The not-so-super league

Regular readers will know that I have a long-standing interest in football (or soccer as American readers know it), partly driven by the extent to which it is an area ripe for economic analysis. The recent attempt by 12 of Europe’s top football clubs to join the breakaway European Super League (ESL) in opposition to the Champions League is thus a fascinating topic, as well as a major sporting/cultural issue. As I started writing this piece the news came through that all six of the English clubs which signed up have pulled out with two Spanish clubs reportedly considering following suit. The project thus seems destined to collapse - a conclusion I came to in my original (non-published) post. But by shining a light on the reasons for the collapse we can illuminate more clearly some important aspects of the economics of football.

The project has been heavily criticised for a number of reasons – the most common being that it reflects greed on the part of the owners who wish to maximise their income irrespective of the consequences for grassroots football (including the women’s game which is now gaining traction across Europe). It is indeed notable that no German clubs signed up, which may have a lot to do with the ownership structure (the 50+1 rule which gives fans majority voting rights). Support for the ESL appears to be confined to the board room as players past and present, football administrators from across the continent and, most importantly, fans lined up to condemn the idea. Obviously UEFA was not pleased that some of the continent’s best-known clubs are planning an alternative to its money-spinning Champions League competition and threatened the imposition of retaliatory sanctions. But there are a lot of issues at play here, not to mention a nice line in hypocrisy from many of those in football who have suddenly discovered an interest in the welfare of fans.

The financial angle

Looking first at the finances of the G12 (or the dirty dozen), 11 of them occupy the top 14 places in the annual Deloitte’s Football Money League revenue ranking (the 12^th is AC Milan which occupies 30^th spot). But according to Swiss Ramble (one of the best commentators on European football finances), the G12 made a financial loss of £1.2 billion (€1.05 billion) in season 2019-20 before player sales were taken into account. He also calculates that they owe a “staggering” €7.4 billion of debt (chart) on €5.59 of revenue (my calculations), implying a debt-to-income ratio of 132%. On that basis it is not difficult to understand why they are keen to take part in a competition which increases their revenue stream, particularly in the wake of Covid which has had a dramatic effect on finances.

But whilst the elite clubs have the option of being able to join a super league which protects their revenue stream, most do not and the enforced absence of spectators since March 2020 has had a major impact on their revenues. Even before Covid struck, the finances of English Premier League (EPL) teams were shaky. The top teams in England have generated a huge rise in income over the last 30 years thanks to the money pumped in by TV companies keen to secure the broadcasting rights. Some of this has been used to fund the construction of more modern stadiums fit for the 21^st century but to a large extent it has ended up in the pockets of players with wages making up an average of 65% of clubs’ income.

The finances of teams lower down the pyramid have not kept pace as the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. We should not kid ourselves that top-level football is an altruistic institution with clubs at the top looking out for those lower down the scale. In 2019 Bury FC, one of the oldest professional clubs in England, was forced into bankruptcy over a debt of less than £2 million. The two EPL clubs closest to Bury, Manchester United and Manchester City, have a combined weekly wage bill of over £6 million. Indeed, for all the outrage generated by the EPL over the breakaway league, we should not forget that the EPL itself was formed in 1992 as a breakaway from the Football League (the administrator of league football in England) to allow clubs to maximise revenue from the sale of TV rights and sponsorship arrangements. As I noted in this post, its record on financial probity is spotty and it cannot be said to be looking after the interests of fans.

Business or sport?

The advent of the ESL is perhaps an inevitable consequence of allowing the big clubs to grab an ever larger slice of the pie. This prescient film clip from 1994 accurately foreshadowed the consequences for the sport of allowing TV to call the shots, with participants in the documentary predicting with uncanny accuracy how little the voice of the fans would count in the brave new footballing world (although the extent of fans’ discontent did clearly convince club owners that the ESL was a step too far).

Football is not a conventional business and it is therefore difficult to ascribe standard business practices. I have long characterised football as operating in an imperfect oligopolistic market in which the products are differentiated by branding and where there are significant barriers to entry. Matters are made more complex by the fact that it is a product which has global appeal but is rooted in domestic structures. This makes valuing the ESL a difficult prospect. However, I would argue that the owners of elite clubs have miscalculated the value of their brand and arguably they do not understand the underpinnings of their industry.

