English Premiership Sails

Sean O'Conor

Buried among last week's football news was the ticking bomb that England's Premier League intends to sever its already frayed ties with the Football Association next season.

That the brash and unashamedly commercial top division in England should exist under the auspices of the world's oldest football association has always seemed an anomaly.

I could never imagine the blazered committees of the county associations comfortably rubbing shoulders with the sharp-suited millionaires of the nouveau riche Premiership in the minimalist corridors of the FA's stylish HQ at Soho Square.

I recently called what I had thought was the telephone number for the Premiership but instead was told “No this is the FA, you need to call the Premier League,” apparently confirming the marriage is one of mere convenience.

With the arrival of satellite and pay-TV in the late 1980s, the money on offer to major clubs suddenly grew considerably and a handful of big clubs began posturing for a new league independent of the Football League, whom they felt were placing obstacles in the way of a big pay day for everybody.

As a response to the increasingly serious breakaway threats, the FA decided to climb into bed with the clubs and the FA Premier League was duly formed in 1992 with broadcasting and marketing rights independent of the sport's lawgiver.

While for now the FA still has a right to veto major decisions and appointments, in practice the Premier League is an independent body whose generated revenues of £1.3billion in 2004/05 make it the fourth richest sports league in the world and 40% wealthier than Italy's Serie A. Next season it hopes to jettison the FA's already scant influence entirely.

David Dein typified the never perfect marriage as he straddled the two organisations until his departure from Soho Square this summer. The Arsenal vice-chairman and current G-14 chairman was also FA vice-chairman and a member of the FA Board until he was voted off following some bad publicity.

It was alleged that Dein's dual status led to some awkward conflicts of interest, particularly when Arsenal's manager Arsene Wenger was an obvious candidate for the England coaching position but Dein & Co. instead vigorously pursued Luis Felipe Scolari and Steve McClaren.

Another criticism leveled at Dein was that his refusal to back an FA proposal to stop clubs taking agents on their payroll was related to the fact his son is a practising one, whose clients include Thierry Henry.

Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho detected an Arsenal hand in the furor over Ashley Cole's ‘tapped-up' move to Chelsea and the contrasting fixture lists for the two clubs following Champions League games and called out loud for Dein to leave the FA in 2005, a wish that came true in June of this year.

Dein, the most high-profile sore thumb in the Premiership-FA marriage, may have moved on, but the TV cash cow has also begun to flex its muscles on the international stage by taking on UEFA over its reported interest in introducing a Europe-wide salary cap, dependent on a maximum of 70% of a club's turnover, a proposal backed publicly by UK sports minister Richard Caborn.

A fuming Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chairman, reacted angrily to the prospect of any regulation of his company's activities;

"UEFA is not, and should not be, the governing body of European football,” he said yesterday. “They have their own competitions to run and should be free to do so as they see fit, just as we have ours."

With a new TV deal in place and worldwide interest overflowing in the English top flight, Chelsea's chief executive Peter Kenyon repeated his claim last week that the Blues intend to become the biggest club by 2014 having conquered Europe.

The talk is all of ‘brands', ‘products', ‘revenues' and ‘profitability' in the new world of football. With the historic lawmakers of the sport at the FA now pushed to the wayside, money-hungry clubs are training their gun sights on their next obstacles to global domination – UEFA and the European Union, and the battle is only about to begin..

Sean O'Conor

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