Funny old world we live in. Who would have thought there would ever be a time
when what started out as one of the world's premier mosque construction
companies would want to buy an English football (soccer) club? Moreover, that
the construction company in question had links to the world's premier
terrorist?
Newcastle United, the object of the Saudi Binladin Group's (SBG's) affections,
has gone into public relations overdrive, denying media reports the seriously
loaded Bin Laden family of Jeddah have lined up a 300 million pound (US$592
million) takeover at Tyneside.
Which raises the question: what exactly is the problem?
Osama, the black sheep of the Bin Laden flock, was officially
disowned by his family years ago. He is to all intents and purposes, in public
at least, persona non grata with the people he used to count as kin.
SBG's chairman, Osama's half-brother, Bakr, is not a terrorist. By all accounts
and reputation he's a legitimate businessman and ranked by ArabianBusiness.com
as the 21st most influential Arab figure in the world. His background and name
have not stopped his company from investing in all sorts of businesses beyond
its bread and butter of construction, reputedly including Microsoft, Boeing,
and even, as Michael Moore makes a case for in Fahrenheit 9/11, the oil
concerns of the Bush family of Texas. He's dined with British royalty and
American presidents - as whitebread and capital "E" establishment as you can
get.
But Bin Laden or "Bin Ladin", as Bakr and his brothers and sisters now spell
their name, are still dirty words in the West. They have as much chance of
buying Newcastle as I do of dating US glamour star Carmen Electra.
Which, when all the facts of the story are considered, is somewhat
hypocritical. Actually, staggeringly so.
To my mind, what is far worse than the Saudi Binladin Group taking over the
Magpies, as Newcastle is known, is the ease by which shady gangsters and their
hangers-on have infiltrated the highest echelons of the English game. The ease
by which certain crooks have gained residency to escape being jailed at home.
The lip service paid to the English Premier League's own "fit and proper person
test", which stipulates a director of a football club will be disqualified from
holding such an office if he or she gets involved in anything that could be
construed as corruption, insolvency, conspiracy to defraud, insider trading,
false accounting, perjury, theft, tax evasion.
Well, the plain truth is the premier league simply needs all the money it can
get and clubs, saddled with unpayable debts from overstretched operating
budgets, are forced to hock themselves to anyone with the means to get them out
of trouble.
So, for me, the real villain in this whole cesspool of greed is the premier
league itself, led by its avaricious chief executive, Richard Scudamore, which
has allowed the English game and particularly the "Big Four" clubs - Manchester
United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea - to foster a culture of spending that
is out of kilter with reality.
As the Sunday Telegraph's cluey columnist Patrick Barclay writes in the June
edition of World Soccer magazine, "That half the premier league is owned by
foreigners in not necessarily a point worth pursuing - the truly perturbing
change is that the leading clubs are being burdened by levels of debt that
appear unsustainable."
Foreign owners involved with premier league clubs include Russians Roman
Abramovich (Chelsea), Aleksandr Gaydamak (Portsmouth) and Alisher Usmanov
(Arsenal) , Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra (Manchester City), American Malcolm
Glazier at Manchester United, Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett at
Liverpool, American Randy Lerner at Aston Villa, Eggert Magnusson from Iceland
at West Ham United and Egyptian-born businessman Mohamed Al Fayed at Fulham.
When rich foreign businessmen come into the league, the league gets the money
and the owners get the legitimacy. It's a cozy arrangement benefiting everybody
except, arguably, the fans. While many think they're getting more bang for
their buck with more games being played and bigger names being signed,
ultimately they're the ones who pick up the tab in the form of increased ticket
prices, membership fees, merchandise costs, TV subscriptions and so on.
It's a vicious cycle that has got out of control, that makes the game too
expensive for the average fan, and something must be done about it to preserve
soul of the game.
But now that it's started, how do we stop it? The evil genie's been let out of
the bottle.
Jesse Fink is a leading football writer in Australia. He is the author of
the critically acclaimed book 15 Days in June: How Australia Became a
Football Nation and has won various awards in Australia for his sports writing.
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