It’s probably a mistake to start with a nearly 29-year-old British cultural reference, but it’s a story of doubts and mistakes, so it seems appropriate.
In 1995, the late, great comedian Caroline Aherne hosted a spoof talk show in which she played a character called Mrs Merton, an elderly lady from Manchester who asked frank and insincere questions of celebrities.
“So what first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?” was his famous introduction to Debbie McGee, the glamorous assistant and wife of the aforementioned TV magician.
A version of this question was running through my head as I tried to find a common thread between the four case studies we did this week on men looking to buy football clubs.
So, Chris/Dozy/William/Thomas, what first attracted you to the cash business with real estate assets that would guarantee weeks, if not months, of positive media coverage and a huge dopamine hit from the gratitude of strangers?
Because when you put it that way, it’s not hard to see how football club auctions can be addictive/good smokescreen/useful advertising/worth a try ( delete where applicable).
We’ve cast Chris Kirchner, Dozy Mmobuosi, William Storey and Thomas Zilliacus this time, but if there are any streaming giants reading, we might flesh out the first season of the documentary series with Laurence Bassini and Massimo Cellino, before we cast in Russell King, Henry. Mauriss, Carson Yeung and David Hilton – the man with four names who bought Scunthorpe United last year – and others in the second season. Like a Bruce Springsteen concert, we might even take requests.
But what does this seemingly bottomless pool of candidates say about English football? Nothing good, right?
Well no, but it’s important to note that none of the gentlemen we featured this week actually purchased the clubs they were so publicly seeking. Some came closer than others, but not all were successful.
Men who want to buy football clubs:
We must also make it clear that it is not just English football that is vulnerable. Kirchner also dabbled in professional golf and sponsored the NHL’s Dallas Stars; Mmobuosi threw (other people’s) money at Nigerian football; Storey’s biggest play involved a Formula One team; and whatever Zilliacus is doing, he’s already done it with soccer teams in Finland and Singapore.
It’s just foreign soccer teams and other sports that our not-so-fabulous four have targeted. Perhaps the most famous fraudulent takeover in sport was that of the NHL’s New York Islanders in the 1990s, although American fraudster Allen Stanford’s attempt to buy English cricket a decade later must achieve a final result.
And should we emphasize that fraud exists beyond sport? Charles Ponzi, anyone? Bernie Madoff? Anna Sorokin? Elizabeth Holmes? Sam Bankman-Fried?
No country, sport or industry should point fingers here: scammers will scam, anywhere and everywhere they can.
However, it would be a mistake to simply gloss over English football’s long list of good-for-nothings and pretend that it goes with the territory. Our clubs may not be particularly vulnerable, but they are, largely because most of them are in deficit.
If they were car companies, fashion brands or restaurants that were no longer making money, they would simply be dissolved. Some people might miss them for a while, but most of us would get over them pretty quickly.
Football clubs, on the other hand, are much more than just a business. So instead of simply giving in to market forces, we fight to keep them alive. This makes them remarkably durable.
But there are a lot of them, most of them are for sale and many of them are put on the market as distressed assets. And guess what? There usually aren’t that many good buyers for this type of business. Beggars cannot choose.
So, instead of wondering why so many of our clubs attract scammers, fantasists or those who advertise, we should ask ourselves: why are so many of our clubs for sale in the first place? And when they go up for sale, why aren’t they flooded with copper-bottom offers from the most successful entrepreneurs and investors?
Fix the game’s durability problem and you’ll also go a long way toward solving its questionable owner’s problem. It would be nice if we didn’t have to wait for an independent regulator to resolve this problem, but one of them is on the way, so the cavalry is coming.
But fairer financial distribution, cost controls and a licensing system will not eradicate all of football’s vulnerabilities. And neither would a stricter vetting process for potential owners. That would help, of course, but we would still be dealing with human beings and – I’m sorry to tell you – human beings are flawed.
Nor will a more robust financial model, better warning system and more due diligence prevent good landlords from going rogue. For every story I could tell you about a rascal who tried to launder his ill-gotten gains through the turnstiles or build houses on the training ground, I could tell you two about the well-meaning businessman who lost his mind chasing glory and left. the club on the verge of bankruptcy.
Weeding out the corrupt can be difficult, but it is doable; It’s much harder to find the incompetent before they break things.
We could take a cue from the NFL and effectively leave control of new entrants to the owning club to existing members – what former Premier League boss Richard Scudamore disdainfully called the “cut your jib” test – but it would require English club owners to act as partners in a joint venture. Good luck with that.
However, we can and must continue to try and make our game more robust, so that the next time there is an international break and the boss calls for a series on the men who tried and failed to buy clubs , I can’t say, “Well, I’ve done half a dozen this year, take your pick.”
I love my job, but it shouldn’t be this easy.
(Top photo: Adam Fussell)