The Premier League’s implacable opposition to sensible reforms that will, for once, put the aspirations of the fans and the needs of grassroots football ahead of the money-grabbing of a few offshore billionaire owners is yet another reason why it is time to seize an unparalleled opportunity to force through change at the highest level of the professional game in England in 2022.
Runaway greed, made possible by what often seems like a free-for-all in club ownership, and poor overall supervision are in danger of destroying the best league in the world and all that is good about the sport which I and millions of fans love. The negative response of the Premier League to Tracey Crouch’s forward-looking review merely emphasises how detached many in the top echelon of the game have become from the interests of the fans.
I hope the Crouch review proposals are not undone by the football authorities before they pass into legislation in the spring. Until the reforms proposed by the review are implemented, we will remain at the mercy of the money-motivated bosses who last year planned to pocket a down-payment of £3.5bn between them for joining the European Super League.
I believe the negative response to the Premier League reform proposals shows how many owners have become detatched from interests of the fans
And we will continue to be held back by inequitable power structures and a system of governance that is unfit for purpose. That system is failing to set the kind of standards which an independent regulator would insist that owners, agents and others uphold.
Football cannot be reduced to the fortunes of a few elite clubs and their players. It does not exist just for them but for all of us.
There is still a golden thread that links kids, trained by amateur coaches, and the hard-pressed local teams struggling to get out of the lower leagues to the roar of crowds in awe of the best players on the planet at a World Cup.
Without young talent in local clubs, there would be no giants and no heroes. Stars like Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford began their road to fame with local boys clubs and school teams and gratefully acknowledge the volunteer coaches who trained and encouraged them and made them what they have become.
Mega-rich profiteers have tried to take the game away from the people who love it most
Football exists for everyone and all teams - stars like Marcus Rashford (L) and Raheem Sterling (R) are only here because of the support for local clubs
Football needs investment but however much elite owners scream and shout, they cannot drown out the truth that now is the time for change. This is the moment to act. The spontaneous nationwide uprising against the European Super League must serve as a catalyst for us to clean up the sport before the owners make another land-grab to strip the fans of their influence.
The game’s real success is driven forward not by money but by something intangible: the dreams that every young person has about themselves and their chosen club. It expresses itself at its best not in a desire to get rich at all costs but in the bonds that tie communities together and that make people voluntarily give up their time and money to support their local teams on a cold, rain-soaked Saturday when the wind is blowing through the stadium and the fans are being drenched for their loyalty.
What angers me is that in a year of disease and death, a few already mega-rich profiteers were not thinking about what their club could do for their virus-hit local communities as much as they were thinking about taking advantage of the fact our attention was elsewhere. With their attempted coup d’etat, they tried to take football away from the people who love it while our backs were turned.
We will remain at the mercy of money-motivated bosses until the prosposals - led by former Sports Minister Tracey Crouch - are implemented
I like a lot of the Crouch review’s 47 proposals. They would curb some of the power of the profiteers. I also favour an independent regulator of both the Premier League and FA. It would bring greater scrutiny of an owner’s financial plans and stop clubs being destroyed by the unscrupulous.
I like the idea of a golden share for fans, allowing them to prevent owners changing the name of the club or moving it away from its roots. And the representative Supporters’ Boards that Liverpool and Arsenal seem to be moving ahead with should become commonplace.
And I agree with the idea of a transfer tax. A stamp duty should be charged on transfers to help the lower leagues and youth football. The Crouch review suggests 10 per cent but if even a five per cent charge was levied on a
