The UK government has been urged to prohibit and phase out state ownership of football clubs, in a letter written to sports minister Lucy Frazer by human rights group Fair Square.
It is stressed that the stability for the game called for by the government’s recent white paper on the future of football simply isn’t possible with the current involvement of states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as the non-profit body raise questions as to why it was not included in the document. FairSquare lays out why state ownership is “the greatest threat to the sustainability, integrity, and vitality of football in England and beyond” before calling on the government to “protect” clubs and the game with rules that “dissuade states or their proxies from even attempting to take ownership of clubs”.
