"Sack The Board"? Be The Board

The Guardian editorialises:

English football's endemic financial crisis claimed another bouffant hairdo yesterday as Sven-Göran Eriksson moved on from Notts County. "The problem with this club is that it has been living beyond its means," said Ray Trew, one of the new investors. Notts County, like Portsmouth and Cardiff City, are in trouble with the taxman, who comes low on cash-strapped clubs' payment priorities. Time to think again about football finances. It may be impossible to divorce success on the pitch from money in the bank, but that shouldn't mean it's impossible to devise a sustainable financial settlement.

In the end, supporter-owned clubs would be the answer. Some of the great Spanish sides – Barcelona, Real Madrid – belong to their fans, hundreds of thousands of them. Defenders of the English system point out that they can only afford it because they sell TV rights individually rather than sharing out the cash across the league. But look at the German example. Last November, the clubs in the Bundesliga, their premier league, again backed the rule that fans own a majority of shares. They claim it guarantees stability, continuity and proximity to the supporters. In practice it really does seem to mean accessible ticket prices go hand in hand with excellence in depth.

Here, brave pioneers like FC United of Manchester and AFC Wimbledon fight to break through the daunting cost barrier. They need a limit on corporate investment if they're to succeed. A supporter on every board would be a start.

Though only a start.

The worst thing that ever happened to football was the abolition of the maximum wage. Football is now, like any other branch of the fashion industry, an example of what homosexual men think that heterosexual women will like. Each England player’s new strip is bespoke – measured for, and then run up by, a Savile Row tailor. Each new member of the squad now goes through this, as a sort of initiation. What a touching act of solidarity in the current economic climate.

I sometimes wonder why the really big clubs still bother with football. They are so rich that they could name a “squad” of simple beneficiaries of some sort of trust fund. The fashion, the glamour, the gossip, the drugs, the drink, the sex, the lot could then just carry on as before, with no need for training sessions or what have you. Who would be able to tell the difference? The pricing of the working classes out of football, its legendarily bad treatment of its staff, and its use as a sort of circus of performing chavs as there might be performing seals or the performing monkeys like which they are now even trussed up, cannot be tolerated for ever. Or, indeed, for very much longer at all.

Mutualisation, perhaps with a heavy dose of municipal involvement where grounds are concerned, is the last hope. If there is any hope. There may very well be none.