Hey UEFA – what exactly is the issue with multi-club ownership?
Aston Villa and Brighton & Hove Albion are the real enemies of football, presumably
Almost every major talking point in football nowadays can, if one likes, be boiled down to the battle between sport and money for the soul of the game.
A handful of superclubs consistently endeavour to improve their lot at the expense of the rest of us, wilfully forgetting what brought us all here in the first place.
The subject of this week’s newsletter is one of those talking points. Multi-club ownership is a show of strength and wealth. I’m against it – I have to state that because it’s only now that the Premier League club I support has made moves of its own that I’ve considered the issue beyond the basic fact, as I see it, of sporting right versus capitalist wrong.
In the main piece below there’s an inherent bias in that I wouldn’t have written it without Aston Villa being involved. I’ve tried (and failed, honestly) to look at multi-club ownership as a matter of reality, not principle.
But, to reiterate at the outset: I’m against it.
Enjoy.
Hey UEFA – what exactly is the issue with multi-club ownership?
Nothing rubs football supporters up the wrong way quite like double standards and hypocrisy.
When UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body met for two days to discuss the multi-club ownership models operated by Tony Bloom (Brighton & Hove Albion and Union SG) and V Sports (Aston Villa and Vitória de Guimarães), among others, the stench of both was thick in the Nyon air.
V Sports – the ownership vehicle of Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens – had barely got its Vitória project started before the qualification of both of their clubs for the UEFA Europa Conference League in 2023/24 threw a spanner in the works. V Sports was forced by UEFA to reduce its stake in the Primeira Liga club in order for Vitória and Villa to play in European competition.
Bloom and Brighton have already benefited from their relationship with Union SG. Though the Belgian outfit operates independently, a handful of players have been loaned between the two in the last few years, Seagulls star Kaoru Mitoma among them. Both have qualified for the Europa League this season; Bloom has reduced his stake in Union SG and his business partner has taken over.
That in itself might highlight the futility of the exercise but Brighton, Villa and clubs like Chelsea and AC Milan with similar arrangements in the works will miss out on the ability to streamline operations with other clubs.
Villa and Vitória are banned from trading players with one another until September 2024. Brighton and Union SG have the same restriction. If that seems like a blow to the plan, try the inability to share scouting networks and player databases on for size.
These aren’t sanctions. They’re not new rules. Yet it was wholly predictable that Villa and Brighton supporters would be affronted by such strict application – over-reach, arguably – and they didn’t disappoint.
Whataboutery is usually a revealing rhetorical tool, a deflective debating tactic that seeks to divert attention away from one’s own shortcomings. Sometimes, though, the intended target of ‘what about?’ is so blatantly justifiable that it’s impossible to ignore. In this case, that’s City Football Group and Red Bull.
Let’s clear up a couple of things. Firstly, these are UEFA rules and City Football Group’s various holdings in Europe have yet to give the confederation body cause to bother with Manchester City in terms of multi-club ownership. Secondly, Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig did have to make changes too when they both reached the relevant competitions.
But this isn’t really about UEFA. Multi-club ownership is the foremost existential question hanging over football other than state ownership of clubs. The technicalities and specifics are immaterial; CFG and Red Bull are multi-club groups and it’s only natural for Bloom, Sawiris, Edens and the supporters of their clubs to point at the regulatory inconsistency.
The transfer constraints are particularly illuminating. Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig (who, again, have played in the same competition) might have made structural alterations but the well documented player exchange remains.
In the coming season Leipzig will enjoy the services of brilliant young Slovenian striker Benjamin Šeško and overrated Austrian midfield metronome Nicolas Seiwald, both signed from Salzburg. Dominik Szoboszlai and Hee-chan Hwang moved over the border a few years ago and have since moved on. They weren’t the first or the last.
FC Liefering is Red Bull’s Austrian farm club and Salzburg’s player exchange with them is prolific. Their squad this season will feature Douglas Mendes, a 19-year-old Brazilian defender signed from RB Bragantino. Mendes was loaned from Bragantino to Liefering before he was signed by Salzburg and loaned back to Liefering for the season ahead.
United States Under-20 international Caden Clark’s career reads thus: New York Red Bulls II, New York Red Bulls, RB Leipzig, New York Red Bulls (loan), New York Red Bulls II (loan); totally fine. Salzburg, too, have swapped loans with New York Red Bulls.
My intention here isn’t to criticise Red Bull or indeed City Football Group for moving their playing assets between their clubs. It’s clear that both have become excellent at developing footballers and that’s to their credit.
But buried within the UEFA ruling is an intimation that multi-club ownership is prohibited to some degree and the idea that CFG and Red Bull are not engaged in multi-club ownership because of some technical governance correction is laughable.
Like all football governing bodies, UEFA is shit at optics. There’s something in their constitution that makes them allergic to the path of least resistance. The righteous complaint here isn’t that Villa and Brighton are somehow in the right but that football opened this door and put itself in a position where UEFA’s application of rules looks draconian.
Never mind the technicalities. If Szoboszlai and Šeško being traded from Red Bull to Red Bull is fine but Johan Lange having a single V Sports player database isn’t, we’ve got all this very badly wrong.
But is multi-club ownership necessarily anti-football? For all the power dynamics at play, are collaborative tools like shared scouting databases problematic by definition?
In a world where City Football Group and Red Bull work the system to their advantage and their main competition is usually bankrolled by sovereign wealth funds, Aston Villa and Vitória de Guimarães pooling resources seems like pretty small beer. Despite the colossal wealth of the men behind V Sports, working as smartly as the teams out in front is Villa’s best hope to ride their coattails.
If the structure of V Sports means Lange looks after recruitment for a couple of clubs and some players move between the two, what’s the harm?
Well, the harm is that Villa aren’t the issue at hand. It’s not about Brighton or Chelsea. What’s actually at stake is Vitória, Union SG and Strasbourg. But Palermo is at stake too, and Melbourne City and Salzburg and Bragantino.
That, really, is the point. Strip away the details and which teams play in which competitions, and the bottom line is that multi-club ownership is deeply unsavoury. Even if we accept the industry football has become, the essence of sport should remain.
Clubs are everything to their supporters and when one subjugates another, no matter how benevolent and mutually beneficial the arrangement, a piece of its identity dies. That’s not permissible for some and not others. It’s weapons-grade bullshit that shouldn’t ever have been allowed for anyone.
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“I subscribe to the All-Blacks philosophy of no d***heads. The small details make a massive difference. When we go away from home, we leave the dressing room spotless. We’ve worked hard on the culture here.”
The censored word is dickheads and Hull City manager Liam Rosenior doesn’t want any of them in his dressing room. There can be a place for the dickhead in some teams but when a team needs to be greater than the sum of its parts it won’t fly. To put it in coaching parlance, it’s a matter of standards.
Salty beef extracts
Fix football refereeing with legal theory (Grace On Football)
The Long Read: A sordid tale of squalid lies, greed and fraud (Unexpected Delirium)
‘Monumental change’: football tackles the impact of periods on performance (The Guardian)
Millie Bright: The fearless captain who will lead England at the World Cup (BBC Sport)
What happened to Reading could just as easily befall your football club too (i)
Dessert
Say hello to the metallic silver and copper-coloured Own Now pack from New Balance. Football beauts.
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