As the billionaires take over football clubs, Fifa urges “direct action” « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Tony Attwood

Every month more football clubs are taken over by multi-millionaires, and billionaires.  The reasons why they do it are varied – and later in this series of articles on the ownership of clubs I’ll examine that point. But first I want to examine the way national and international Football Associations are suddenly waking up to the challenge that these take overs pose to their own power-grip on the game.

I’ll do this through one in-depth example: Craig Whyte, Rangers, the Scottish FA and Fifa – a set of links that has not always been examined in the many pages of articles written about the Rangers affair.   But although this article is mostly about Rangers my prime focus is the new challenges that football face, and the ways in which the authorities are moving (albeit very slowly) to overcome them.

To start with the fundamental: there is a Fifa rule that says if ever a government interferes with the running of the national football association, then that association shall be expelled from football.  There’s another that says that if the association goes to court to resolve a matter against another association or Fifa, it is expelled.

The same rules apply for clubs, where obviously the relationship is  with the regional FA and the continental association such as Uefa.   To put it simply, Fifa and Uefa rules put football outside the law.  Disputes are kept in the family.

Fifa and Uefa have not always been successful in this vision – the Bosman ruling was one example where EU law won out, and the insistence of the EU that EU employment laws apply as much to footballers as to car wash attendants (to take an example at random) was another.   But by and large Fifa and Uefa have kept a lid on things, and football matters don’t normally end up in any court except for insolvency and tax matters.

But the Rangers case has thrown all this in the air – and the outcome will have huge impacts for all of football.

Rangers were given a 12-month transfer ban by the Scottish FA as part of their punishment for a range of offences.  Rangers took the matter to court and in the Court of Session in Scotland and a judge said that a Scottish FA panel had no right to impose the punishment it imposed, under the governing body’s rules.   The SFA considered an appeal but rejected it on the grounds that it would have difficulty with Fifa and Uefa rules if it went back to court to re-establish its authority.

So the Rangers case is being heard again by the appeals panel, and one might conjecture that this time around the SFA are going to come up with far more severe sanctions.  It is looking as if in winning a battle, it has sacrificed the war.

Fifa has now told the SFA to take “direct action” against Rangers not over the initial problem of going bust, etc etc etc (which it is doing already, as are the tax authorities) but for ignoring the regulations that prohibit clubs from taking associations to court.

Meanwhile the SFA are still trying to get the previous Rangers owner to pay the £200,000 fine that the panel gave him – a matter that was not touched by the Court ruling, and this leads to another interesting point.  Part of Rangers’ case is that the present club, and the new owners, when they are found, should not be guilty for the sins of the previous owners.  It is an argument rejected by football associations – for if they accepted it the 10 point penalty for administration (for example) would never be applied.

Which brings us to Craig Whyte, the previous chair of Rangers.  He is reported to be chairman of a complex maze of interlinked firms from around the world which some reports have worth more than £1 billion.  He is resident in Monaco – which is not a member of the European Union, and is a tax haven.  Getting money out of a Monaco resident is, well, difficult – as the SFA are finding as they try to get the £200,000 fine that they have imposed on him, paid.