Football League steps up to plate with Leeds United ownership decision
Guardian 24/3/14
Preventing Massimo Cellino from taking a majority stake in the Championship club shows a shift from the game's relationship with money to applying the rule book
For a fanbase inured to secrecy and broken promises the tale of a yacht called Nélie and the disbarring of Massimo Cellino from owning Leeds Unitedis just another page to add to the club's sorry story since Peter Ridsdale infamously "lived the dream" on borrowed cash.
But for the Football League it marks something of a milestone. While intervention under its owners and directors test has recently led to subtle changes behind the scenes at some clubs, not least at Nottingham Forest, this is the first open-and-shut case of a prospective club owner being struck out by the rule.
In taking the view that Cellino's recent conviction in a Sardinian court for non-payment of import duties on a boat constituted a disqualifying condition under its "dishonesty" test, it represented one small step in football's relationship with money and a giant leap in the willingness of governing bodies to apply their own rule book.
In one sense it looks like an obvious call, given the coincidence of the court case's proximity to the Football League's deliberations. On the other the picture was clouded by the fact that the ruling was based in Italian law and Cellino's lawyers are believed to have argued that it was a civil, administrative matter rather than a criminal one. An appeal remains possible but will have to be lodged within 14 days.
On previous occasions the impression has been given that football's governing bodies were looking for excuses not to implement their fit and proper persons test rather than apply it. Despite the globalisation of the game and the procession of owners from home and abroad alighting on English clubs for a myriad of not always munificent reasons, the refrain was always that little could be done above and beyond the law of the land.
That was before the financial meltdowns at Liverpool, where Tom Hicks and George Gillett borrowed their way to infamy, and Portsmouth, where a jaw-dropping series of transactions precipitated freefall and forced the Premier League to beef up its own tests and introduce new rules requiring clubs to provide advance financial information.
At Football League level the picture is more complex. Just before Greg Clarke was appointed chairman the league had its own wake-up call with Notts County – the country's oldest league club pushed to the brink of oblivion in a surreal tale that took in Jersey-based fraudsters, North Korea, Sol Campbell and Sven-Goran Eriksson.
Football League resources do not allow for the kind of investigatory oversight that is now commonplace in the Premier League, while the absolute numbers are obviously larger (72 clubs compared with 20). The worst problems now manifest themselves not in the top flight but at Championship level, where a perfect storm of the need to gamble on promotion to the promised land, the increased firepower of rivals fortified by parachute payments and rising costs make even clubs with sizeable fanbases an unappealing prospect financially.
As a result, some of the most famous names in English football have tended to attract investors with ambiguous intentions or sources of income.Birmingham City's current travails are an extreme example of where that road can lead.
The Football League deserves some sympathy, while many of its clubs remain in financial difficulty and crying out for investment. But there appears to be a belated realisation that it also has a responsibility to discover who the ultimate owner, or prospective owner, of any club is and where his money comes from.
It does not help Leeds fans very much in their current predicament – with the Bahraini owners GFH reluctant to commit to further funding and faced with having to find another buyer – but it must be hoped some good will come of the Football League's belated line in the sand.
Strange and disconcerting as it is, there appears to have been a recent outbreak of common sense amid the ruling bodies that make up English football's dysfunctional family.
First the Football Association built a carefully argued and impeccably researched case against Nicolas Anelka over his antisemitic quenelle gesture. Then, despite an ultimatum from the Hull City owner, Assem Allam, it knocked back his crackpot plan to change the club's name to Hull Tigers. Now the Football League has found a backbone.
Preventing Massimo Cellino from taking a majority stake in the Championship club shows a shift from the game's relationship with money to applying the rule book
For a fanbase inured to secrecy and broken promises the tale of a yacht called Nélie and the disbarring of Massimo Cellino from owning Leeds Unitedis just another page to add to the club's sorry story since Peter Ridsdale infamously "lived the dream" on borrowed cash.
But for the Football League it marks something of a milestone. While intervention under its owners and directors test has recently led to subtle changes behind the scenes at some clubs, not least at Nottingham Forest, this is the first open-and-shut case of a prospective club owner being struck out by the rule.
In taking the view that Cellino's recent conviction in a Sardinian court for non-payment of import duties on a boat constituted a disqualifying condition under its "dishonesty" test, it represented one small step in football's relationship with money and a giant leap in the willingness of governing bodies to apply their own rule book.
In one sense it looks like an obvious call, given the coincidence of the court case's proximity to the Football League's deliberations. On the other the picture was clouded by the fact that the ruling was based in Italian law and Cellino's lawyers are believed to have argued that it was a civil, administrative matter rather than a criminal one. An appeal remains possible but will have to be lodged within 14 days.
On previous occasions the impression has been given that football's governing bodies were looking for excuses not to implement their fit and proper persons test rather than apply it. Despite the globalisation of the game and the procession of owners from home and abroad alighting on English clubs for a myriad of not always munificent reasons, the refrain was always that little could be done above and beyond the law of the land.
That was before the financial meltdowns at Liverpool, where Tom Hicks and George Gillett borrowed their way to infamy, and Portsmouth, where a jaw-dropping series of transactions precipitated freefall and forced the Premier League to beef up its own tests and introduce new rules requiring clubs to provide advance financial information.
At Football League level the picture is more complex. Just before Greg Clarke was appointed chairman the league had its own wake-up call with Notts County – the country's oldest league club pushed to the brink of oblivion in a surreal tale that took in Jersey-based fraudsters, North Korea, Sol Campbell and Sven-Goran Eriksson.
Football League resources do not allow for the kind of investigatory oversight that is now commonplace in the Premier League, while the absolute numbers are obviously larger (72 clubs compared with 20). The worst problems now manifest themselves not in the top flight but at Championship level, where a perfect storm of the need to gamble on promotion to the promised land, the increased firepower of rivals fortified by parachute payments and rising costs make even clubs with sizeable fanbases an unappealing prospect financially.
As a result, some of the most famous names in English football have tended to attract investors with ambiguous intentions or sources of income.Birmingham City's current travails are an extreme example of where that road can lead.
The Football League deserves some sympathy, while many of its clubs remain in financial difficulty and crying out for investment. But there appears to be a belated realisation that it also has a responsibility to discover who the ultimate owner, or prospective owner, of any club is and where his money comes from.
It does not help Leeds fans very much in their current predicament – with the Bahraini owners GFH reluctant to commit to further funding and faced with having to find another buyer – but it must be hoped some good will come of the Football League's belated line in the sand.
Strange and disconcerting as it is, there appears to have been a recent outbreak of common sense amid the ruling bodies that make up English football's dysfunctional family.
First the Football Association built a carefully argued and impeccably researched case against Nicolas Anelka over his antisemitic quenelle gesture. Then, despite an ultimatum from the Hull City owner, Assem Allam, it knocked back his crackpot plan to change the club's name to Hull Tigers. Now the Football League has found a backbone.