The Red & Whites have returned to the top flight of French football after a two year absence following their 1-0 win this afternoon away to Nimes, and now only need a draw against Niort to wrap up the Legue 2 title as speculation is already beginning to mount over who the new arrivals at the club will be.
You see Monaco is just not your average football team located on the French Riviera home to playboys and multi-millionaires who prefer polo and Formula One to the working man’s love of the beautiful game.
All that is going to change though, now that the club is owned by a Russian billionaire along the lines of Chelsea’s Roman Abramovich who can single handedly buy any player he wants for the team.
Dmitry Rybolovlev is the owners name a Russian Oligarch who made his fortune in the fertilizer business, and now wants to make tiny Monaco one of the biggest clubs in Europe.
Before his arrival a couple of years ago the club was in decline lucky if they could attract a home crowd of more than 5,000 to watch a match, and with the Stade Louis II only having a capacity of 19,000 Monaco has never been about making money through ticket sales.
As in anything be it sport or be it business when one side seems to have an advantage over another jealousy comes into play, which in this case is the French Football Association (FFF) and their members who have complained bitterly about Monaco’s unfair advantage of being a tax haven able to entice the world’s top players as they would pay very little of their wages in taxes unlike in France, where the top earners can pay as much as 75% to the government.
This of course is not an issue with the Qatari owned Paris Saint-Germain, who have more money than they know what to do with, and having a rich team like Monaco to play against would only help French football in so many ways yet the other clubs want Monaco to move their headquarters to France and pay the taxes like everyone else.
This of course will never happen as legally the Monegasques hold all the cards, and are entitled to run the club under their own tax laws.
During a heated debate on the subject of paying taxes, Monaco have said that they could just quite as easily join Italy’s Serie A if the French league did not want them.
Today’s promotion marks the beginning of a new era for Monaco, and you can be sure things are going to change with a host of new signings arriving at the club including if Spanish television is correct Atletico Madrid striker Radamel Falcao.
If there was ever a team destined to be one of the darlings of the soccer world it has to be AS Monaco, and with their success you can expect to see more resentment from all but PSG.
