Religion

While talking about the difference between the Han and Roman Empire, there are some interesting points to note and elaborate.

First, religion plays a critical part in holding people together. Since 380 AD, Christianity was the major cohesive force in the western world. The second and third Roman Empires (that is, the Byzantine and Russia) were largely hold together by the same religion – the Orthodox.

Second, both USA and (formerly) USSR are the Roman type of country. American people are bound by the same motto – freedom – while USSR was hold together by the same religion – Marxism.

But, the most interesting question we should ask is: What kind of country is …?

If you think a country that it is the Roman type because the territory is wide and there are no fewer than a dozen of different races (although one of them obviously dominates the government), you are bound to face the second question: What common value do these people have?

I am dumbfounded.

Nation

On a casual look, the two empires are rather similar, although they are entirely different in reality.

(The only similarity is both of them adopted remarkably modern political systems. That’s another story.)

You see? The Han Empire represented the idea of nationalism. People of the same race, Han (漢族) in this case, live together and form a country. Citizens are bound together because they share the same genes as well as culture and tradition. Settlers at the border are barbarians and should be conquered – they could, and would, never be incorporated into the country and become “one of us”. On the other hand, if the people is living under the ruling of a different race, they would fight for independence.

In contrast, the Roman Empire represented a country of idea. The territory was huge, and there were people from all races. Nonetheless, they are unified by having the same thinking – value, idea, dream, motto, religion, whatever you call it. As long as one accepts the core value or thinking, they could become a citizen of the Roman Empire, irrespective to their skin colour and genetic background.

Empire

My recent leisure reading is The Age of Empire by Eric Hobsbawn.

This is the last book of the Age trilogy (the birthday present that I bought for myself last year) and, to me, the more difficult one to follow. As Hobsbawn himself mentioned, this is not a book to describe what happened, but to discuss and explain the historical events between 1875 and 1914 from a socialistic point of view. Although it could stand alone as an excellent treatise, the theory and argument that Hobsbawn put up are logical consequences of the previous volumes, notably, the industrial revolution and the French revolution.

*********************
An important idea that emerged during the period of discussion and Hobsbawn spent some effort to elaborate is nationalism. Given the recent incident in Ukraine and Crimea, and using the jargon of Humphrey Appleby, the topic is not entirely without contemporary interest.

The underlying question is simple but profound: What is a country?

In short, there are two forms of country. The classical examples are the Han (漢) and Roman Empires, which appeared roughly at the same time in history.

Changed

Talking about the canteen of our medical school, there is a remarkable story I hear from my classmates.

It goes like this: A few years ago, shortly after the tragedy of Mr. Ching, the previous principal prosector of our Faculty (see http://ccszeto.blogspot.hk/2010/02/prosector.html and the related post), one of my classmates paid a short visit to the canteen. To his surprise, the owner of the canteen – who used to chat with we medical students while we were lining up for lunch – was there.

“Why!” My classmate exclaimed, “It’s amazing to meet you again. It’s over twenty years since I was last here, and you don’t appear to be a day older!”

“Em…” the middle age man looked embarrassed, “I suppose you are talking about my father, who has recently retired. I inherit the canteen from him…”

PS. I am quite sure the story is fake; an almost identical scene appeared in Stephen Chow’s classical comedy From Beijing With Love (國產凌凌漆).

Breakfast

I arrived at the campus over half an hour before my session started, and I decided to had my breakfast first.

In the canteen of the medical school, of course.

Once again, this was the first time I had breakfast here since I left the campus and began my clinical years. As a person with obsessive personality, I was a daily customer of this little bistro throughout my second-year when I resided in the hostel. My standard order in those days was bacon and eggs (with sunny side up), bun with butter, and coffee or lemon tea.

And, this time, 25 or 26 years later, I found myself making the same order. Nonetheless, things changed, for good or otherwise. The bacon was a different brand. There was no sunny side of the eggs - the yolk was hidden in the white like what we have from the McDonald's.

