For a guy sitting on £341.5 million of someone else’s money, Lord PleasedMan,
formerly known as Lord Triesman, the chairman of the FA, is rather smug on
the subject of football debt.
While conveniently advancing an agenda of allegiance to those who hold sway
over the 2018 World Cup finals bid, PleasedMan sold English football down
the river last week with a speech at the Leaders in Football conference at
Stamford Bridge. In essence, he linked the Barclays Premier League, which
must be one of this country’s must successful exports of the past 50 years -
a phenomenon, Sepp Blatter, the president of Fifa, called it recently – to
the global financial crisis. This was not a smart statement by any standard,
but in business terms, and considering his audience, making the future of
the Premier League sound precarious and its existence corrupt was hugely
damaging to the sport in England.
It was, however, exactly the sort of populist blather that Blatter and Michel
Platini, the president of Uefa, wanted to hear. PleasedMan’s old mates from
the world of politics would have lapped it up, too. They have been looking
to place their dead hands on football for years and his Lordship is going to
deliver it to them tied with a bow.
Some people think that PleasedMan is smart. He is not. As my colleague, Gabriele
Marcotti, correctly identified last week, no one who was still a member
of the Communist Party in 1976 is smart, or particularly quick on the
uptake. PleasedMan is a career politician, with all that implies. And
according to the most recent figures provided by Deloitte for 2007, his
organisation exists with a bigger debt than Arsenal, Aston Villa, Black-burn
Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Ever-ton, Fulham, Hull City, Liverpool, Manchester
City, Middlesbrough, Newcastle United, Portsmouth, Stoke City, Sunderland,
Tottenham Hotspur, West Bromwich Albion, West Ham United and Wigan Athletic.
Yet, mystifyingly, despite his love of transparency, PleasedMan did not
mention this when he talked of football businesses operating with debt at
high-risk levels. He just fingered the clubs.
On September 26, the FA renegotiated its repayment schedule over Wembley
Stadium, making a saving of £3 million a year. This was a coup for Alex
Horne, the FA’s chief operating officer, in the present financial climate,
but it raises the question of motive. Horne used the same tactic that any
householder would to bring mortgage payments down, by persuading the six
lenders to extend the FA’s payment schedule from 2018 to 2023. Yet why would
any business want a mortgage around its neck for longer than was necessary,
unless affording it was a problem?
The FA has a debt of £341.5 million directly attributable to the construction
of Wembley and the stadium is still losing £1 million each month. Horne
hopes that, by 2012, the stadium will be self-financing and will contribute
to the coffers rather than drain them, but he cannot guarantee this because
the profit will at first be small and could be affected by intangibles, such
as a potential rise in police costs. Either way, is PleasedMan in a position
to pontificate, considering that his organisation is living with a black
hole that equates to the debt of more than half the Premier League clubs put
together?
No, but this will not stop him because PleasedMan’s speeches serve a dual
purpose by cosying up to the people in high places at Fifa and Uefa who may
help to secure a World Cup bid that is increasingly the preserve of his
friends in Westminster. The make-up of the nine-man management board for the
2018 campaign was announced yesterday and contained more politicians than
football people. There is PleasedMan; Richard Caborn, the former Sports
Minister; Gerry Sutcliffe, the present Sports Minister; Lord Mawhinney, a
Conservative peer; and Baroness Amos, a Labour peer. There are jobs for the
boys, and girls, now PleasedMan is in charge.
Bill Miller, the Texan lobbyist and campaign consultant, got it spot on when
he said that politics was show-business for ugly people, because once folk
such as Mawhinney and Caborn get a sprinkle of the stardust that English
football has to offer, it can never get rid of them.
It is the sense of entitlement that is so startling. What is it about the
state of the economy, our disastrous choices in the Middle East, a health
service that regards treatment as an accountancy issue or the “think of a
number and quadruple it” bid for the Olympic Games that convinces PleasedMan
that what football needs is greater involvement from his colleagues in
government? The national game would be better served by the first five
people to emerge from the Shed End at Chelsea on a Saturday afternoon than
this lot.
Uefa and Fifa fear the growing strength of the English club game and wish to
control it, and PleasedMan is the empty vessel they will use to attack it
from within. They coat this unease in the language of high principle, with
talk of transparency and national identity, but try to get to the bottom of
the ticket scandal that implicates Jack Warner, a Fifa vice-president, or
consider what greater loss of identity is there than the FA’s appointment of
an almost wholly Italian staff to manage the England team.
This is beyond any humiliation visited on English football by the Premier
League, for it cuts to the heart of the national game, yet if the FA, Uefa
or Fifa will not fight to protect the institution of international football,
why should clubs make decisions based on anything other than hard business
facts? There is nothing more flint-heartedly pragmatic than the FA’s
employment of Fabio Capello as England manager.
