To the beginning of this study, we had been also given for
task to check if the assertion according to which the clubs of football of the
developed countries followed the traces of the multinational corporations and,
with them, were established beyond the borders of their countries of origin,
was authentic. Through the creation of the centers of formation for young
players, located in African or Latin-American open ground, the objective of the
clubs in any case seems to put up with a logic of transnationalisation of the
activities. One would see from the start a team carrying out expenditure, often
colossal in the species, to claim to draw no benefit from it. What it would be
necessary to retain, it is that football has few ways to make itself too
commercial. But it is worked with length of the days and with the passing of
years vessels which ensure to him a continuous and not easily reversible
presence in the ordinary business world. We dare to believe that the conversion
of the legal structure of the majority of the clubs of association to
nonlucrative goal into that of commercial companies made it possible to focus
the attention of these new people morals on the advantages of the emergent
markets. If « the European firms have to invest more on the emergent
markets in order to draw advantage from their fast growth »
(Jacquemin Alexis and Pench Lucio R., Editors, 1997, p. 181), the clubs of
football did not have for their part need to be made there fold through
supplications, as a long time as they had already included/understood and
recognized the emergence of Africa and South America as regards football.
Since the experiment did not yet spread to it majority of the
teams having certainly their junior teams with the seat even of the club, even
of the centers of formation in the country -, the creation of a center of
formation by a team, recognized rich, in a developing country starts with the
French club of Paris-saint-Germain, before knowing another form with Ajax of
Amsterdam.
The project of creation of the center of training of the young
players launched by Paris-Saint-Germain has, strictly speaking, nothing similar
to a project of foreign direct investment. It takes effect in 1997, when the
news bulletin of the club diffuses the news below taken again :
« Claude Roy prepares the future. Creator, at the beginning of
season, of Planet Champions International, a center of formation in Burkina
Faso, the Parisian sporting director and the club intend to make of Tunis a
head of bridge of their policy of recruitment »
(PSG News-Review of press of Monday January 05, 1998).
Within the limits of the perception of the objectives of the
creation of the center, it is released in filigree, the policy of recruitment.
Transposed to the universe of football business, the objective of recruitment
applies to the clubs what the strategy or the objective of research of the raw
materials is worth or straightforwardly of the factors of production for the
multinational corporations.
For this reason, it is necessary to compare with the route
multinational corporations, the character of direct foreign investment of the
center thus created by the Paris-saint-Germain. For that, MUCCHIELLI J.L (1998,
p. 46), assistance to discover the characteristics of a direct
investment :
1° a concept of control or being able of influence on the
management of a foreign company ;
2° a transfer of complex competences (a technological
unit and
3° a logic of production. And AAKER D.A (1998, p. 255) to
increase : « Many firms test the desire to develop total
strategies in the sight to take part indeed in competition ». The
logic of production thus seems to be determining. It is thus when the
delocalization aims, at the base, to make carry out with the company the
economies of scale, which « have a power from the total point of
view » (LEONTIADES James, 1984, pp. 30-37).
1.B.3. Quid if a club of football is a
company ?
But, right now, it raises the question with the spirit
inevitably to know if Paris Saint-Germain is a company, and still if the
International center of formation Planet Champions is too. Professor Blanpain
(1996, p. 25), taking again the opinion of the Prosecuting attorney Lenz,
hears, him also, by companies «of the entities which carry on an
economic activity, whatever their legal statute or their mode of financing. It
is not required, add-it, that there is a goal of lucre. ». This
definition has the merit to retain the essential element of a company, far from
any formal legal structure : the exercise of an economic activity. It is
done within the framework of a unit known as sometimes of production.
Taking into consideration this precision, it Appert that,
without being a commercial company, with the legal direction of the term, the
club Paris Saint-Germain, is not less one company, from an economic point of
view. As a team of football, it regularly engages the players, to which it pays
wages. On the market of the transfers, the PSG is also very active, either as
salesman, or as purchaser of the players. This season, the only transfer of
Anelka, among so much of others, cost him more than 25 million American
dollars. It is besides for this reason which the European court of justice did
not hesitate to establish that the exercise of the sports, as an economic
activity in the direction of article 2 of the Treaty of Rome, concerned the
field of application of the Community legislation (Blanpain, 1996, p. 21).
In the same way, professor Andreff Wladimir (2000, pp.
184-185) continues in the same direction by describing the economic activity of
the clubs of football : «Certain clubs, writing-it, specialized
in the training of players in order to supply the market of the professional
players, and thus to release a source complementary to
financing. »
It is that the new characteristic of the
sport : « an economic activity like another, which makes it
possible to include/understand the chump end abandonment of the principles
founders of the Olympic ideal and a recombining of this field around the
commercial values » (Borough J.F and Gouguet J.J, 1998, p. 18). All
these developments accredit the thesis of professor Blanpain (1996, p. 25)
according to whom « the clubs of football can be regarded as
companies and the federations like associations of companies. » The
version of companies recognized with the clubs is divided by professor
Késenne Stefan (1996, p. 21) for which the practice of the sport
constitutes an economic activity smell it that are needed two clubs
(undertaken) to manufacture a match (the product).
By summarizing all the literature offered to us by the
analysts, and by comparing it with the characteristics of the direct foreign
investment pre-recalled, we can consider that the act posed by Paris
Saint-Germain contains well realities of an investment.