This is reinforced by the findings of Peter Sloane, one of the pioneers in the economics of football who has been studying the area since the early-1970s. In a paper published in 2015[1] he noted that there are significant differences in the conduct of North American and European team sports management: “While it is assumed by most protagonists in North America that clubs attempt to maximise profits, in Europe the most common assumption is the maximisation of playing success subject to a break-even constraint.” Sloane went on to point out that “North American leagues are closed to new entrants through the granting of exclusive territorial rights, though with allowance for some franchise mobility, whereas in Europe leagues are open to entry through a system of promotion and relegation.” It is notable that three of the English clubs signing up to the ESL are owned by Americans and arguably they made a mistake by applying the American model in the wrong setting.

Sloane touches on another interesting point: Although there may appear to be little solidarity between clubs in the same league, “mutual inter-dependence is generally regarded as a sine qua non of professional sporting leagues.” An inherent paradox of competition is that while clubs strive for playing success at the expense of the opposition, they each have an interest in the survival of rivals as they require healthy teams to play against. A revenue sharing structure, rather than a profit maximising model, best ensures this by ensuring that smaller clubs can receive additional revenue to buy better players in order to improve their performance, thereby raising the quality of the product. Although the ESL model does allow for revenue sharing, it only does so for elite clubs already in the clique. The uncertainty of result required to ensure continued consumer interest is correspondingly reduced. Accordingly, a successful league can best be described as a joint venture between the administrative body which sets the overarching competitive framework and the clubs which operate as independent entities within it. Changing this fragile balance will lead to system failure.

The future

The attempt to form the ESL is not the first time that big clubs have tried to increase their revenue at the expense of smaller clubs and it is unlikely to be the last. As I have pointed out before, if football is allowed to be conducted along casino capitalism lines with light-touch self-regulation it is inevitable that the more powerful will try to assert their market power. In its 2019 election manifesto, the Conservative Party promised to “set up a fan-led review of football governance, which will include consideration of the Owners and Directors Test.” There have also been calls to set up an independent regulator to oversee governance of the sport although past performance suggests that they generally tend to be toothless bodies.

However, football finances do clearly need to be overhauled. Some of the lessons football can learn from US team sports are the introduction of wage caps, restrictions on transfer fees and restrictions on stock market flotation. There is also a case for limiting the amount of debt that clubs are able to carry. Over the last 30 years football has failed to reform itself. Maybe it is time to impose reform upon it.

---

[1] Sloane (2015) ‘The Economics of Professional Football Revisited’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy 62(1), 1-7 (available here as a download)

House of Sad

Every now and then I like to go off-piste and look at issues in the world of football, partly because it interests me but also because it is an area ripe for economic analysis (bear with me on this, there is some economics in here). A couple of years ago, I looked at the financial position of Newcastle United, the club I support. I reluctantly concluded that although the financial model adopted by the owner Mike Ashley was condemning the club to mediocrity, this was consistent with a strategy in which the owner had no incentive to spend huge sums of money for no guaranteed reward. However, this was inconsistent with the demands of fans who want to see the club spend money in order to challenge for trophies, rather than simply making up the numbers. Perhaps the relationship between owner and fans can be seen as a principal-agent problem in which the owners’ actions on behalf of the club impact directly on the fans. 

The news earlier this year that a Saudi Arabian consortium was interested in buying the club was welcomed by fans who hoped that it would allow Newcastle to challenge for trophies on the domestic, and perhaps even European, stage. The group included Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund PIF thus making a direct link to the Saudi government whose record on human rights is, to say the least, questionable. This posed an ethical dilemma for me. Obviously I want my club to be successful which would have been enabled by the funds PIF has at its disposal. Against that I am uncomfortable with the links to a government deemed by Amnesty International as repressive. As it happens, the dilemma was resolved yesterday when the consortium withdrew its bid for the club.

