When a fan-led review, chaired by the former sports minister Tracey Crouch, explored ways to redistribute football income to non-Premier League clubs, the indignant chief executive of Leeds United, Angus Kinnear, denounced the project as akin to “Maoist collective agriculturalism”. Pace Mr Kinnear, as the upper reaches of the national game risk becoming a private playground for American hedge funds and sportswashing states, a more collectivist mindset in football is exactly what is required.
The publication of this week’s football white paper – which draws heavily on the Crouch review’s proposals – is a landmark moment, and a step in that direction. The most eye-catching part of the plan is the creation of the first independent regulator of men’s football in England, charged with protecting the integrity and sustainability of the game at all levels. After three decades in which English football’s elite clubs have moved into a different orbit from the rest, and a laissez-faire ownership culture has opened the door to unscrupulous buyers, this is overdue.
The new regulator would act as a much-needed broker for the common good, in a world where money has been allowed to talk too loudly over other considerations. Perhaps most crucially, given the corrosive financial gulf that has emerged between elite clubs and the rest, the regulator would be given backstop powers to enforce a fairer distribution of income throughout the leagues. The sheer scale of England’s football pyramid is unique, and its clubs are sources of communal pride and identity across the country. A more equitable deal, if it can be enforced, will help preserve the game’s variety and its strength in depth.
Equally welcome are proposed regulator powers to prevent owners removing clubs into lucrative closed-shop competitions such as the aborted European Super League – plans for which prompted a fans’ revolt in 2021. Lower down the leagues, in the wake of the demise of clubs such as Bury and Macclesfield Town, an annual licensing system would help ensure sound business models, together with a beefed-up owners’ and directors’ test. It is also right that after years of campaigning for these kinds of reforms, fans are finally promised a greater say in the running of the clubs they sustain. As with other aspects of the white paper though, the devil here will be in the detail.
Taken as a package, the proposals offer a chance to reassert collective values which have become obscured since the Premier League was formed three decades ago. Established through a breakaway by clubs from the old First Division, the Premier League has become the brashest, richest and most watched league in world football. As a sporting spectacle it can be dazzling and compelling. But a moral compass has sometimes been missing in the midst of a relentless pursuit of wealth, power and prestige.
There is one notable lacuna. The sports minister, Stuart Andrew, has said that the enhanced owners’ and directors’ test would not be relevant to the most high-profile ethical dilemma facing English football – its growing exploitation as a source of soft power by super-rich authoritarian states wishing to clean up their global image. On Sunday, the Carabao Cup final will be contested by Newcastle United, owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Manchester United, currently the subject of a multibillion-pound bid by the son of a former Qatari prime minister.
A Qatari takeover of Manchester United would encapsulate the sense that, at the very highest level, English football’s soul is up for sale. If an independent football regulator cannot wrestle with these sorts of ownership issues, then governments must find another way to do so.
