How football is being taken over, and the huge danger these changes bring
By Tony Attwood
Following on from my piece on the billionaires running football (which focussed on Mr Whyte of Monaco, and the doings at Rangers) it might be a good idea to ask why a billionaire wants to invest in a club.
Possible answers are…
1. Something to do. Having so much money might be a bit boring, and if you like football, it could be rather nice, especially if you like the club. If I had a billion I think I would go and talk to Torquay United and ask if they would like to have a new stadium, and become something of a force in the south west. The reason would be purely emotional – my father (who like his father, was devoted to Arsenal) moved to Torquay in his latter years, and our last games together were at Plainmoor.
Am I the only person who thinks like this? Would a billion change my emotional outlook? Who knows.
2. Investment. It is possible you might think that you could get your money back. In an earlier article I pointed out that if Mr Usmanov reaches 30% he has to bid for the shares (unless he gets FSA dispensation), and if so if Mr Kronke wanted to make £££££££ he could simply sell out. I’m not in any way saying that he does want to do this, but rather that if that was the plan it would be a good investment on his part.
3. Advertising. The whole Emirates, Qatar, Ethiad thing is advertising of a nation, of an airline. It works, although it is rather expensive.
4. Corrupt practices – money laundering, and the like. If the buying and selling of clubs such as Portsmouth was for emotions, investment or advertising then it was a flop. If it were for corrupt practices, then maybe it worked – although of course I have no inside information and make no allegation.
The problem is that if Torquay United wanted me and my make-believe billion, they might see me as a white knight come to do good – and that is what I would hope would happen if my billion dropped out of the sky. But they might get so enthusiastic about my scheme they might not see, or might not want to believe in, any dubious bits beneath. Benefactors can be good and they can be bad.
Let us not forget that Woolwich Arsenal FC was saved by a benefactor – Henry Norris. And what a benefactor. He honourably paid off every single debt the club had in 1910, gave firm financial assurances to the League that he would personally guarantee that the club would continue, and that he would keep the club at Plumstead for a year so that the locals could buy shares or turn up and support – and then when that failed, out of his own pocket he built Highbury Stadium. Honour or what?
And all he got for his troubles was a dark reputation for a minor infringement of the rules later on which resulted in him taking out about 0.1% of the money he put into the club.
So when we look at billionaires and football clubs we have to recognise that
a) they can be in the game for any one of a number of reasons – honourable or not.
b) the power of their money and the emotions involved in football that make people want to believe the good times have come mean that these owners have huge, huge power. As the SFA have gone after Craig Whyte of Rangers, he has called them a joke, and said of the fine imposed on him, “good luck in collecting the money”. He clearly believes he can’t be touched.
And this is the danger – football has moved into the hands of people who might or might not be honourable, and by and large because of their money, are sometimes hard to call to account.
With the help of Untold readers I have been collecting details of a few of the clubs affected. Here’s a starter pack…
Man City. We know about Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan; what I was not anticipating was to turn up in Melbourne, Australia, and find another Ethiad stadium branded like the Man City stadium. Is there to be one in every major city in the world?
The big question is, is this club taking on Uefa’s plans for Financial Fair Play? If they are, and if they win, then that’s all the proof we need. The billionaires run the game, not the organisations that claim to run the game.
Chelsea. What is most interesting is that the story has always been that Mr Abramovich went to Uefa and asked them to introduce FFP. It looks as if Chelsea believed that they could bring themselves into line with FFP in time, by building up a league winning first team, and an Arsenal-style youth system. Now the system is not delivering (although we must recognise that they have won the Champs League) they are back buying big time. Have Chelsea abandoned FFP compliance for the moment? Certainly the combination of Man City and Chelsea not going with FFP poses a huge problem for Uefa.
I’ll return to other English clubs later, but let’s look abroad for a moment…
Malaga. The club was bought in June 2010, by Qatari investor, Abdullah bin Nasser bin Abdullah Al Ahmed Al Thani. Chilean manager Manuel Pellegrini, was brought in, having previously been at Villarreal and Real Madrid. They have been revived and moved from relegation threat upwards. It is a gradual climb, but this seems the new approach. Not, buy everyone now and win the league next year, but a three year plan. Old players out new players in. This last season they qualified for Champions League qualifiers for the first time ever. The system works.
Vitesse in the Netherlands could be a similar case to Malaga. In August 2010, Merab Jordania of Georgia took over the club and said he wanted the club to be champions of the Eredivisie within three years.
Paris St Germain were taken over by Qatar Investment Authority in 2012, prior to that they owned 70%. The club is valued at around €100m and the president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi said he wanted to spend €100m more in buying players. on the transfer market in the years to come to build a strong team. They are said to be the richest club in France – they came second in the league in 2011/12
Zenit St. Petersburg. In December 2005, Gazprom (the largest natural gas company in the world and the largest company in Russia) took a controlling stake in Zenit. It invested over $100 million, buying new players and starting to build a new 62,000 seater stadium. 50% of Gazprom is owned by the state. In April 2012, Zenit won the Russian Championship for the second year running.
Juventus The owner is the Agnelli family. Andrea Agnelli was head of Fiat, and was said to have controlled around 4.4% of Italy’s gross domestic product, 3.1% of its workforce and 16.5% of its industrial research investment. Juve were at the centre of Calciopoli – the referee based corruption scandal, and were relegated to the second division, and had two titles removed. Recently they have publicly renounced that ruling and claimed the titles as their own.
These are just a few of the clubs in which a billionaire has taken a club and invested significant sums in it, in order to take it forwards. There are many more and I shall continue exploring the list in a future article.
But for now I am trying to pull threads together, and my main thought thus far is that this activity is utterly changing football. Putting vast sums into a club does allow very rich people, within three years, to get to the top of the league in a country, and start fighting it out in the Champions League. Yet it brings dangers such as,
Corruption: Rangers and Juventus followed different routes to corruption, and both have eventually been caught out. Maybe there are others.
False promises: One need only say Portsmouth – although there are many others around the world
Clubs used for criminal activity. On Untold, Anne has exposed money laundering and how it is linked to football. (See links below)
I guess to that list I am now adding: the challenge to Uefa and the leagues. There is the forthcoming challenge to FFP through these billionaire clubs, and there is a challenge to the leagues as exhibited by Rangers going to court and Juve’s corruption.
These are serious challenges, and I believe anyone who casts them aside as being of no significance is misreading the future of football.
———————————-
There is more to come but meanwhile you might like to look at…
As the billionaires take over football clubs, Fifa urges “direct action”
The billionaire clubs – their owners and their success
Money laundering and football Part 1 Part 2 Part 3