It appears that the Premier League (PL) had dragged its feet in applying the “fit and proper person” test to the prospective owners and 17 weeks after the bid was submitted, the consortium simply lost patience. Quite rightly the PL wanted to determine the precise links between the consortium and the Saudi government. It needed assurances about who would have control (who is the beneficial owner), where funding would come from and who would appoint the board. In the absence of clarification, the PL’s rules prevented it from sanctioning the deal. On the surface, you might think that this was a case of good governance in action. But the PL – and indeed the English Football League, which governs lower leagues in England – has a murky record. Consider these examples:

1. In 2003 the PL welcomed Roman Abramovich's takeover of Chelsea FC with open arms. Not once did they publicly ask how he obtained his money. Nor did they raise the issue of money laundering, despite the fact that any business funded by funds of dubious provenance is a classic money laundering risk.
2. In 2005 the PL was quite happy to allow the Glazers to purchase Man Utd, despite the fact they loaded the club with huge debts in the process. Those debts are currently valued at £0.5bn – almost 0.8% of the annual gross value added generated in Manchester.
3. The PL welcomed Thaksin Shinawatra as the buyer of Man City in 2007. Thaksin, being a former PM of Thailand who was deposed in a coup, is the sort of politically exposed person whom people in finance are warned to treat carefully in any financial dealings. Thaksin then sold the club to the Abu Dhabi Investment Group, owned by a member of their royal family. The club was recently charged with breaching UEFA's financial fair play regulations (and dubiously acquitted), yet we did not hear anything from the PL on the issue.
4. If it is Saudi involvement the PL is concerned about, there seem to be no worries that Sheffield United are owned by a Saudi prince who recently won a court ruling that he could purchase a 50% stake in a club reputedly worth £100m for just £5m. 
5. Lower down the leagues, the football authorities claim to have a 'fit and proper' person test. Yet Wigan Athletic was last month declared bankrupt just four weeks after it was sold to a Hong Kong based consortium.
6. The travails of recently-promoted Leeds Utd can partly be laid at the PL's door. They raised no eyebrows when in the early-2000s the owner borrowed against future revenues to load up the club with debt, predicated on the basis it would regularly qualify for the Champions League. It didn’t and predictably Leeds went bankrupt. It then went through a series of owners which culminated in the farce whereby Massimo Cellino took control in 2014 only after winning a challenge to the Football League's attempt to block him. Cellino was later banned for financial irregularities before being allowed to return to his post. You almost couldn’t make it up.

I could go on. Fans of football clubs with long pedigrees such as Blackpool and Portsmouth can tell similar tales of woe in which unscrupulous owners managed to take over clubs before subsequently ruining them. On the basis of their past record of "anything goes" there are calls for the PL to be more open about why they put obstacles in the way of the Saudi takeover, without ever explicitly saying they failed the ownership test. Has it discovered a moral conscience, in which case I fully expect that this won't be the last occasion that club takeovers are blocked? Or is it because the Saudis have blocked the PL from taking legal action against the broadcaster beoutQ for illegally streaming matches whilst simultaneously blocking the PL’s licensed broadcaster in the Middle East?

In effect, football is being run along casino capitalism lines: The very behaviour which voters condemned banks for undertaking prior to the Lehman’s bust is alive and well in football. It has been well established in finance that self-regulation does not work – there is always an incentive for someone to game the system to their advantage. The same is true in football club ownership. To the extent the owner is running a business, there needs to be a systematic set of rules which proscribe what owners can do and penalties which are consistently applied in the event they are broken. Football’s regulators could do worse than learn from the financial regulators, which have been open and transparent about what institutions can and cannot do, and which crack down hard on miscreants. There should also be a separation of the financial incentives of the PL and those of the top clubs. Regulators are there to regulate, not to get rich on the back of those they are meant to oversee.

My favourite quote from the book by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski Why England Lose … (aka Soccernomics) is “just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.” But it should not be this way. If football people want to be treated as the professionals they say they are, the sport needs to be regulated properly. Not run in the capricious manner which benefits the rich owner at the expense of the less well-off fan.

Are the rich getting richer?

The English FA Cup has a long tradition extending all the way back to 1872, and no team has secured a greater winning margin in the showpiece final than Manchester City, which on Saturday beat Watford by 6-0 (though in 1903 Bury  beat Derby County by the same score). Indeed, City’s performance was superb although given the quality of footballers at their disposal this came as no real surprise. City’s position at the top of the English football tree bears no comparison to Bury's in 1903. City became the first club to win the domestic treble of trophies in the same season and as a measure of their current pre-eminence it is worth noting that although the club has existed in its current form since 1894 and won a total of 18 domestic trophies, 10 of them have come in the past 8 years.