Well, I changed, too. It used to be cream and sugar in my coffee. Now, milk alone seems too sweet for my teeth.

As the old Latin proverb: Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis.

In Chinese, it got to be: 韶華變易，吾且與時並進。

校巴

Shortly after the dental visit with my daughter, I had a teaching session in the university campus early in the morning. As many of you may know, I do not drive (although I do have a driving licence), and, naturally, I took the train to the university station and got to the main campus by school bus.

Believe it or not, this was the first time I took a school bus since 1988 – over a quarter of a century. In my student days, the university was a simple aggregate of three colleges, and the hill was by and large a rural area, full of snakes and cockroaches. There was only one route for the school bus that stopped at each and every college, as well as the main campus, and it was free.

But, shortly after I graduated, we had a different Vice Chancellor. The school bus began to charge its passengers. Not a huge amount, of course. But, nonetheless, a charge. Over the subsequent years, there were no fewer than a dozen of occasions that I could choose to take the school bus (alas, I took up an academic post for 15 years already), but I deliberately neglect the option because I felt uneasy to pay for something that used to be my welfare.

Fortunate for me, the school bus was free of charge again a few years ago (I am unaware of the change until very recently), and I decided to claim my benefit again.

How?

I turned off my Nexus and enjoyed the short trip.

Friendship

I was wrong. Before Euterpe could finish with the second line of her homework, her name was called - and so was Macy. The two of them marched into a gigantic treatment hall, each heading for a different cubicle.

********************
It must be 10 or 15 minutes later when the nurse called me to see the dentist – a charming young girl, who explained that there were two carries in Euterpe’s teeth; some fix up and cleansing were necessary.

I continued to wait. (To be honest, I was rather impressed by the efficiency of their clinic – and it was free!) Macy did not come out either. She must be needing some kind of treatment also. Her mother was sitting quietly at a corner.

Another half an hour passed. At last, the two girls came out almost at the same time. I found Euterpe’s eyes were slightly red and watery – and so was Macy’s.

“Oh, does it hurt?” I asked my princess.

“Not quite. Just a bit sore,” she shrugged her shoulders, and then turned to her classmate, “Let’s go home together.”

We took a minibus to Causeway Bay for the underground. All through the journey the two girls was a single existence, engaged in an endless little talk – and the red watery eyes turned into bright and beaming ones. When they waved goodbye at North Point, my princess had certainly forgotten any discomfort she had on the dentist’s chair. To her, it was an enjoyable afternoon.

This is what true friendship is all about.

Dental

On a recent occasion, I took a half day off and brought my daughter Euterpe to visit a dentist.

Oh, there's nothing (seriously) wrong with my princess' teeth. As a primary school student, she joins the dental health program organized by our Department of Health, and what she is offered is a yearly dental check up.

The clinic is closed to the Queen Elizabeth Stadium at Wan Chai. Since I've never been there, I picked up my daughter after school, took a minibus right the way - and we arrived an hour before the scheduled appointment.

At the entrance of the clinic, we met Macy - a classmate and good friend of my daughter. She was accompanied by her mother. Their appointment was 30 minutes ahead of ours.

"Let's wait together," Euterpe said. And the two girls joined their hands and sat in the waiting hall.

"We'd got to wait for quite some time. Let's see what's in your school bag and we should start doing some of your homework." I said.

(To be continued.)

Fall

I must say Venetians had good reasons to put their (remaining) money on tourism.

After hundreds of years of international trading, the city is a fine mixture of various people and culture – Slavic, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and what not. The weather of Venice is modest and inviting. Certainly a good place to spend the winter for rich families from central or northern Europe.

For that reason, the Republic was drowned – by tourists rather than sea water. Flats and apartments were turned into hotels. Shops and restaurants were only interested in rich European travellers. Everything became very expensive and hardly affordable by local Venetians (who were, for obvious reasons, those bell boys, porters, shopkeepers, and waiters). They were forced to live in some marginal areas around the city. In short, the good old Venice was literally split into two parts: A rich and extravagant part for the display to outsiders, and a poor sordid one occupied by local residents. To them, Venice had died –its soul was used in exchange for materialistic subsistence.

