Multi-ownership of clubs: The Premier League gives itself a license to cheat – Eurosport

Nothing will therefore prevent Newcastle from picking a few players from the squads of other clubs owned by the Saudi PIF next January; and the summer to come; and all the other summers and winters that will follow, at least until football gets its house in order. This Tuesday, by eight votes to twelve, the Premier League rejected a motion which would have banned loans between clubs linked by common interests until the end of the season, pending a lasting agreement.

And you read correctly: by eight votes to twelve, since a two-thirds majority is required to pass such motions within the Premier League. It therefore took one vote to prevent Ruben Neves, purchased for more than 50 million euros by al-Hilal last summer, from reinforcing Eddie Howe’s ‘squad’ in less than two month, wiping its boots on financial fair play regulations.

We know that Howe in fact complained that this cursed financial fair play had prevented Newcastle from strengthening as he would have liked after the Magpies qualified for the Champions League. This is because Newcastle had exceeded the 200 million mark in net spending on the transfer market in 2022, as Howe seems to have forgotten.

The PL’s decision will therefore offer its club the miracle master key it needed to send a snub – no, an arm of honor – to the defenders of sporting fairness. Al-Hilal will have all the freedom to make nice New Year gifts for their cousins ​​on the banks of the Tyne without affecting, at the very least, Newcastle’s ability to stay in the top tier of the table. financial fair play.

Certainly, it would not be the first time that a Premier League club (or other championships, by the way) would go to a ‘partner’ to help themselves. Chelsea, for example, had the closest links with Vitesse in the Netherlands, while Manchester United got on wonderfully with Royal Antwerp. Union Saint-Gilloise and Brighton have also carried out exchanges between good friends (Kaoru Mitoma is the latest), which will come as no surprise since they shared the same owner, professional punter Tony Bloom.

The context was different, however. It was almost always a case of a ‘big’ club relying on a smaller club by asking them to complete the training of their young people by giving them playing time in a competitive environment. In return, the ‘training’ club welcomed young footballers of a much higher quality than those it could hope to find in its natural detection center.

What we are talking about here is something else. It is the possibility of systematizing the circulation of talents in isolation, of short-circuiting the systems put in place to compensate for already existing financial imbalances. The principle of reciprocity no longer applies. Newcastle’s youngsters would not have the slightest interest in spending one or two seasons in the Saudi championship, which remains very weak despite the massive arrival of foreign footballers last summer.

And obviously nothing would prevent an al-Hilal or an al-Ettifaq from buying another Ruben Neves to immediately send him on loan to Newcastle, for whatever duration, making the flagship club pay only symbolic compensation. of the PIF.

How is it then that six other Premier League clubs have aligned themselves with Newcastle’s position in rejecting the motion? The answer is simple: all are involved in club multi-ownership projects, and therefore intend to benefit from the same privilege. Everyone intends to have a license to cheat.

We believe we know their identity. Even if they won the game, they are in the minority in the Premier League, thirteen other members of which have every reason to be bitter today.

Manchester City is obviously at the top of the list. The City Football Group is nevertheless not going to shoot itself in the foot, having already circulated many players in its network of twelve clubs. Chelsea? Normal. Clearlake and Todd Boehly’s “project” is the creation of a multinational group of clubs, of which Strasbourg became the second member not so long ago.

Nottingham Forest, whose owner Evangelos Marinakis also controls Olympiakos. Sheffield United, whose owner is the Saudi prince Abdullah ben Musaid Al Saud, who is hard to imagine putting a spoke in the wheels of the PIF project and who, moreover, also owns the Belgian D2 club Beerschot. Wolverhampton Wanderers, known to be linked to Zurich Grasshoppers. Burnley, who still hopes to link their future to that of KV Kortrijk, in Belgium.

And finally, the icing on the cake, Everton, which its gravedigger Farhad Moshiri promised to the very shady owners of 777 Partners Limited, whose empire of clubs on the verge of bankruptcy (Vasco Da Gama, Standard, Genoa, Hertha for n (name only four) depends for its future, if it has one, on the possibility of exchanging players between its satellites.

The others, all the others, had said “yes”. They were thirteen against seven, and that was not enough.

There should be a defense against this new assault on sporting integrity. It should not be possible for a league engaged in international competitions to act alone in this way; but it is, because you can be sure that neither UEFA nor FIFA, which could easily stem this descent towards football increasingly cut off from its roots and its truths, will move a finger.

Alexandr Ceferin, questioned on the subject during the last UEFA Congress in Lisbon, took care not to close the door to the scourge of multi-ownership of clubs, using words so vague that we understood the message: it would not hinder the conquest of European football by sovereign states or investment funds. And Gianni Infantino’s FIFA loves Saudi Arabia so much that it de facto awarded it the 2034 World Cup without taking the slightest vote. Expecting nothing from her has become natural.

A cheater who is issued a license to cheat remains a cheater; but cheaters don’t care if it helps them win. And this November 21, it was a great victory that they celebrated.