From The Observer - Foreign ownership killing the game.

Gary Stevens Joined : 08 Jun 2007 Posts : 1063

Sadly, the game as we know it has already changed beyond recognition and is likely to change even more in the next few years.Just hope Tottenham achieve success under British ownership. Is Levy the man for it? I hope so.

The big sell out

International tycoons are taking over English football and the FA are doing
nothing to prevent it. Nine top-flight clubs are now under foreign
ownership - and more are set to follow. As the cash pours in, what is the
game in danger of losing? Tom Bower assesses what the cost could be

Sunday July 29, 2007
The Observer

No other country allows the crown jewels of their major sport to become the
uncontrolled playthings of investors whose backgrounds remain untested. The
Football Association's failure to investigate properly the background of the
foreign nationals buying top clubs or their growing influence on the sport
heralds the end of the Premier League as an English institution. Persuaded
that football's only hope of survival is spending unlimited millions of
pounds, the game's administrators have swallowed the myth that the Premier
League can flourish only by unquestioningly allowing a wholesale takeover by
foreign investors. The silence and self-inflicted paralysis in Soho Square
is endangering the whole of English football.

The rot started when Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch, was allowed to
buy Chelsea in 2003, despite the controversial origins of his fortune. Many
Chelsea fans believed that Abramovich's billions would not have any negative
effects on football in England. Standing on the sidelines, the FA and even
the government, with powers to scrutinise any directors seeking to control a
public company, allowed Chelsea to become an oligarch's toy without heeding
the warnings that, while Abramovich's love of football seemed genuine, his
money would destabilise the Premier League. The predictions were accurate.

Four years later, the billionaire's investment looks shrewd. Having paid
£150m for Chelsea, Abramovich could now resell the club for at least £500m.
Over the next two years, the majority of Premier League clubs are destined
to be owned by foreigners. Premier League football will not be played for
English fans, but for one billion paying spectators on global television.
Financially that might be rewarding for rich investors and for the players
themselves, but the benefit for fans and for the national team is
questionable. The English game, some believe, is facing a fatal blowback.

Richard Scudamore, the gung-ho chief executive of the Premier League, has
welcomed foreign takeovers as 'irresistible'. Their millions, he predicted
some years ago, would enhance the game. Thanks to foreign players and
foreign money, the Premier League has certainly become the world's
wealthiest, most watched and admired national competition. But Scudamore now
risks being devoured by his new paymasters and the consequences for English
football could be catastrophic.

Over recent weeks, some of the nine foreign owners of Premier League clubs
have been quietly discussing Scudamore's dismissal and his replacement by a
non-British executive. Their motives are financial. Having spent millions to
buy the clubs and many more millions on foreign players, they are impatient
about inadequate profits. Scudamore, they complain, is an amateur compared
to his American peers. 'Only the Americans know how to really market the
Premier League brand,' says a football agent close to the foreign owners.
'They've got Scudamore with his unsophisticated "Third World" mentality. A
proper marketing expert could earn millions more from the most exciting
sporting fixture in the world.' To maximise the profits, the foreign
investors argue, the Premier League should be rebranded and marketed like
Coca-Cola.

In his defence, Scudamore can parade the high fees being paid by Asian
television companies for the rights to show Premier League matches. In Hong
Kong, the host broadcasters have just paid $200m (£100m) to screen the next
three seasons' matches, which amounts to about $10 spent per match for each
viewer. In Singapore, the TV rights were sold for $160m over the same
period. The biggest area of potential growth is China, which has paid $50m
but is identified as a future bonanza. Those deals will contribute £625m to
the Premier League over the next three years. And that's the rub. While
Scudamore practically doubled the league's income over the previous
contract, the new foreign owners want more. The recent tours by Chelsea,
Liverpool and Manchester United to America and the Far East and South Africa
are as much about long-term marketing as generating immediate income.

Scudamore's successor is likely to be an American without any interest in
the 37,500 English clubs affiliated to the Football Association, or the
Premier League clubs' commitment to the England team. The Premier League's
relationship with the FA, already frail as a result of Scudamore's disdain,
would be further jeopardised. With at least four more Premier League clubs,
including Everton, Arsenal and Fulham (owned by the would-be Brit Mohamed
al-Fayed) expected to be sold over the next year or so, the balance of power
is inexorably tilting in the foreigners' favour.

