- How gambling on success through spending more on players can come unstuck
- The mass walk out at Arsenal was a total indictment of the quality of support for the club
By Sheik Yerbouti
For years we have got used to the notion of Arsenal buying this, that or some other player only to find that none of the story is the slightest bit true, no one has approached anyone, no one is buying, no one is selling and the newspaper or blog made it all up.
In fact happens well over 95% of the time with transfer rumours. But now we have another twist. The Swiss takeover that might, or most likely might not exist.
Fortunately the Saudi ownership buyout stories are still a month or two away from the Premier League, but since English football journalists are often mono-linguistic and ill-informed they will surely be here soon.
Take for example “Saudi Arabia reportedly close to investing in FC Schaffhausen” which Le Matin is currently running. As we know the Saudis have already spent £6bn on sportswashing, so this could fit in.
FC Schaffhausen as you may not know is a Swiss club in the Challenge League – which is the name of the second division in Switzerland. Their season has finished and here is the table
| Team | MP | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yverdon Sport | 36 | 20 | 6 | 10 | 64 | 53 | +11 | 66 |
| 2 | Lausanne-Sport | 36 | 17 | 10 | 9 | 58 | 43 | +15 | 61 |
| 3 | Stade-Lausanne… | 36 | 17 | 9 | 10 | 70 | 53 | +17 | 60 |
| 4 | Aarau | 36 | 15 | 12 | 9 | 63 | 57 | +6 | 57 |
| 5 | Wil | 36 | 16 | 8 | 12 | 62 | 52 | +10 | 56 |
| 6 | Thun | 36 | 12 | 13 | 11 | 62 | 55 | +7 | 49 |
| 7 | Schaffhausen | 36 | 12 | 8 | 16 | 51 | 59 | -8 | 44 |
| 8 | Vaduz | 36 | 7 | 16 | 13 | 54 | 56 | -2 | 37 |
| 9 | Bellinzona | 36 | 11 | 4 | 21 | 38 | 71 | -33 | 37 |
| 10 | Xamax | 36 | 4 | 12 | 20 | 42 | 65 | -23 | 24 |
The Chief Executive of FC Schaffhausen is Jimmy Berisha, and he has now met (allegedly) a Saudi prince in Jeddah and they have drawn up a deal.
Now the Swiss are quite cautious as to who they invite to invest in their country, and there are all sorts of twists and turns here since Jimmy Berisha has only been running the club for about five months.
So was his plan to take over and invite the Saudis in, all along? Maybe, because Prince Abdullah bin Saad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud asked Jimmy over to watch an international football tournament. The chairman of the Swiss club called itm, “A great honor for our club and a good opportunity to establish international contacts.”
According to Le Matin discussions have reached an advanced stage, and “An agreement has been reached with President Jimmy Berisha to invest in the club,” In response the club is reported as saying,“For FC Schaffhausen and the city of Munot, this is good publicity in an exciting economic region.”
OK so all that seems possible. The Saudis have an interest in Switzerland either because they just love mountains and people who speak lots of languages, or because, well, what? Banking?
Now as it happens the honourable Prince Abdullah bin Saad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud turned up on computers a couple of months back when he was talking of buying Olympique Marseille. At least that was in one report. Another said it was AS Monaco. We didn’t run either story because, well, you know, there is the question of our credibilty to think of.
And quite a good job we waited to, because after those earlier forays some of the media in France people began to question who the gentleman was and just how close he might be to those at the top of the tree (if they have trees in Saudi Arabia, I am not sure that they do).
So we had a look at the universal font of all knowledge (Wikipedia) and they said Saad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was born in 1915, which would make him around 109 years old – which is quite old for that part of the world. But what was especially interesting was that he was “a former chairman of royal family council of Al Saud.”
Anyway the Swiss media went looking also and said, “When we look at his branch of the family, he is not at the heart of power and he does not speak on behalf of the Saudi kingdom… we know nothing of his financial capabilities.”
So now, just as we have fake agents going round pretending to represent players in order to get a free lunch out of an unwary media outlet, we now have possibly fake sheiks claiming to be on the board of the ruling family.
Maybe anything to do with Saudi Arabia, its football league, its transfers, and well, pretty much anything else should be taken with a gallon of crude. Although apparently they are planning to run the world cup.
Did I detect a typo in the last line of your article? Did you mean to type “ruin”?
Peter Kay,
LOL!