“This was not a message aimed at the gallery,” one commentator wrote of
PleasedMan’s speech last week, yet the gallery is the default target for
everything he says. According to Premier League sources, his first reaction
when told of the plan for a 39th game was positive and encouraging and he
turned against it several days later only after the idea had gone down like
a lead balloon with just about everybody, most notably Blatter and Platini.
He responded like a true politician, checking which way the wind was blowing
before passing judgment. There was no perception or insight. It was the same
on stage at Stamford Bridge. PleasedMan did not have specific figures on
Premier League debt, merely an unsubstantiated estimate from a source he
declined to name, despite his soundbite on the subject of transparency.
It would be astonishing if the global economic crisis did not affect football,
considering that it will make an impact on just about every other facet of
our lives, but debt alone is not the problem, provided that it can be
managed. There is trouble ahead for West Ham United, who are owned by
Björgólfur Gudmundsson, who, as the former chairman of Landsbanki, is one of
the central figures in the collapse of the Icelandic economy. Despite
denials, there is growing speculation that West Ham may have to be sold as
early as this week and if a buyer cannot be found, a period of austerity
will follow.
Some will view this as a vindication of PleasedMan’s warnings about investment
coming from individuals and institutions that are not financially secure,
but think back to the time when West Ham were sold. Did anyone question
Gudmundsson’s economic strength then? Exactly the opposite. On the day West
Ham went to Iceland, he was viewed, in all quarters, as the best game in
town. The previous chairman, Terence Brown, was useless and presided over a
regime that was subsequently proven to have lied repeatedly to the Premier
League over the acquisition of two Argentina players on loan.
Gudmundsson’s rival buyer was Kia Joorabchian, the man who facilitated those
transfers, backed by investors unknown. Gudmundsson, by contrast, was
regarded as successful and respected, with vast personal wealth and a solid
business reputation. He was bringing in Eggert Magnússon, the former
president of the FA of Iceland, to run the club. This was the sort of
package a modern football business needed, it was agreed. West Ham were
going places.
It proved to be a road to nowhere and sometimes life is like that, but nothing
PleasedMan has said or done would have prevented West Ham from becoming
collateral damage in the global economic crisis. He has been as blind-sided
by the Icelandic crash as the rest of this country, including the Government
and local councils, who had £750 million invested in Iceland’s banks when
they fell down a crater. No doubt PleasedMan will come up with an answer to
the ramifications for football club ownership, though: a working committee,
perhaps, made up of politicians.
The global economic crisis is not a problem caused by football; it is a
problem for football. It was Landsbanki that went skint, not West Ham, and
that could happen in any market, at any time. To link the two, therefore, is
disingenuous and, considering the FA’s need for favour from Blatter and
Platini, self-serving. It is fitting, however, that Lord PleasedMan is such
a fan of transparency because if anyone is easily seen through, it is him.
And another thing...
Vive la France, if you want more predictable winners
David Taylor, right-hand man to Michel Platini at Uefa, says that work on a
licensing system for European clubs is under way and among the schemes
considered will be the French model. Presumably this is the one where the
same team win the league seven seasons in succession (and are top again this
season), although, being Scottish, maybe Taylor does not realise what a
worthless model that is.
Every cap is worth it
That David Beckham equalled Sir Bobby Charlton’s milestone of 106 caps with a
12-minute cameo appearance against Kazakhstan on Saturday has caused
disquiet. Yet what is he supposed to do? Refuse to go on? Appear
anonymously? His role in the team now is to shore up the final stages of a
win and he has accepted it with good grace. One poor pass aside, he played
well, albeit briefly.
Not all of Charlton’s matches were World Cup finals, either. In fact, only 29
were competitive. He also made 26 appearances in the home international
championship, a tournament English football later abandoned as pointless.
There is no purpose in trying to quantify the worth of individual matches.
The England manager has found it necessary to call upon Beckham on 106
occasions. That is some achievement.
The Debate
Division of sport into heroes and villains will encourage boo boys
There is no Italian equivalent of the traditional English pantomime, but
perhaps Fabio Capello will understand the Wembley crowd’s reaction to Ashley
Cole better if he thinks of the Commedia dell’Arte, with its heroes and
villains, wise men and fools. The crowd goes to boo and to cheer and this
audience response becomes part of the performance.
That is where English football is now. Cole makes a bad mistake: boo. David
Beckham completes a routine cross: hooray. We shouldn’t have opera singers
belting out the national anthem before England matches, we should get
Christopher Biggins to do it dressed as Widow Twankey.
Debate: To boo or not to boo? Click
here to take part in Martin Samuel's Debate.
