The English FA: asleep on the job when it comes to club ownership

It just keeps getting better for Pompey

Thanks to the recent messes at Leeds United (no-one knows who owns them) and Notts County (no-one’s willing to disclose who exactly owns them), we’ve been reading lots of op-eds lately clamoring for the English FA to actually use that “Fit and Proper Persons” test they’ve been waffling about for some time.

Theoretically, if you want to own a soccer club in England, you need to be examined to make sure you’re really someone who should be indulging in such things. Seems reasonable enough, right? Nothing too untoward about a little check-and-balance on the ownership process.

That’s how it should work, and yet the rise of anonymous ownership consortiums and reclusive millionaires/billionaires buying up clubs like they’re properties on a Monopoly board has prompted very little response for those supposed to be watching over the security and stability of soccer in England.

As such, we get embarrassments like this gem in today’s papers: the new Pompey owner knows nothing about football and just wants to make a quick buck.

If that’s not bad enough, enjoy his smug soundbite:

“We are going to purchase the remaining shares in the club by entry of additional partners, whether they are from the Gulf or Europe,” Faraj said. “Our plan is to stay at the club for a period of not less than six months, until the club stands again, benefiting the club as well as us. This is based on the fact that purchasing the club was purely [an] investment, and in the future we may sell it if we get additional gains.”

Faraj, who is represented on the board by his lawyer Mark Jacob, claimed it was no concern that he knew little about football. “It’s not a secret to hide, we are investors and we have no relationship to sports, but at the same time we have an integrated team of legal and technical advisors,” he said. “All are working at the club as executives and planners for more than five years, and they know all the details and reasoning. This is natural in the business world.”

I despair. Really, I do. While there is little moral ground for not letting people take ownership of things and institutions in other industries, sports has always seemed to protect its interests a little more than other industries. Take, oh, any American sport, for example. There are established practices in place whereby owners can vet potential owners in some detail before giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

It makes sense for them; to protect some level of competitive interest as well as a pure-as-can-be image of the sport’s brand in general, the NBA, NFL and MLB all closely examine those trying to buy their way in before making a collective decision. Sure, it makes these sports exclusive, but it also protects the sanctity of the institution at large. Just last week, the NBA announced that they were to carefully scrutinize a move by Russian gazillionaire Mikhail Prokhorov who’d made an agreement to purchase the New Jersey Nets. Smart move! Who knows where his money is coming from, etc.

And yet, under Richard Scudamore, the thirst for money-money-money is utterly crushing the Football League’s credibility and stability (the second part is somewhat ironic considering that all this cash being injected into struggling clubs is supposed to secure their long-term future. Hilarious!). And it’s getting quite sickening.

Where should we begin?

- Tom Hicks and George Gillett, a duo of soccer novices who appear to have done precious little more than impress their friends with the nobility of the franchise they bought while saddling it with endless debt, breaking numerous promises to fans and management about a new stadium and transfer budgets, and single-handedly handicapping a club that’s trying desperately to compete with richer, more intelligent rivals (of course, we could lump Rafa’s transfer dealings in as a handicap, but let’s not pile on, eh?)

- Flavio Briatore, the morally-bankrupt wheeler-dealer who was banned FOR LIFE from motor racing for the worst instance of cheating in the sport’s history, and yet has no trouble getting involved with Lakshmi Mittal at QPR. Definitely someone we want involved in soccer.

- Qadbak, the consortium of private, unknown money men who helped broker the deal for Munto Finance to take over at Notts County, and subsequently offer Sven Goran Eriksson millions to rebuild the club. Their chairmen are, or have been, involved in several questionable business deals, yet remain in charge. (Don’t worry folks, to pour fuel on the fire, the Football League said they passed the test, in spite of a massively complicated ownership structure that “features offshore entities.” Move along, nothing to see here, folks)

- Leeds United! A club whose own chairman, Ken Bates, admits to being clueless about who owns the club. Even though he said it was him, he’s since retracted that statement. No, it’s some Cayman-based company Forward Finance, and it’s whoever owns its 10,000 shares. Yeah, talk to them. I’m sure they’re willing to go on the record.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not outwardly saying any of the anonymous owners are involved in illegal activity, but it provides a sad counterpoint to the days when clubs were family-owned and everyone could see the owners in the Director’s Box every Saturday at 3pm. I’m also not so naive to think that this is how soccer should be in the modern era; we all know that such throwback days are long gone, and ultimately, it’s for the best this way. After all, without all this cash, we wouldn’t be sitting in our apartments in the US watching La Liga or Bundesliga games live on TV.

But let’s take a step back from both extremes for a second, and admit that some middle-ground is possible. In his seemingly endless quest for money and cash for the Football League, Scudamore and the FA have plunged the game, and their shiny EPL golden egg, into all kinds of moral quandaries that other sports don’t seem to deal with nearly as much.

As a recent op-ed so brilliantly points out, the FA are so quick to excoriate Eduardo for a dive, Adebayor for a goal celebration, or Robert Huth for throwing a punch during a game, and yet, no such moral or ethical code is applied to the guys whose investment in the sport at the club level deserves similar scrutiny. I’ll leave you to draw the obvious implication there as to why they don’t.

For Al-Faraj, he’s openly admitting that they’ll hang around at Pompey for 6 months or so before looking to sell on and take their tidy profits with them. For a club that’s struggling to even pay its players, is anyone in charge of soccer concerned at how bad that looks?

Recent evidence at other clubs would suggest the answer is a firm no.