Why I have joined sportiness: from falling in love to the fascinatingly messy world of football financing

At first glance, my first football game was a roaring success. Sunderland won 1-0 and the six -year -old I watched the match without being distracted. My father had realized that the process for his son was not interested in not trying again for a few years. He would not have wasted his breath.

My memories of this trip to Roker Park are blurred, a mixture of my own and those embedded in me through endless reviews of the end of the season to VHS. The fact that I was wearing the band that recorded a season in which Sunderland has relegated should be proof of how strongly this new obsession is fulfilled.

I loved football immediately and in retrospect now the hug of the sport of something that leads me to this piece today: numbers.

This was a time before the digital scoreboard, and the invention of the half -time values ​​in games that were played elsewhere required a little additional effort. On the back of the first matchday program that I have ever held, the selected games of this day were, each of which had assigned a letter. The same letters were on the manually updated scoreboard. I could not tell you now that the other games take place on this day, let alone the half-time numbers, but the memory that the different scorers excitedly train-and immediately to my father to dictate-never leave me.

It was likely when he realized that he had created a monster. After I had never noticed the slightest football, I was now beaten.

Ten weeks after this home game in 1996, a first exit came: Everton 1-3 Sunderland, Craig Russell and a Michael Bridges clip. A first defeat at Roker followed a week later – another bracket, this time from Wimbledon's Efefan Ekoku – and thus realizing that Sunderland is actually only unbeaten at the end of time. Doesn't matter. I was now connected in the long run.

This new obsession was strange. I went to the house of my grandparents with little more than a cube, a notepad and a pen, who ran with Glee through fully invented tournaments (who knew that there were so many 6-6 undecided at the World Cup?)

I put on the results on CEEFAX and waited patiently that the page will handle the next set of scores. An uncle of me baptized me on the way home from this Everton trip “Stato”. I am now in my thirties and it is a nickname that is still used today.

Life events are remembered by their proximity to important football data.

I will not say that I would ever forget my anniversary, but it helps that Sunderland signed Jack Clarke the day we married (luckily the marriage took longer time than Clarkes time at Wearside). On at least one occasion in which an old job, my future wife (first meeting: two days after a 3-1 home win against Stoke City) and I needed a colleague, I entertained a colleague through her selection data from Sunderland's 1996-97 season for me to react with the opponents and to result, even, not even, even, also the goalkeeper Goalkeeper, also, also, also the goalkeeper, also, also, what not.

Craig, if you read this, I promise that we no longer spend time. Please return our calls.

Football was an early love, pay next to themselves and then written at a point that I can't really remember. I've always been a reader and at some point I turned my hand to write down my own things. Of course, football was the first starting port. The efforts to convert everything into a serious undertaking were stilted; Instead, I decided to ensure the security of an accounting qualification, got myself to charter and record writing where I could. In 2017 I wrote a book about Sunderland during my fleeting free time (pretty hastily when I'm honest) and that sparked the flame again.

Since then I have tried to marry the two worlds as much as possible. It helped that the interest in the finances of sport has never been greater. PSRS march to join HT, FT, OG, XG and MotD at the top of the abbreviation of football, does not continue.

I was obsessed again, this time with the money that spoiled in the game (if not at every level), and started creating a database that creates financial facts and numbers. I discovered a job opening The athleteApplied and, and behold, here I am ready to act as our first proven football financier.

It is a great career shift for me. It is not without risk. It is also one of the simplest decisions I've ever made.

In an article that I recently read, I complained London's lack of a daily newspaper. Now the Evening Standard has drawn in the weekly publication that I stumbled into the perfect anecdote why – and I say this without ego or hybris – I could have made this shift into a small series of publications.

In this piece, the author emphasized an instance of a single writer at a well -known daily newspaper in another British city, in which “29 stories in two days for the newspaper website … a story per half hour”. This has imagined me both as a crying shame and as completely not surprising. The number of sales outlets that invest both in your authors and your audience is slim and thinner.

As a reader of The athleteYou will already know that you are a convinced member of this dwindling group. Entry to the employees means to join a publication, the time and effort begin to make you the best of modern sports, with insight and quality that can only be reached by giving authors the best available resources. It means to join a network of journalists who are characterized in their area. And it means to give them to the reader, the detail and the nuance to never reach a hastily written piece of clickbait.

When writing about the increasingly chaotic topic of money in football, there is little envelope. These are more and more important, at least in a sporty context.

With this in mind, this is not just an opportunity for Me.

There will be a necessary adaptation time if we find out what works in this new area of ​​reporting and what is not. Here you come into play a lot. If there is something in the burgeoning field of football financing that you cannot believe that nobody looks enough deep, tell us. If there is anything – something – that you believe is that it is a story that has to be told or examined, let us know. You can do this in the comments below or send an e -mail to cwwatherspoon@theatletic.com.

This week we start with deep dives on some of the largest clubs in England.

Manchester United's much published financial suffering to apparently unstoppable growth from Manchester City from Arsenal must be returned from Manchester United, trying to be as sustainable as possible from Arsenal's table to Liverpools. Everything will be treated in the coming days.

In addition, the world is really our oyster.

The “top” clubs get many eyeballs, but in football where money is involved, there are many stories. Many of them are stories about hurt, although not all. Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford are the good news of the Premier League, but there is much more down and beyond. The focus will not be on individual clubs either. We will take a look at the lot, from FIFA on Down, the often dark depths of football financing and that of important stories that keep the sport we know, keep up and, for better or bad, still love today.

I can't wait to stick to it. I hope you will enjoy the trip with me.

(Upper photo: Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Pictures/Light rocket about Getty Images)