- The world cup ball is a ball like no other – but why is it introduced now?
- Why so many managers get sacked and why clubs can’t appoint the right manager
By Tony Attwood
As you might have guessed, I don’t have much interest in international football, so I use international breaks to look at issues in football that genmerally don’t get covered by the media very much.
Hence, I have on occasion commented on the way that football authorities seem rather reluctant to get involved in issues beyond everyday results and transfers.
But there’s another point. When an industry gets used to the fact that it can hide some inconvenient facts from the world at large, it tends to get a bit sloppy and think it can just do it forever. Now, if you are outside the UK, you might not have come across the Nottingham Maternity Care Scandal, but it is a massive and appalling situation in which senior hospital staff have been abusing their positions for years, and nothing has been done. And this case tells us not just about one set of hospitals, but how easy for senior people to cover up anything from mistakes to criminal negligence, if they set their mind to it.
Obviously, my interest is football, and here we do have an organisation that, although not a specialist in uncovering terrible situations, does on occasion point us in the right direction: the CIES Football Observatory. If you are not familiar, you can get more information at https://football-observatory.com/Sign-up.
Now CIES have published information about money laundering through football. I don’t think it is a subject we’ve touched upon much, so I started to do some digging – and in what follows, I would urge you to keep in mind that I am starting from scratch here – I had no insights into allegations of financial misdemeanours in football clubs, I am just looking.
My understanding (and it is just that) from CIES work is that English football exists in a way that (perhaps by chance) makes it very easy for criminals involved in money laundering to get away with that activity. Of course, I make no specific suggestion or allegation, but now I think of it, it is quite possible that on, or associated with, the boards of some football clubs (either in England or elsewhere), there could be people who might be interested in moving money around quickly without the authorities knowing.
What makes this interesting here is that some UK clubs could be owned by an array of “holding companies”, and some of these are not based in the UK. There is nothing illegal in that, of course, but the report tells us that over half of the Premier League clubs are owned by one or more offshore holding companies. So when we talk of a club owned by “The Bark-Smythe” family (I just made that up) that might not actually tell us who the final beneficial owners actually are.
Now, let us imagine Agamemnon Soccer plc (also made up) owns a club. Money pours in from transfers, sponsorship, rights, etc via agencies, third parties and the like. Go back down the chain, and you might find somewhere in the mix a very dodgy organisation of which we know nothing – including where it gets its money from.
But in effect, because the club always needs money to pay transfer fees, the club is being used to help move money around the world. And that’s not just me getting beyond myself, for Europol and others have noted the connection between large-scale crime and the beautiful game. And not just in relation to betting but also in relation to money laundering and match-fixing. Indeed, the National Risk Assessment on the topic sees football as a key element in money laundering.
Now I got interested in this because I’ve often wondered why people get involved in football when something like 97% of the league clubs lose money. Maybe they just love football, or love their local club, and of course, that is fine. But if the owner had some funds he didn’t want examined by the authorities, the answer might come back, “ownership is obscure, but dependence on external funding is high.”
Of course, I am NOT pointing the finger at any club or owner. I seriously am just exploring an issue that is new for me and fascinates me, not just because football has its own regulatory bodies, but because, although some clubs have been found guilty of abusing children in their care, there has (as far as I know) been no major investigation into how children are protected in football clubs across the UK. If that is right, maybe the same laxness exists with club finances.
In fact, it seems that there is no organisation within football that is there to investigate something that might not look right. And so if the media won’t investigate, and it is far too big and complicated for a person like me to investigate, no one investigates.
So there are two facts out there. One is that most football clubs lose money, and the other is that none of the major footballing authorities openly agree that the way children are treated by clubs is one of their prime concerns. Two totally different issues, but in each case they give me a feeling that something ain’t right.
It was only after I started to link these two thoughts that a friend who knows infinitely more about how international companies work than I do, pointed out to me that there’s a danger that sanctioned individuals, including those linked to foreign regimes, could use clubs to hide or legitimise illicit wealth.
Now, of course, there being a risk doesn’t mean it happens. It means there is a risk. And so to tackle these risks, the government introduced the Football Governance Act 2025, creating an Independent Football Regulator (IFR) with lots of good powers such as much stricter ownership tests, the proof of who the beneficial owners, the enforcement of financial sustainability rules, and the ability to “intervene to prevent collapse or criminal exploitation” (their words not mind), sharing data with the National Crime Agency, and giving fans the ability “to deter rogue ownership.”
So it is now up to clubs to check on owners, directors, sponsors and agents, and stress-test club finances and maintain open lines of communication with regulators and law enforcement.
We await developments, but if I have got any of this wrong, please do write in and correct me – ideally citing an appropriate source so I can learn more.