No alternative scenario seems feasible. To remain in the Premier League with
a chance of qualifying for the lucrative Champions League requires tens of
millions of pounds to buy new players. Liverpool, for instance, have just
signed the young Spain striker Fernando Torres for an improbable £26m, a
club record. One of Liverpool's main rivals, Arsenal, have in recent seasons
begun to struggle because much of the club's money was spent on a new
stadium, the 60,000-capacity Emirates, rather than players. Depressingly,
none of the club's potential buyers is English. That is consistent with the
absence of any Englishmen offering to buy West Ham, Aston Villa or
Portsmouth. Even Liverpool were never destined to be bought by a wealthy
local fan. The English are cashing in their national sport to earn fast
money. Greed is not the only reason. No Englishman, it seems, has the vision
and ability to secure an adequate profit from Premier League football as an
owner.

Daniel Levy, chief executive of Tottenham, would accept, it appears, an
offer at £200m for the club (his company ENIC bought an initial 29.9 per
cent share in Spurs in 2000 for £22m and now owns 66 per cent), while Danny
Fiszman, one of Arsenal's major shareholders, would agree to sell his shares
if the club were bought for £400m, plus £300m of debt. There is no shortage
of bidders for Arsenal. Boris Berezovsky, the fugitive Russian oligarch,
unsuccessfully negotiated to buy the club and, like other oligarchs, oil
sheikhs and Asian magnates, is still hunting for his prize. Their reasons
are obvious: the international status of owning a Premier League club far
outshines possession of aluminium plants and oil wells. Their motives are
little different from generations of British owners. Sitting in the
directors' box, surrounded by thousands of screaming fans, and looking down
at 'your' team does wonders for the ego. Does it matter if Doug Ellis at
Aston Villa sells out to an American or Terry Brown at West Ham is replaced
by an Icelandic biscuit tycoon? Certainly, few would see little reason to
cry that Ken Bates, previous owner of Chelsea, has been swapped for
Abramovich.

Pini Zahavi, the Israeli agent responsible for brokering Abramovich's
purchase of Chelsea, Alexandre Gaydamak's takeover of Portsmouth, and Kia
Joorabchian's failed bid for West Ham, epitomises the unsentimental
predator. 'What's the problem?' he asks rhetorically. 'Britain has sold its
banks, its gas, electricity and water supply companies and even its airports
to foreign companies.' Laughing, he adds: 'Ninety per cent of Mayfair is
foreign owned and sometimes all of Arsenal's team is foreign, so why not the
football clubs? Honestly, I can't understand what difference it makes.'

The difference is that football is not a utility or a bank, but part of the
fabric of England, uniting so much of the nation in frenzy and depression
during international competitions such as the World Cup. That communal
glorification is already threatened by the rising costs of watching Premier
League matches. With the exception of the top-six clubs, spectators are
increasingly deterred from watching less glamorous matches from the stands
because of excessive ticket prices and the amount of football shown on
television. More insidious is the growing habit by the managers of the star
clubs to 'rest' their best players in matches against their inferior rivals
and in cup matches. That disappoints the fans, is a step towards potential
match-fixing and hastens the introduction of a European super league, a
poisonous scheme for English football.

The only possible block to a complete foreign takeover of the game at the
highest level would be the Football Association. Notorious for freebies and
fiefdoms, the FA's executives and members are stubbornly loath to reform
themselves. Ineffective to prevent corruption by agents, remove conflicts of
interest among club owners (such as Chelsea's flagrant disregard for
protocol when they tapped up Arsenal's Ashley Cole in January 2005) and
control the spiralling prices and wages for players, they have meekly
accepted their impotence at the power of the Premier League. Outwitted first
by Scudamore and now by the foreign owners, the FA are powerless to persuade
football's new tycoons to develop and sustain the sport at a local level.

In those circumstances, English football could be said to be fortunate that
foreigners have come to the rescue. Sky - owned by a naturalised American -
and the major clubs owned by foreigners have invested enough money to save
English football from its mounting debts. The downside is that the
foreigners understandably appear only interested in personal wealth and
glory. None is genuinely interested in investing in British youth or
re-establishing closer relations between the clubs and the fans, or
encouraging football's grassroots in order to strengthen the national game.
According to former West Ham chairman Terry Brown, who was replaced at the
East End club when an Icelandic consortium bought them for £85m, his
successor, Eggert Magnusson, has made little effort to retain the club's
relationship with local charities and council officials. (When contacted,
West Ham said they would shortly be announcing 'two initiatives' with local
charities.)

So far, foreign players and managers have been tolerated because the game
remained under English control. The first foreign takeovers were seen as
eccentric but not threatening. That will change if Americans, Russians,
Arabs and the odd shady Thai politician execute a wholesale takeover.

Not only would the game lose its English identity but, more important, the
FA's benign influence would be further eroded. Impotent against the foreign
investors, the FA would find it increasingly hard to organise and train the
England team and adequately police the rules about the registration of
players and financial probity. As the divorce between the FA and Premier
League solidified, loyal fans could well become disenchanted by the
internationalisation of their clubs. The blowback for the investors would be
empty seats in the stadiums reflecting the fans' anger that their passion
had become a plaything for remote speculators.

