How Cameron can really help British football

By Darrell Goodliffe

David Cameron, struggling as he was on Wednesday, couldn’t resist the opportunity to name-drop Sepp Blatter and England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup into Prime Ministers Questions. He made much play of how we have the best teams, stadiums and fans but neglected to mention the serious structural problems that we have within football in this country.

Anybody wanting a reminder of them could have ventured to the High Court and watched as the chaos surrounding the ownership of Liverpool FC continued. Liverpool has become something of a hostage to the whims of a hedge-fund, Mill Financial, which is understood to have assumed control of the 50% stake in the club owned by George Gillet. Everything will hinge on whether Mill, and the co-owner Tom Hicks, can find a way to repay at least £200 million worth of the debts owed to the Royal Bank of Scotland by the end of business today. If they can’t then the only way to dislodge their control may well be for RBS to send Liverpool hurtling into administration with all of the possible consequences that implies, including the possible deduction of points and, given Liverpool’s already dire performances and results, their plunge into a relegation scrap.

What lies at the root of Liverpool’s problems (and indeed those of other clubs – and not just small ones) is the short-termist dash for profitability and instant success. In that regard not much difference exists between the fiscal recklessness of clubs like Liverpool and the banks in the wider economy – when those at the top start falling down then the game really is up.

However, Mr Cameron should perhaps absorb the lesson that a strong structure cannot be built when your foundations are rotting away; indeed, a structure like that quickly becomes top heavy and comes crashing down. Lower league clubs have been struggling to make ends meet and living on the bread line for a considerable amount of time but of course do not attract as much media attention. Of course, it is always the fans who pay the price both in terms of increased ticket prices and the eventual cost of bailing clubs out.

The problems are endemic and won’t be changed by a change of owner per se but need to be accompanied by cultural change and sweeping structural change to enable new, co-operative, mutual and other forms of co-ownership, to flourish. Football would actually be a good place to start with this model of a new economy because it is likely to create a high volume of interest in the formation of “Supporters Trusts”. If you visit Supporters Direct then there are also examples of how having a mutually owned football club benefits the wider community in terms of sharing resources like pitches, etc.

However – like the wider economy – supporting this flowering within football is going to need a friendly government in power that will be willing to use state-muscle to change the rules of the game and level the playing field. Like with the ‘Big Society’ I rather suspect David Cameron’s talk about supporting football is hollow and actually means the empowerment of vested interests, rather than real people. However, I am happy for him to prove me wrong. So, if you really want to support football (as opposed to use it to score some easy points in the polls) you know what to do Mr Cameron.