Foreign Takeovers

It seems it is nearly every day that a new foreign owner comes into English football. According to Wikipedia Aston Villa, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Portsmouth, West Ham United and Manchester City have all been taken over by foreign owners within the last few years. In the championship QPR were recently taken over.

Manchester City's take over was very well documented and due to the wealth of their new foreign owners are now considered the richest club in the World. The latest figure for net worth of the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), who own Manchester City is $800,000 million.
(List of Premier League football club owners. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2008, from
http://en.wikipedia.org)

The takeover of Queens Park Rangers (QPR) was a strange one because it was hard to see where the attraction to owning the club was. However, despite this QPR has brought in Flavio Briatore, Amit Bhatia, Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal. This equates to a combined wealth of £23 billion and Mittal's own personal wealth is £20 billion.

For all the glamour and prestige that foreign takeovers have there are as ever pitfalls and these more often than not get passed onto the fans. One example of this is the increase of a family season ticket from £860 to £1,600 at QPR. More recently QPR have introduced the first £50 championship ticket. This has all caused criticism because although there have been vast improvements to corporate areas little has been done to the regular seats.

The new ownership at QPR has caused other issues which include a redesign of the club's badge and the removal of the club's mascot. The old badge has been replaced with a coat of arms and the black cat mascot removed because Briatore considers them to bring bad luck.

(Savage, M. (2008, August 8). QPR hatch plan to succeed in the rich man's game.
The Independent.
Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk)

The next premier league clubs subject to a foreign takeover is likely to be Arsenal and Newcastle. Arsenal have American businessman Stanley Kroenke as a shareholder, but he has recently confirmed that he will not make an outright offer for the club before September 2009. Meanwhile Newcastle is likely to be sold to a Nigerian group and current owner Mike Ashley is actively looking to be brought out.

Foreign ownership is all very well and good, but it is drastically changing English football and has a number of problems. This is not true of all foreign takeovers, but is certainly true of some.

The first major issue regards the football knowledge of the buyer. There have been way too many examples of owners getting involved in player transfers. Running a successful football club is about a lot more than simply buying a few players that look good on paper, but not all foreign business people understand that.

The second big issue is that of time. Managers need time to be successful, but sometimes owners expect instant success for the millions they put in. The end result is managers being sacked when they shouldn't be.

My opinion is that foreign ownership is getting out of control and something quite major will have to happen to stop it. As sad as it is, I can see a big club going into administration or getting relegated due to poor management by the owners.