The story sounds familiar, eh?

Decline

The tough luck of Venice came from three different angles.

First, the Ottoman Empire took control of the Middle East in the 15th century, and trading with the Far East via land was increasingly difficult. On the other hand, Bartolomeu Dias reached the southern tip of Africa (which he called the Cape of Storms initially) and opened the sea route to Asia, while Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan opened up the gigantic market by heading west. Taken together, the halo of Venice the republic as a financial and commercial center faded. There is actually no reason to pay any attention to a small coastal city along the Adriatic Sea or those trivial islands of the Aegean Sea.

Venetians in the Middle Age were not stupid. They saw their difficulty rather plainly and did try to save their city by exploring new sources of income.

And they went for tourism.

PS. The thing that only goes up and never comes down is – our age.

Venice

Although I was mostly thinking of Ukraine and Crimea in the past few days, the most intriguing European city that keeps flashing through my mind is Venice.

Well, I’m not entirely clear – I do not mean Venice as a city, but the Republic of Venice in the 12th century.

A small but lovely and romantic country. And immensely rich, too.

But the legend had a humble start. To begin with, the small coastal city was nothing more than a colony of the Byzantine Empire. From the 8th century, it was practically allowed to be independent – the city was ruled by a governor; it had its own court as well as currency. The irony is, Venice was never meant to be a republic – and it was never one. Its governor was not selected by any democratic means, but by discussion within a small circle of elite families.

Nonetheless, things were running in the right direction. By controlling the Mediterranean Sea, it held a critical position in the trading between Europe and Asia (Arab as well as China). Money came in like mad. For a good period of time the Venetian Lira was the reference currency used for trading between European countries.

The problem is, of course, there is only one thing that only goes up and never comes down – and this exception is not the luck or fate of any city.

反璞

Although we have excellent pragmatic reasons to teach our students apparently useless and unrelated knowledge, I am inclined to be philosophical on this matter and challenge the very idea: Why should we confine ourselves to learn useful things? 

You see? We all begin from scratch and gradually mold ourselves to fit a certain position - for example, a doctor. As to old Chinese sayings: A piece of jade must be cut to become an instrument (玉不琢，不成器).

Nonetheless, we often forget we are the jade but not the instrument. There is no reason for us to exist as any particular instrument. On the contrary, we should always bear in mind that the very nature of us is the jade and not any instrument that we temporarily take up.

And, tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. When the time changes, we have to follow the need and regress ourselves to the original scratch of jade in order to mold into something else in need.

This is what Lao Zi (老子) said returning to innocence (反璞歸真).

Use

(My meeting with the students went on.)

“Em… There may not be any use to learn all these. But, who knows?” I murmured, “Let’s do it because the topic is interesting. Never mind what use we could make out of it in the future.”

****************
When the meeting was over, I began to think of the comment in a bit more detail. I must say the student is entirely correct. Nonetheless, I do not feel quite right. My first response is university is a place of teaching useless knowledge – otherwise we should call ourselves polytechnic. The word university comes from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which means a community of teachers and scholars. To begin with, it was not meant for the teaching of useful and pragmatic knowledge.

But we do not have to be that idealistic. The reality is, if we only try to learn things that we are sure to be useful in the future, we would know very little – and we will find ourselves not well-equipped when an opportunity appears.

SSM

You may ask what the hell the use is to know what’s happening at Ukraine.

I must say I have no idea. In fact, while writing the blog about Black Sea and Gazprom, I had a short meeting with some of our first year medical students, and was posed with the same question.

The story goes like this: Towards the end of their academic year, our junior medical student have to do a small project (we call it “special study module”). I am one of the supervisors on the list, and the topic that I always put up in the past 10 or 12 years is Why can birds fly?