· Tom Bower is the author of Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of
British Football (Simon & Schuster)

The revolution in numbers

11
Number of players from outside the UK and Ireland who started the opening
matches in the first weekend of the Premier League in 1992

340
Players from outside the UK and Ireland in the Premier League at the end of
last season

75,000
Average annual salary in pounds at the start of the Premier League in 1992.
Scott Parker is to earn that amount in a week at West Ham

191
Millions of pounds paid by Sky in 1992 for live broadcasting rights
contract, for five years

1.7
Billions of pounds paid by Sky and Setanta for live broadcasting rights over
the next three years

625
Millions of pounds generated by the sale of overseas TV rights in a
three-year deal that will see the Premier League shown in 208 countries

5
Number of foreign managers. There were none in 1992

40
Percentage by which the combined revenue of Premier League clubs
outperformed that of the sides in Italy's Serie A in 2005-06

9
Number of Premier League clubs with foreign owners. In 2003, there was just
one, Fulham, whose owner had lived in the UK for 30 years

295
Thousands of pounds paid by David Dein in 1983 for his stake in Arsenal.
Described by club chairman Peter Hill-Wood as 'dead money', his shares are
now worth around £60m

Founding Father Joined : 05 Jun 2007 Posts : 3522

agree with all of that. Football is dying - I'd rather watch Southend on a Saturday afternoon for 5 quid than trapse all the way to WHL and pay 50 quid to watch Jenas et al slope around hardly bothered if we win or lose because, hey, they get their thousands every week right?

Other days I love the Prem - depends if we are winning or not I guess Very Happy

Edgar Davids Joined : 06 Jun 2007 Posts : 2576

There was an article in 4-4-2 recently about that, Dan - they interviewed four lads who had given up supporting Premier League teams to go back to grass roots and support their local club. None of them regretted it, in fact they all seemed to thrive on the fact that they were a valued member of the club, rather than feeling as though they were just another cash cow to be sucked dry in order to pay the massively over-inflated wages of a bunch of dopey young upstarts who didn't seem to give a shit half the time.

Edgar Davids Joined : 06 Jun 2007 Posts : 2497

Guys, it's time to support South China. COME ON YOU SOUTH CHINA! cheers

_________________
To dare is to do

Founding Father Joined : 05 Jun 2007 Posts : 3522

Gary Stevens Joined : 08 Jun 2007 Posts : 1063

I follow a number of other teams but the simple fact is that my support for Spurs is unrelenting and overwhelms all else. They (the club) has screwed its fans for years - even back in the 60s the directors (Sidney Wale) had scant regard for the average everyday fan. The one thing then, though, was the close affinity between player and fan. Now we have lost that and I find I simply can't warm to the Baby Bentley generation of players. I can still remember sharing a pint with Steve Perryman (actually he drank coke) at the White Hart one lunchtime. Can you imagine any of today's players being bothered to chat to their fans? So much has been lost, yet there is no way I can ever let go.

For the record I also follow Charlton, Dulwich Hamlet (Isthmian league?), Hearts, Vejle (Denmark) and the Brisbane Strikers. I support all those teams but if and when they play Tottenham, my loyalties are totally lillywhite.

Edgar Davids Joined : 06 Jun 2007 Posts : 3552

As i mentioned before, I also follow my local team, Whyteleafe FC.

Ozspur - next time I see ya I'll lend the Sport Book of the Year 2005.

My Father and other Working Class Football Heroes by Gary Imlach.

Absolutely superb book about Stewart Imleach, an ordinary football hero and star of his time. 40 years on his son tells the story of a father, a game and the way the world changed.

Edgar Davids Joined : 06 Jun 2007 Posts : 2596

I saw Southend play a couple of times with my grandad (grandparents lived in leigh-on-sea, grandma still does) when I was younger, great experience. 6/9 quid entry or something, great seats.

Good memories of Roots Hall, back when Southend were in Division 1 (none of this championship nonsense) Andy Rammell up front and Simon Royce (class act) in goal.

Edgar Davids Joined : 06 Jun 2007 Posts : 3552

Non-league football isn't that cheap to watch. Whyteleafe were charging 8 quid last season. Okay, not huge amount but they play 3 divisions below the conference.

Going back to the article, the fact that owners are foreign is irrelevant - its that they are only in it for the money. This started a long time ago and it's just continuing. In the next 18 months Spurs will be owned by some tinpot dictator - that’s when we start getting worried. Levy is no different, but he is able to pretend to be in it for the glory - not the money. I guess being successful and generating money go cap in hand - the time to worry is when success proves elusive.