Whilst football success is often cyclical, the key ingredient in City’s success is money – and lots of it. According to transfermarkt.co.uk, Manchester City has spent a whopping £1.35 billion on transfer fees over the last 10 years – 13% more than their nearest domestic rivals Chelsea. They have also recouped significantly less in transfer fees with the upshot that their net outlays over the past decade exceed £1 billion – 90% more than Chelsea. The club is owned by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family whose personal net worth is estimated at £17 billion whilst his family fortune is reckoned to be around $1 trillion. It thus comes as no surprise that City can afford to buy the best.

Of course, clubs that spend most on transfer fees are not guaranteed to be the most successful. Neither Manchester City nor Paris St-Germain (the next largest net spender over the past decade) has ever won the Champions League. The relationship between wages and trophies won tends to be much closer (here) since it a better reflection of a players’ quality. Ironically, latest data suggest that average wages at Manchester City are around 8% lower than at their cross-town rivals Manchester United (which won nothing this season). But City’s manager Pep Guardiola, widely regarded as the best in the world, is the highest paid manager in English football earning £15.3 million per year (and a recent report suggested that the club’s hierarchy are considering raising that to £20 million if he signs a new 5-year contract).

In short, Manchester City has bought its success by purchasing the best players, paying them well and employing the world’s best coach to manage them. A similar pattern is observed across the other four major European football leagues with the club that paid the highest average wages winning the title in 2018-19.  Even more astonishing is that in all five major leagues, the club winning the championship this season also won it last season (Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Manchester City and PSG). Last year’s champions in Austria, Scotland and Switzerland also retained their titles. For the record, in Scotland average player salaries at champions Celtic, which recently claimed its eighth successive title, were 84% higher than those at second-placed club Rangers. It appears that money doesn’t just talk – it screams loudly.

All this raises the question of whether the footballing rich are simply getting richer at the expense of their weaker competitors. There were certainly plenty of commentaries in the wake of Manchester City’s FA Cup demolition of Watford suggesting that City have ripped up any pretence at a level playing field (here, for example, or here). But to assess whether that is really the case, let us look at the evidence.

The table shows football equality indices and concentration indices in the big-5 European leagues. The equality index is defined as the number of individual clubs winning the title relative to the number of seasons contested. The higher is the index, the more equal is the competition; if a different club won the title every year the index would be unity. I use the birth of the Champions League in 1993 as the cut-off point and compare the pre-1993 and post-1993 samples. The evidence suggests small changes in England (negative) and Italy (positive) and a larger increase in Spain. But the big changes are in Germany where the dominance of Bayern, which has now won seven consecutive titles, is quite startling whilst in France it has risen sharply.

As a cross-check I created a concentration index calculated as the proportion of total league titles won by each club (again split between the pre-1993 and post-1993 samples) and the table reports the highest indices for each country (the higher the index, the more dominant is any one club in winning the league). The results show a marked increase in concentration ratios with the biggest increases in England and Germany. This is partly a sampling problem, in that the pre-1993 sample is much bigger than the post-1993 period, but the magnitude of the increase is notable. The data suggest limited evidence of increased inequality (except in Germany) but higher concentration indices, indicating a rise in the frequency with which the same teams win their domestic title. In other words, the data appear to reflect a rise in an elite group of clubs which can expect to compete for the title – generally those which also compete in the Champions League – and a widening gap to the rest. 

Given the importance of external sources of money to fund sports teams (which I will look at another time), there is a danger that broadcasters and sponsors will gravitate towards the top performing teams over the longer term. This will enable the top teams to continue paying out the most on wages and consolidate their positions. Ironically whilst this is a major concern in European football, it is less true of American football which does not even operate a system of promotion and relegation. Only seven teams have won the Super Bowl on consecutive occasions and none has managed three straight wins. Moreover, 20 different teams have won it in the last 53 seasons. In the same period only 12 clubs have won the English Premier League whereas just 7 have won Spain’s La Liga. Given the amount of money flowing into the NFL, this does not suggest that huge monetary inflows necessarily stifle competition: It is where it flows and how the authorities channel it that matters. Premier League take note.