Seriously my original idea is something about comparative anatomy. Nonetheless, I didn’t have to worry very much about my idea because the topic remained idle for many years and, until recently, nobody seems to have any interest in flying creatures.

And, now, the topic is chosen by some students. (They may not be all that interested in birds or anatomy; the faculty is apparently running out of topic.) When I arranged a small meeting with them at the beginning of the project and told them what I expected, one of them asked, “What is the use of learning birds?”

I was dumbfounded.

Gas

What I said yesterday, unfortunately, may not be really relevant nowadays. If Turkey becomes part of Europe, the Black Sea is less of a consideration - because of the strategic position of Istanbul.

(Turkey has been on waiting list for years but is not yet a member of the European Union. If Ukraine falls into the hands of Vladimir Putin, I am sure the process would not take long.)

In that case, why should the land on the border be so important?

Because of Gazprom.

Yes, I mean the largest extractor of natural gas and actually one of the largest companies in the world. It accounts for over 15% of the gas production worldwide (over 80% of Russian production), and up to 8% of Russia's gross domestic product. Natural gas is extracted from Yamburg and other freezing parts of Russia and exported to Europe via the Unified Gas Supply System (UGSS), the largest gas transmission system in the world.

Unfortunately (to Russia), UGSS is much under the control of Ukraine.

The situation is quite obvious if you take a look on the map here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Major_russian_gas_pipelines_to_europe.png

PS. Ukraine literally means the land on the border. It was the name coined by Polish invaders in the 16th century.

Fleets

For those who are not familiar with military history, there are four major divisions of the Russian navy, namely, the Northern Fleet, the Pacific Fleet, the Baltic Fleet, and the Black Sea Fleet. The last of this list is of particular importance because it provides the access to the Mediterranean Sea – so that Russia could have military influence on Syria, Jordan, and other countries of the Middle East.

(The Black Sea Fleet was actually first established by the original Russian Empire some 200 years ago for the same purpose. Its major adversary at that time was the Ottoman Empire.)

The problem is, the Black Sea Fleet is mostly based on Crimea of Ukraine.

Before the dissolution of Soviet Union, everything was fine because they were but one country. However, after the Berlin Wall was torn down by Mikhail Gorbachev, Kiev becomes out of the grasp of Moscow. Although the naval facilities at Crimea remains officially under rental to Russia, the condition is never secure – especially when the voice of joining the European Union is growing.

PS. You really need some idea on the geography of the Europe before you could appreciate what’s going on. As always, my advise is to learn playing Diplomacy the board game. You would be surprised to find that neither the place nor the distribution of power change very much in the past 100 years.

Ukraine

The recent hot topic of international politics is certainly the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army.

I must say I have very little background knowledge on the history and relation of the two countries. Some of my friends are strongly against Russia and consider this incident the modern version of Czech being occupied by Hitler’s army. On the other hand, some point out that Crimea and the eastern part of Ukraine were Russian territory until 50 or 60 years ago, and there are good reasons for Vladimir Putin to take them back. (For example, http://m.gamer.com.tw/home/creationDetail.php?sn=2364254)

It goes without saying that when politics and diplomacy is concerned, there is no permanent right or wrong, but only permanent interest, and, when you look at the matter from that angle, Russia should always be eager to take over Ukraine - no, not Crimea or the Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine; I mean the whole country.

The traditional view could be understood by considering the structure of Russian navy. 

Let me explain tomorrow.

Lupin

My recent bedtime reading is Arsène Lupin.

For those who are not familiar with the history of detective novel, Arsène Lupin is a fictional gentleman thief created by Maurice Leblanc. What I am reading is not a book, but three small paperbacks that include the abbreviated version of six novels:

• 813
• The Teeth of the Tiger
• The Overcoat of Arsene Lupin
• The Countess of Cagliostro
• Le Secret d’Eunerville
• Le Second visage d’Arsène Lupin

I must say the stories are spicy and enjoyable, but the plot is rather similar when you compare between the stories. For that reason, although Arsène Lupin did outwit Sherlock Holmes on a few occasions (in the stories written by Leblanc), Sir Arthur has all the reasons to win all fame and reputation against his French competitor. As always, if one could focus on his own business and do his best, there is no need to compare to other people or any benchmark.

