It wasn’t quite the game’s answer to splitting the atom, but for this body it counted as a giant leap. Think of how cavemen felt when they noticed that two pebbles plus two pebbles equals four.

Led by their chairman, the former Tory minister Lord Mawhinney, the league declared that henceforth they wanted to know who owned their member clubs. Apparently – and here the ghost of Einstein gives a round of applause – it’s hard to judge whether a person is a fit and proper owner if you don’t know who the person is.

Some had assumed that the league already operated such a rule. It stood, thought trusting souls, to reason. It was also believed that if the likes of Flavio Briatore could be banned even from lurking in the vicinity of Formula One because of a race-fixing scandal, he surely couldn’t be a fit and proper co-owner of QPR.

But then, it turns out that ownership is a tricky concept. Look at poor Ken Bates. Does he know the first thing about buying and selling football clubs without a whiff of controversy? Call that a rhetorical question.

Mr Bates turns out, nevertheless, to have been in “error” when he informed a Channel Islands court that he jointly-owned the Cayman Islands holding company controlling Leeds United. On reflection, he finds that this isn’t the case. He also cannot name the person or persons owning the firm.

But then – and I’m thinking of selling this plot development to John Grisham – it turns out that even if the league demand and receive the names of the owners of member clubs they may not feel the need to publish the inform-
ation. This is called transparency. Clear?

England’s Premier League clubs make public the names of significant shareholders; the older but junior division worries over data protection. The flash types upstairs also have the impertinence to inquire after the cash behind the identities and to ask – such a 
delicate business – if the big bucks are legit. The Football League have yet to get around to that.

Now, is it just me, or does all of this convey the sense of a wee storm massing on the horizon? At Notts County, a takeover by something called Munto Finance turned out to be a front for a takeover by something called Qadbak. The latter was supposed to be based in Switzerland but is registered in the British Virgin Islands. And who owns the odd acronym? The Football League may know but aren’t saying.

At Leeds, to put it politely, the ownership structure calls the Marie Celeste to mind. At QPR, the moral high ground has been ceded to Formula One, of all sporting paragons. And amid all this the phrase “fit and proper” is being tossed around like a frisbee.

Who cares? These things matter to fans of the respective clubs, no doubt, but the wider world does not worry too much if the County boardroom resembles a scene from Dallas. Why, in any case, would mysterious rich men from overseas want baubles such as Leeds and QPR, for whom the phrase “once great” might as well be on the crest?

Start with a simple fact: English football is no longer English, not in the family silver sense. Manchester, both parts, belongs to Americans and Arabs; Chelsea to a Russian; Aston Villa to another American. And so on.

Liverpool will probably find new foreigners shortly. At Arsenal, shares are changing hands again. Everton is yours if, no offence, you want it. The 
fascinating feature, as we have remarked previously, is that prospective British buyers are conspicuous by their absence. Are they extra smart?

You don’t, as things stand, get to turn much of a profit from the hard grind of long-term football ownership. For the most part, you get the chance to service the debts you acquired in buying the club or, like Roman Abramovich, you get to kiss a couple of hundred million goodbye.

But, ego enhancement aside, there are other possibilities. First, football brings hard cash over the counter, if such is your taste, week in and week out. The old-fashioned folding stuff has many uses. You also get to conjure with player contracts, commercial rights and the like, internationally: a bonus.

Secondly, you win the chance to make a killing, with reasonable luck, when the next consortium comes along. Pre-recession, only the witless (and misguided Newcastle proprietors) lost money in the football franchise trade.

All those interesting people now populating the Football League’s membership list are in it for one thing, in other words: promotion. So does it really make sense to have two divisions linked umbilically yet with separate administrations and different rules when the scope for scandal is obvious?

Fit and proper: a noble formulation. It means you shouldn’t be a convicted crook, a former jailbird, a sex offender, or someone who has been banished from another sport. Yet how do you eject such a person? The Football League’s answer: dunno.

A safe bet in an uncertain world: we haven’t heard the last of this.

ian


Bell