Every soccer fan dreams of the day his or her club gets taken over by a billionaire; that instant transformation from financial also-ran to filthily rich global force. The very best players in the world demand salaries that are far out of the reach of all but a tiny handful of soccer teams, or even of sensibly wealthy owners, so the only way to compete for their signatures is to have more money than sense—a lot more.
Take, for example, Manchester City. A club that barely a few years ago was no more than an average Premier League team, and 12 years back wasn’t even in the top flight of English soccer. Four years ago, though, it was bought by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, and since then he has lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on player transfers. He has even bought players when there is no space for them in the squad, simply because he can.
The Man City experiment seems to be bearing some fruit—the team currently sits on top of the Premier League—but life is rarely that perfect, and if there is one thing soccer fans fear more than anything else, ironically, it is probably their club getting taken over by a billionaire.
Even if they grew up in the real world, most of the incredibly rich aren’t used to not having things their own way, or to admitting failure. The soccer world, though, is a tougher place to be, and it often doesn’t play by the usual rules of business. The best-laid plans easily go awry, the best team doesn’t always win and money doesn’t guarantee success. But more than all that, they aren’t playing with mere toy companies here, but with the lives and loves of thousands—maybe millions—of fans.
Far too often, these tycoons get it wrong, very wrong—sacking experienced staff, renaming iconic stadiums and buying a host of prima donna players—and a few years into their ownership, when they are still hemorrhaging money into a struggling team, their patience quickly runs dry. Some take disastrous personal responsibility, sacking more people and making further ill-advised player transfers, some make the cold, hard business decision to drop the club like a brick. Either way, recent English soccer history is littered with the carcasses of failed or failing teams.
The Asia Football Investments consortium bought Leicester City two years ago, renamed the home ground the King Power Stadium and brought in ex-England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson. The team was a preseason favorite for promotion, but since then Eriksson has left, and it lies in 15th place in the second tier of English football. Another example is Liverpool: in the 2006-07 season, American businessmen George Gillett and Tom Hicks bought the club, and, after their disastrous leadership took it to the brink of bankruptcy, its creditors forced a sale in 2010.
Some of the fear comes down to the nationality of these billionaire playboys. Partly this may be a xenophobic view of the increasing amount of foreign ownership in English football, but there are definitely different categories of foreignness. The most sought-after are probably Arab sheikhs, with their seemingly bottomless pots of money, and next to those maybe Russian oil tycoons, since they have almost as deep pockets, but can’t seem to shake the image of corruption and criminality. And the least desirable, I have to admit, are often Americans. Old stereotypes die hard, and we struggle to really believe you understand or care enough about soccer to be trusted.
And finally it seems this dream/nightmare scenario has come to my club, Reading FC. Last week a mysterious group called Thames Sport Investment surfaced with plans of investing. Worryingly, this organization seems to fail the basic modern test of legitimacy: having a website, or at least a few informative hits on Google. It seems, though, that a 29-year-old Russian tycoon, Anton Zingarevich, is behind this deal. On the upside, he apparently has links to the area as he went to school near Reading, and the current owner, John Madejski, is reportedly going to retain a significant share and influence at the club. Plus, money will also offer the chance to strengthen the team and push for promotion.
On the downside, though, having been under the same management for 21 years, this is a leap into the unknown. Big decisions are being made that will determine the future of my club, and unfortunately I don’t have the sufficient billions to get a place at the table.
Tom Taylor has one teeny, tiny request for all you loyal readers. All he wants are a few billion dollars to buy his favorite team. Show your support with a little dough at tom.taylor “at” stanford.edu.