PS. I must say the last two stories on my list (Le Secret and Le Second visage) are written by Boileau-Narcejac rather than Leblanc himself, and are definitely a cut lower.

Well, what is worse than piracy?

It's copycat of piracy.

Reasons

While I was digesting the lesson I learnt from the problem of morale, H – a young consultant working in another hospital and a good friend of Vivian – rang up my wife and had a long chat.

I asked Vivian when her telephone discussion was over, “My dear, what’s up?”

“H was asking for my advise. Well, she may just be asking for a listener,” my wife said, “She is planning to resign.”

“Really? What’s gone wrong?” I was truly surprised. From what I know, H should be the last person to join the private market: She is a tough person, her boss has great hope on her, and she is not in need of money.

“You know, her juniors are a remarkable lot. They like to have their own way to do things and never listen to H.”

"I see..."

And I come to realize even relatively senior people could have a low morale for many reasons.

Analogy

You see? For most of the patients, high blood pressure is the result of a number of contributing factors in combination. Some of these factors may be reversible, others not. Nonetheless, it is not necessary to understand all the factors thoroughly and deal with each of them if our aim is to bring down the blood pressure.

For the same argument, we may not have to understand and take care of all contributing factors to the low morale in order to improve it. In fact, an extensive knowledge on the cause may hamper the design of a solution because we will easily find ourselves lost in the jungle of information and the irresistible tendency to deal with each individual factor.

Another psychological trap - and Principle #2: If a problem has many contributing causes, the most efficient way to solve this problem is to devise a novel strategy without considering individual causative factor.

PS. It is obvious that this tactic does not apply to all problems. In general, it should work if we are dealing with a (theoretically) quantitative parameter, for example, blood pressure, blood sugar, or morale - which we could imagine it is measurable, but we just don't know how.

Solution

(Our luncheon discussion continued.)

"That brings us back to the original question: How could we solve the problem?" I asked.

"Em...  For some of the contributing factors, we could do something about. For the others, the situation is rather hopeless." PW said.

"That doesn't sound very promising," I said to myself. If there are two dozens of causative factors and each contributes to 3 or 4 percent of the problem, it is an impossible mission to tackle each and every of these factors, while rectifying just a few would have no appreciable effect. Moreover, there could well be another dozen of causes that have not been identified.

********************
I was still pondering that problem the next morning. As some of you may know, I have a habit of reading medical textbook for half an hour each morning before doing anything else. On this occasion, I was reading the pathogenesis of hypertension.

And, all of a sudden, I saw light.

Something

Although my friend’s proposal sounded logical, I felt uneasy – there are a whole lot of difficulties in execution.

I thought for a while, and then I saw some light, “My friend, I agree with everything you say. However, your plan would invite a full range of opposition and possibly never work out. After all, our primary objective is to improve the morale of young doctors, not to solve A – although it is an important problem per se. Although B is the less important factor that contributes to the poor morale, I suppose we can do something about it and achieve the same goal.”

Principle #1: It is not always necessary to solve the major problem to achieve the ultimate aim.

WY was surprised. She certainly thought that my proposal wouldn’t work either. In fact, when I considered the issue again on my way home, I was not sure how to solve B, or how the morale would become if B is really solved.

*********************
On the next day, I lunched with PS, LS and PW, and we got back to the same discussion.

The outspoken rheumatologist said, “I think there are many other contributing factors – C, D, E… all the way to Z.”

I was forced to agree.

Morale

A hot topic amongst many of my friends recently is the low morale of our medical officers.

