB 21 — Money has been making headlines in the British footballing world again. Or, more specifically, a lack of money.

Firstly, Glasgow Rangers concluded a long period of gradual decline by limping into administration.

The Scottish club is truly an example of a fallen giant. Formerly one of the most popular, successful and prestigious clubs in the world (they were the first British club to reach a major European final), they are now reduced to scrapping for survival after piling up massive debts and failing to pay their tax bill.

But Rangers are by no means the only club to find themselves in a financial hole, with Championship strugglers Portsmouth being plunged into administration for the second time in three seasons (please can somebody do us all a big favour and just put them out of their misery? They stink of fish anyway. And yes — if you hadn’t already noticed — I am a Southampton fan).

Let’s face facts: football is a silly business. In fact, purely as a business it’s often entirely self-defeating and almost always destined to fail. Nobody with an ounce of business sense should ever enter the football world expecting to make any money (with the seedy exception of agents).

Running a football club is not profitable. It just can’t be. The ceaseless pressures of fan expectation and ever-increasing player wages ensure that any money earned is immediately spent. Plus quite a lot more.

For example, when I worked for Reading and we were promoted to the Premier League in 2006, everybody told us that the change in status was “worth” an immediate £50 million (RM239 million) and that we’d entered a world of untold riches.

Nonsense. When we were relegated two years later, the club was not a penny richer: more money had been coming in, for sure, but it had all been spent to meet the unavoidable demands of trying to compete at the higher level.

Similarly, Stevenage’s exploits in holding Spurs to a goalless draw in Sunday’s FA Cup tie have led all and sundry to declare their replay at White Hart Lane as a “massive pay day.” Equal nonsense. What do you think will happen to the extra hundred thousand or so that Stevenage earn from the game at White Hart Lane? They’ll spend it!

The commonly held perception that professional football clubs are extraordinarily wealthy is a complete fallacy. They might earn a lot of money, but in nearly every case they spend even more.

That’s true even at the very top of the game: Barcelona, arguably the biggest and best club in the world... in debt to the tune of nearly €400 million (RM1.6 billion); Real Madrid, their perennial rivals, once favoured by General Franco... saddled with debt approaching €200 million; Manchester United, possibly the most supported club on the planet... more than £300 million in debt.

Whoever you are, however big your club and however numerous your fan base, running a professional football club and carrying huge levels of debt go hand in hand. It’s enough to make hard-headed, profit-driven businessmen recoil in horror... yet many of them are still attracted to the game.

But here’s the thing. Sport is not a normal business. Football is not about making money; it is about glory, glamour and excitement.

It is a fantasy world that allows ordinary people to step away from the confines of their ordinary existence, finding a sense of identity and belonging in a fast-paced, highly ritualised world of exaggerated euphoria and despair. In that kind of world, there’s no space for staid accountants and their dry spreadsheets — get outta here... this is the place for reckless dreamers!

The difficulty comes, of course, when the money being spent doesn’t actually exist in the first place. If Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi wants to transform Manchester City into one of the most successful clubs in the world by spending a few million of his few billion, why shouldn’t he? But if some dodgy pretend tycoon invents a load of cash that he doesn’t actually own and uses it to plunge Portsmouth into unsustainable debt, then we have a problem.

So the system, I don’t think, is the essential problem behind football debt: the system being abused by foolish people is. But isn’t that always the case? In politics, in economics, in society at large: any system is only as weak as the people who come along and ruin it.

Sport is not about making money; it is about making dreams. Mega-rich owners who choose to fulfil their personal fantasies by ploughing billions of their own cash into the sport — for whatever reason — can carry on, as far as I’m concerned. And if a few casualties fall by the wayside, so be it; even dreams can turn into nightmares.

But please let’s not insist too much on turning football into a profit-making business — that would be entirely missing the point.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.