Howay the lads: The economics of Newcastle United

Less than four weeks ago global audiences were gripped by the World Cup, which attracted a global audience of 3.4 billion people who watched at least some of the tournament on TV. But it is back to the grind of the domestic scene as the first round of English Premier League matches kicks off this weekend. This is where players, who just a few weeks ago were gracing the world scene, earn their corn: Footballers in England can look forward to 38 league games and numerous domestic cup games, whilst the top players must also face up to the rigours of the Champions League.

The best players get well paid for their trouble. According to the Global Sports Salary Survey for 2017, the average salary for players at the two Manchester clubs, United and City, was £5.2 million ($6.8 million) per year. Clubs such as Barcelona, Paris St. Germain and Real Madrid shell out even more, with the average Barca player earning 25% more than their counterparts in Manchester. If a top flight player can expect to play 60 games per season, an average player in Manchester earns around £87,000 per game – or nearly £1,000  for each minute they are on the pitch. Clearly, that is an awful lot of money to shell out but the simple truth in sport is that if you want to win, you have to pay.

Contrary to the view on the terraces that clubs have to spend in the transfer market to be successful, the academic evidence clearly shows a stronger correlation between the wage bill and football success. This reflects the fact that clubs which spend most on wages tend to attract the best players. As the chart below shows, there is a decent linear relationship between the average wage per player and Premier League position in season 2017-18. Those clubs lying above the line underperformed relative to their wage bill whilst those below the line outperformed. This brings me nicely to one of own personal pet peeves since I am a long-suffering fan of Newcastle United – a club that is perennially perceived to be one of the great underachievers of modern English football.

As is evident from the chart, Newcastle significantly outperformed its wage bill last season largely thanks to the outstanding performance of the manager Rafa Benitez, who has an impressive managerial CV at some of Europe’s top clubs. Although it is only one data point, it is testimony to what a good manager can achieve without spending huge amounts of money. But it is hard work to operate like this on a sustainable basis and Benitez is used to competing at the top of the table with clubs like Liverpool, Inter Milan and Real Madrid (his last job before Newcastle). Like most Newcastle supporters, I am frustrated at the refusal of the club’s owner, retail magnate Mike Ashley, to loosen the purse strings which would allow Benitez to strengthen his squad to improve the chances of winning something. Indeed, there is a common perception that Ashley is the root of all evil at the club (see, for example, this article from the German magazine Kicker). But a closer look at the club’s finances make it clear that matters are far more complicated than they appear on the surface.

At first glance, the club would appear able to spend more. Since he took the job in March 2016, Benitez has recouped almost £58 million in net transfer fees alone. Moreover, since Ashley took control of the club in 2007, he has sanctioned an average net spend of just £11 million per year which is around the going rate for one player these days – one new player per season is just not going to cut it. This failure to invest means that in the last nine years the club has suffered two of the six relegations in the club’s 126 year history. And the costs of relegation are significant. Relegation in season 2015-16 cost the club £40 million in lost revenue with the result that a modest profit of £4.6 million in 2016 was transformed into a loss of £41 million. Were Newcastle to have spent more than one season in the Championship (the second tier), parachute payments available to relegated clubs would have dwindled and revenue losses would have been even higher.

Doubtless Ashley would retort that increasing outlays would bring in little additional revenue. Each gain in league position only generates an additional £1.9 million in prize money. In order to justify spending an extra £10 million would require the club to improve its position by 5 places. Having finished 10th last year it would be a tall order for the club to be in the running for a Champions League spot. But this penny-pinching approach is at the extreme end of the feast or famine approach which characterises football finances. Once we factor in TV revenue, Newcastle generated a total of £123 million last year purely from being in the Premier League.

There again the club’s wage bill in 2017 was around £112 million so a large part of the Premier League revenue is eaten up by costs. And the club is also heavily indebted (as indeed are many top flight clubs in England) with the total amountng to £144 million as of mid-2017 which is more than 100% of income. Fortunately, the debt is held by Ashley and is not subject to interest charges, and the owner’s strategy appears to be to manage the club such that current costs are met out of current income. Whilst this is a laudable aim – and debt has been broadly stable over recent years – it is not enough to satisfy fans who want to see the club actually win things. Winning the FA Cup would generate £6.8 million in prize money (even reaching the final would bring in another £5 million) plus gate receipts. However, the EFL Cup (as this season’s League Cup is called) is not even worth bothering with on a financial basis (here).

