But how far does the rottenness extend? Just how corrupt is the top of English football?
Thursday 13 November 2008
The Premiership's dirty secret
Your humble blogger is not an enormously big sports fan. To say the least. He blushes still at the memory of mistakenly referring to Sir Alex Ferguson as Alan Ferguson (after someone I used to work with) in an unguarded moment. And yet even he has noted both that Harry Redknapp (recently arrived at Spurs) and Karren Brady and David "Porno" Sullivan (Birmingham) are currently on police bail in a complex investigation into the transfers of Amdy Faye to Portsmouth and Newcastle. What really strikes me is the lack of coverage in the bits of the newspaper I normally read - ie not the sports pages - this criminal scandal has received. It's almost as if we don't want to have to acknowledge rottenness at the heart of our national game.
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2 comments:
Excellent post JM. Not quite up to the FOOTBALL/PREMIERSHIP expertise on show at another place but hells bells, not a bad start.
Good news JM, i am both enormously big and a sports fan.
The answer to your question is its VERY VERY VERY corrupt.
As an example of what is normal and proper in the sport, Harry Redknapp signs contracts for X million pounds per year - prob about 4. He also gets written in that he gets 5% of all gross transfer activities. That is, if he sells an average player for 1 million (prob does this about 20 times a season - more than most managers), then he gets a million pounds. Regardless of whether he bought the bloke last year for 5 million, or the club lose money... That is not uncommon or unusual.
Sam Allardyce was manager of Bolton. His son was an agent. In some transfers, his son represented Bolton, the player, and the other club. So that is fair and proper. Again, was not illegal or against FA rules at the time.
The FA have a "fit and proper person" test that is applied to anyone who wants to own a football club. This has recently been passed by Shinawatra (convicted in Thailand in absentia of embezzling several BILLION dollars), Gaydamark (on trial somewhere in the Middle East for gun running), Al Fayed (the phoney pharoah himself) etc etc.
I could go on?
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