With the recent controversy surrounding the foreign purchase of Portsmouth Football Club, many fans are questioning the integrity and identity of English football. This is the latest team to be bought up and controlled by an individual who does not call England home which pushes the number of foreign owners in the twenty-team English Premier League to exactly half. This explains why this bid holds more significance than any of those in the past six years. With that, Portsmouth or Pompey, as their supporters affectionately call them, suffered a rather intriguing few months.
For starters, the team sits dead last in the Premiership (at the time of writing this entry). Moreover, Portsmouth possesses an amount of unmanaged debt unprecedented in the league, something that brings a huge question mark to their chance of survival. Simply put, there is chaos on the South Coast. The outfit recently revealed shocking news of their lack of ability to pay players, staff, and agents, amongst many others involved in the massive organization. This inability is something that the upper echelons of modern British football have never seen. Portsmouth has been in a catastrophic state, which has raised many eyebrows across the country. As if these problems were not enough, the club is welcoming its second owner in as many months. With its purchase at the hands of the wealthy Ali Al-Faraj, Pompey was thrown a life preserver, one that may keep them afloat in the Premier League. Though debt is not unheard of in the rest of Europe, why are so many of these English teams turning to investors from abroad instead of handling the problem at home? The Portsmouth situation brings about another sensitive question. What does the future hold in terms of ownership in the Premier League? While multiple fans and figureheads around England realize the positives and negatives associated with a foreign owner, it would appear from reactions that either something is being lost or everything is being gained.
Foreign ownership in the English Premier League has undoubtedly had numerous positive effects. One positive correlation appears to be titles and foreigners. Winning has become a habit for several of these cash-injected clubs. Championships and global popularity have increased immensely over recent years. Multiple teams are household names in many parts of the world and include the likes of Manchester United (American), Manchester City (United Arab Emirates), Liverpool (American), and Chelsea (Russian). The teams listed previously are some of the most successful clubs of this decade with Manchester United and Chelsea combining for seven of the last nine Premier League titles. Liverpool and Manchester United have collectively won two Champion's League titles this decade with English teams being involved in the last five finals (Chelsea being one and Liverpool losing out on one occasion). There is no doubt that, despite the ownership issues, England has dominated the competition for Europe's most sought after trophy. In these economic times, as demonstrated by the Portsmouth calamity, international investment has been instrumental in keeping many teams alive. Other clubs such as Chelsea FC have flourished under the watchful eye of their passionate owner, as noted by Giancarlo Abete, the President of the Italian Football Association, "The foreign owners have kept the clubs profitable and expanded their global outreach even if they have failed to win over the confidence of all their English fans." Chelsea, once a perennial underachiever, became a superpower because of Mr. Roman Abramovich and his dream. The charismatic, success-driven Russian billionaire purchased the club in 2003. Since then, he has bought hoards of players for top dollar. With that, very few Chelsea fans are questioning their influential owner and Premier League titles. By implementing a set of guidelines for owning a club known as the "Fit and Proper Persons Test" and the "5-step Ownership Test," the English Football Association is adapting to the times and encouraging owners of the highest moral fiber. Surely the profit and praise flowing in from around the world is enough to keep the mouths of rebellious fans closed. Former Birmingham City FC (potentially the next team to be purchased from abroad) Chairman, David Gold recently commented, "People cast new foreign investors into bogeymen, as if they are coming in to rape and pillage our wonderful game... I look at foreign owners coming in and I don't see any damage. I see the sophisticated leadership" Mr. Gold is right to a certain extent, unfortunately a large group of nationalistic fans do not appear to agree.
Many near and dear to their football squads feel foreign ownership takes a certain something away from the tradition of their beloved teams. Several clubs have been around for over a hundred years. Naturally, the fans have a unique, deep relationship, with their organization. Through foreign ownership, there is a sense of a loss of not only identity but also integrity, and at least some supporters perceive these changes as a sellout. Instead of operating from within, the clubs become headed by corporations and billionaires from without. Multiple Premier League teams were owned by either the fans or were passed down through generations of families, thus perpetuating an element of English nationalism and pride. These squads include the likes of Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Everton, Hull City, Stoke City, Tottenham Hotspur, Wigan Athletic, and Wolverhampton Wanderers; with Arsenal possessing some form of minority English ownership. Managers are even speaking out against this trend in modern football. Arsenal FC boss Aresene Wegner, himself French, elaborates, "What was traditionally true in England is that the people who were the owners were the supporters... That was really reassuring for the fans because the heart of the owner was like their heart."
Another Frenchman, UEFA President Michel Platini recently took a jab at England, "I like people to put their money in their own leagues. You English can put in rules so you have no more foreign owners, like in Germany where no foreign owner can have more than 50 per cent of shares in a club." The most recognizable leagues around Europe possess little to no foreign owners. In France, a majority of the cities own their clubs. In Spain, the fans own most of the teams. Italy provides for an interesting example. Not only did Italy win the last World Cup with a squad that contained players that plied their trade exclusively in their home country, Italians owned all of these teams in the top flight. This is the model that several English supporters hope to emulate. Another issue is the problems facing the youth system. By encouraging foreign ownership and, consequently, foreign talent, many youngsters are being pushed out and underdeveloped. This has hurt the Three Lions (English National Team) in recent years with their last major trophy coming in 1966. The loss of the youth system and increase in foreign ownership has had its fair share of negative effects.
I acknowledge the financial benefits that many foreign owners have brought to the beautiful game in England. However, these businessmen are a manifestation of a problem that is much larger than ownership. English football is on the rocks in many ways. There appears to be an identity struggle that not only has fans from within, but also those abroad, asking difficult questions. Where has the soul of the game, which originated in the British Isles, gone? As mentioned before, numerous countries in continental Europe take pride in the fact that their owners are native sons or daughters hailing from the nation in which domestic league is located. In England there is a different mentality, which appears to suggest a loss of dignity at the hands of investment opportunities. Mr. Wegner concedes, "This tradition has gone. It looks as if we have gone from one period to a new one with more people who look at it as an investment where, of course, they want to be paid back quickly." Is this tradition lost forever? These next few years will surely tell us a lot of about the future of the English game, but my hope is that the Arsenal model, though itself under strain, represents the most promising path forward. That is to say, it is important to balance domestic and foreign ownership in conjunction with steady finances, for the well being of the club and its future. Now that half of the teams in England are owned from abroad, there is finally a sense on the home front that this is a pressing issue jeopardizing football. With Portsmouth struggling and many of the lower league teams begging for a cash influx, financial opportunities for foreign owners are constantly increasing. The tradition of English football is in peril. If something is not done swiftly, fans will surely lose their spirit, and with that, club leaders will lose integrity, and organizations will struggle with identity. Not all is lost, however clubs are coming to realize the importance of domestic owners, as seen at Arsenal and at teams across the country, which will hopefully recapture the pride and character that once defined English football.
