Of Takeovers and Presidents

Football today is no longer just a sport, it's a money-making business, in fact a very huge one. We have come to see various takeovers in the BPL in the recent years,namely the big ones Chelsea, ManUtd and Liverpool. The scale of earnings in the football has risen so much recently until it has become very attractive investments for the super-rich. An author once said, you will never get rich working under an employer because you are only serving that particular person. The more people you serve the richer you get. True enough, the BPL is broadcast all around the world and it's biggest customer is obviously the most populated continent of them all, Asia. There's no official numbers how wide the audience is, but to simplify things, it's in terms of billions.


We've seen many takeovers in the BPL. Here's the list of them I compiled
Chelsea - Roman Abromovich
Man Utd - Malcolm Glazer and family
Liverpool - George Gillett and Tom Hicks
Aston Villa - Randy Lerner
Newcastle - Mike Ashley
Portsmouth - Alexandre Gaydamak
Fulham - Mohamed Al-Fayed
Man City - Thaksin Shinawatra
Sunderland - Consortium headed by Niall Quinn
West Ham - Eggert Magnusson

10 clubs are have been involved in takeovers and only 1 British ownership has been retained, Mike Ashley, owner of Newcastle United.

Next , the ones under-threat
Arsenal - Alisher Usmanov and Stanley Kroenke
Tottenham and Everton - Dubai Investment Group (DIG)
West Brom - Carson Yeung

So are takeovers good for the game? There's plenty of ways to look at this. Chelsea would be the strongest example for supporting the takeover argument. Russian money indeed has transformed Chelsea from an average to a world-class footballing club. This enabled Chelsea to break the stranglehold of the two-horse race previously. Competition is stiff as ever and obviously this improves the quality of the league. With takeovers at smaller clubs such as Portsmouth , Aston Villa and Man City, those teams are no longer that easy to beat. In fact, those are the teams trying to breakthrough the top 4 and they are mounting lots of pressure on the "Big 4" to be at the top of their game.

Financially, takeovers are extremely good for any club. Injections into clubs allow them not only to pay off outstanding debts but most importantly provide transfer kitties to buy bigger players.

Then why on earth are fans objecting them? It's quite simply because of emotional and ethical reasons. I'm not sure how other fans feel when their clubs are being takeover, but I am quite against any takeover at Arsenal. I do feel that letting foreigners own the club would mean repatriation of earnings to other countries. All the money generated by English clubs eventually does not stay in England and in the long term the BPL is technically a foreign-owned league. That's one part of the argument. I thank owners of the club that do not play any role in the clubs decision-making. This is one of the biggest fears when a takeover occurs. We saw Freddy Shepperd, once chairman at Newcastle signing Patrick Kluivert. I am very sure it wasn't Sam's proposal. We also saw Mr. Abramovich making the decision to bring in Andriv Shevchenko,and that too was definitely not a manager's(Jose) signing. This sort of interference is very disturbing to clubs and it is very frustrating for managers having their roles taken from them. That is what I fear most. If an owner buys a club and leaves the management to do their job,then this could be accepted.

President's control

Now comes the other issue. The huge involvement of president's of clubs. Especially Laporta of Barcelona, Calderon of Real Madrid and Milan's Galliani. I am not sure whether this has been practice for years where presidents exert a lot of control over a manager's role. For example, the pursuit of C.Ronaldo by Real Madrid was done by Calderon all the way, not Bernd Schuster which knows what the team needs and want. That is one sign of corporate side of football using its powers. Is it how it should be , I think not. Another more recent example, Kaka's representatives met on Roman Abramovich's yacht to discuss a move. Kaka's agent's are fine, but shouldn't be Scolari be doing the negotiations instead of an outsider from operations, the owner himself. It just doesn't sound right.
Presidents unveiling new players at the press is still perfectly fine. Corporate executives such as David Gill of Man Utd , Peter Kenyon of Chelsea and Ken Friar of Arsenal who work closely with managers when dealing with transfers are doing it the right way. But for those having little discussions with managers are going make some big mistakes for sure.

The 700mil pounds question would be whether Arsenal needs a takeover to help reduce the burden of paying off stadium debts and having extra transfer funds. I do think this season would be quite a decider whether the the club is able to cope with having to be selling-club (net income from transfers). David Dein is very serious about a takeover, I do understand his view but there's just a lot more in a takeover. Comments and views are welcomed.

~deyao~