Or, as PW – a fellow rheumatologist of my department – put it succinctly: What is morale? There is no such word in my dictionary.

I shall not elaborate what I think on this matter. (After all, I don’t think I need to have an opinion on this occasion, and, if any, my view is definitely biased and would not help the situation.) However, I would discuss the metaphysical and psychological insight that I learn after discussing this topic here and there.

First, my friend JW said, “We’ve got to do something about it.”

Quite right. On the next day, I asked WY, “Why do our medical officers have such a low morale?”

“I think there are two causes, A and B. Since A is more important, I am proposing an action plan to take care of it.”

That sounded logical. The two causes seemed obvious, and the proposed plan was a logical solution for A.

(To be continued.)

PS. I shall not specify what A and B were, or what action plan was constructed. The topic is slightly sensitive, and I will try my best to confine myself to the underlying principle rather than facts and details.

Thread

While talking about what is and what is not impingement of the freedom of press, let’s go through another scenario:

If a person collects records about the wrongdoings of a government but does not make them public (he may reveal what he knows to a few persons, but has no intention to pass the files to any mass media), and he is then assassinated, we would not see it as a thread to the freedom of speech.

For example, have you heard of the assassination of Georgi Markov by that poisonous umbrella?

Again, ordinary people like me would still have a strong feeling.

***********************
In other words, we are thrilled by two related but not necessarily identical issues: The brutal way of doing away with an irritating existence like a triad society, and the thread to the freedom of speech. The former is definite, while the latter is probable but not proved beyond doubt. My humble opinion is there are so many effective means to restrict the freedom of press (notably by influencing advertisers and selective release of official information) that knife seems a redundant additive to the existing armament. For obvious reasons it doesn't entirely exclude the possibility of using violence to affect the freedom of press - not everything that we do are rational.

Freedom

The usual reaction to Kevin Lau’s case is it represents the bell that tolls for the freedom of press.

But, let’s start with the basic question: What is freedom of press? It means the freedom of communication and expression through published and electronic media, usually implying the absence of interference from an overreaching state. (A closely related concept is, as you know, the freedom of speech, by which we could express our view by verbal means.)

In other words, freedom of press could generally be impinged by the government or other high authority, when they try to influence the content or opinion of mass media. If a journalist reports the illegal doings of the triad society and is then being attacked, we don’t see it as a thread to the freedom of speech, but ordinary people like me would still have a strong feeling (our Scholar #19 is wrong here) because it is a brutal way to silence some undesirable voice.

Of course, it is not unheard of that the government of some countries are nothing more than triad societies recognized by the United Nation.

That’s most frightening, I know.

知秋

The famous topic in our city recently is certainly the case of Kevin Lau (劉進圖).

I shall not discuss my view here. In fact, I have little opinion, except I keep thinking of an entirely different case some 20 years ago.

It is the murder of Yip Chee Chau (葉知秋).

For those who are not familiar with the history of our own city, Yip was a columnist in 1980s and was famous for his skeptical view on the (mainland) Chinese government as well as a strong opinion against an Taiwan independence movement.

On 18 January 1992, Yip was found dead at the staircase of the building that he lived – his skull was smashed like peanut shell. That was around the time that Yip made a series of critical comments towards the Chinese government in his newspaper column, and a few days after a conference against Taiwan independence movement. Either side was believed to be responsible for the assassination.

But no. It turns out that Yip was killed accidentally during a quarrel with his girlfriend’s husband.

PS. Don’t get me wrong. I have no intention to suggest Lau’s case bears any resemblance to Yip’s. It is just my déjà vu feeling.

Need

“Madam, what’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing. I just had a quiet evening, and, guess what, I spent it all by watching television!”

I must say that’s news. After Euterpe and Adler were born, our television was used almost exclusively for showing Disney – the World of English package as well as channels 441 and 442 of NOW TV. We have not watched the tri-colour channel for so long a time that I have difficulty to tell Fala Chen from Sharon Chan.

“Alas! What did you watch?” I asked.