As a Newcastle fan, I want to see my club win things or at least make a decent attempt at doing so. But the economics of running a football club mean that unless you have ultra-deep pockets it is difficult to compete on a consistent basis. In many ways, Ashley has not been a good steward of the club: He is a lousy communicator, is overly parsimonious and fails to appreciate the importance of the club to the local community. But it is hard to disagree with the underlying business ethos that the club must live within its means. The romantic in me harks back 20 years to the days when Kevin Keegan’s team swashbuckled their way up the league, spending huge amounts of money in the process. But the legacy is a large debt which, two decades on, continues to constrain the club’s ambition.

Being Wayne Rooney

Wayne Rooney is one of the most famous footballers in the world. He is the record goal scorer for his club, Manchester United, and for the English national team, and has won everything worth winning at club level (including 5 league titles, an FA Cup and the Champions League). However, over the last 12 months, questions have increasingly been raised about his continued ability to cut it at the highest level which has raised speculation that he will leave Man United at the end of the season. Not that football journalists know anything – The Guardian reported earlier this month that he would leave the club at the end of the season  having suggested just three months ago that he has no intention of leaving. Meanwhile the fans, not exactly models of consistency themselves, are generally in agreement that it is time to go.

But whilst the fans treat usually football decisions in the context of the on-field activities, there are in reality a lot of other economic factors to consider. Look at it from Rooney’s point of view. He is 31 years old and reported to be paid around £300k per week on a contract  believed to run until June 2019. Even if we assume this figure is around £260k, as reported in a number of media outlets, this means he can expect a gross income in the region of £27 million even if he never kicks a ball again. From the club’s perspective, it would appear to make sense to offload their highest earner if he is no longer able to perform at the level demanded of him. Indeed, as of mid-2016, the club was paying out £203 million per annum on wages – implying that Rooney accounted for just less than 7% of the total.

But Man United also earned £268 million in commercial revenue – primarily sponsorship and retail activities (here for more detail on the club’s accounts. It is slow to load, but worth it for an in-depth look at the accounts of a major football club). We should be in no doubt that Rooney has helped sell a lot of replica shirts. But now that he is no longer in the England squad, his commercial value will undoubtedly have slumped. Footballing considerations aside, the club appears to have little to gain financially by keeping him on. Of course, no other club in Europe is going to pay Rooney £13.5 million per year so unless he decides to join the exodus to China, where silly money is apparently on offer, what to do? The rational response would be to hang around for the next couple of years and bank the cash. Fans forums would, of course, be inundated with comments suggesting that he is only in it for the money and that such actions will tarnish his legacy. But frankly, you can trash my legacy for £27 million any day.

Rooney’s logical response to this criticism should be to ask the fans what they would do in the same situation? If your employer told you not to come in to work for the next two years whilst still paying your salary, most people would say it is illogical to refuse. After all, you could travel; learn a foreign language; do further study or take up a new hobby. Failure to understand the rationality of this position is a form of cognitive bias, defined as “a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.” It is not just football fans who suffer such biases, of course. Financial markets are riddled with them, which goes towards explaining why many investors make decisions which they can justify at the time but with hindsight appear ridiculous.

As it happens, the rumour mill is in full swing suggesting that various clubs are currently bidding for Rooney’s services. He may indeed be tempted to go elsewhere: It is not as if he is short of money so he can presumably afford to take a pay cut. The motivations for him wanting to do so are fully in line with evidence from psychology which suggests that factors other than money can motivate sportspeople. Like actors, sportsmen (and women) are motivated by adulation. So long as he continues to be reasonably well paid, Rooney might be tempted to trade off some of his extraordinarily high current salary for a lower one and a continued presence in the public eye.

Still, it’s a nice problem to have. As for me, if I were faced with Rooney’s decision I’d take the money on offer from Man United. In fact, I would take a small fraction of his salary in order not to play football. Now you might say that I am not as good a footballer as Wayne Rooney so am in no way as deserving. But that is only true on the field of play. When both of us are doing nothing, I’m just as good as he is.