“A love story in a bakery. You know, it’s very touching!”

My god. She mean the soap opera that Vivian and I found hopeless just an hour ago!

But, on a second thought, I shall not laugh at my mum’s taste – or the lack of it. She is not a rare species. There are millions of people in this city who have no interest in top class artistic performance or creative drama. All they need is some vulgar music and simple soap opera to cheer them up after a whole day of stressful exertion.

Maybe Sir Run Run did do the right thing.

TV

It was a most ordinary Sunday evening.

As usual, Vivian and I brought Euterpe and Adler to visit my in-laws. My mum was staying home with Minnie, my Indonesian maid. Uny, my other maid, was on holiday.

After dinner, my father-in-law turned on the television. It was the tri-colour channel.

Some soap opera was on. It was a sponsored program. And tons of embedded advertisement. In no time my wife sighed, “This is hopeless. Let’s turn if off and do something more useful.”

We ended up listening Evgeny Kissin and Vienna Boys’ Choir from YouTube.

**********************
We returned home later that evening.

My mother was reading Next Magazine in the living room. She was obviously very happy.

(To be continued.)

Leeds

You may think the information that I outlined yesterday is a waste of time.

Yes and no. If you put yourself into the shoe of the manager of Everton, the problems become obvious: You have less money than your neighbour to recruit top players, and you are not as famous to attract talented youngsters to join your soccer school. In fact, promising students would often left for a better prospect (for example, Wayne Rooney).

You may ask: What is the optimal strategy in this situation?

I must say I have no idea, and am still searching for one. Nonetheless, I know very well what strategies are disastrous.

The notable example is Leeds United.

The story is simple: Between 1997 and 2001, under the leadership of George Graham and David O'Leary, Leeds did well in the Premier League. In fact, it went all the way to the UEFA Cup semi-final in 2001. Seeing its own success, the club became ambitious; revenues were used and loans were made to expand the club.

And the rest is history. Thirdteen years later, Leeds United is now a mediocre in the English Championship League.

Everton

Although it sounds simple to consider possible strategies of a football club, in reality the situation is more complicated.

Let me explain in a slightly convoluted way:

Some of you may know I am an inherent fan of the Liverpool FC because my father was one. Nonetheless, if you want to study business strategy, Everton, the less famous club of the same city, would be far more interesting.

You see? Liverpool is the leading club at the Merseyside county. It is a global brand. Its  annual income is over €250 million,  expenditure on salary  around €150 million. It had won 18 trophies of the English League Championship  (a record only broke by Manchester United recently), and 5 in the European Cup / UEFA Champions League (only surpassed by Real Madrid and A.C. Milan).

And, Everton? What do we have here? The annual budget is around half of its wealthy neighbour. However, when I check the record, it's not at all humble: It had 9 trophies of the English League Championship (but the most recent one was in 1987), and once in the now obsolete European Cup Winners' Cup. The problem is the Club is very much less famous, and the brand is, if any, local. For example, have you ever heard of a fan of Everton in Hong Kong?

PS. The most famous product of Everton, at least for all foes of Manchester United, is David Moyes. That's another story.

Difference

Don't get me wrong. I am not proposing in-breeding and xenophobia. After all, Messi was first trained in Newell's Old Boys of Argentina and joined Barcelona at the age of 13.

Of course, there is no need to confine yourself to a single strategy. Many successful football clubs have their own training program but also recruit famous players from other clubs. Nonetheless, there is more than a fine line of difference between enlisting Cristiano Ronaldo at the age of 18 (by Alex Ferguson !) and the same player six years later (by Florentino Pérez), or between enlisting Andriy Shevchenko at the age of 23 (by AC Milan) and at 30 (by Chelsea). In the jargon of Peter Lynch, a ten-bagger would gradually turn into a cash cow - and eventually to a cigarette butt.

Alas, there's nothing wrong with buying cigarette butts - as long as you are not paying the price of a cash cow.