English Premier League deal-maker Keith Harris, responsible for engineering club takeovers, has admitted that the days of billionaires bailing out clubs are over, reports David Conn. Harris cites the no-sale of Newcastle United after three and a half months as hard evidence of what the global economic crisis will mean to soccer.
“The problem was not the price being asked [for Newcastle] but the general climate,” Harris said. “In a way it is a wake-up call: we’re in the toughest economic situation anybody has endured in our lifetime and that means we are unlikely to see much activity on the football takeover scene.” He added that clubs, with the exception of super-rich Manchester City, should approach the coming year with prudence.
“We have been through a time when clubs have been overspending, with very ordinary players commanding huge transfer fees and wages,” he said. “The climate has changed and takeovers are not going to be the solution to the woes that they may have been two years ago.” Although potential owners may want to ultimately make money out of soccer, in reality “a football club is a trophy asset, for enjoyment. Confidence is dented everywhere and I do not see much activity on takeovers until we get some form of stability in people’s minds.”
Harris thinks that a meltdown is possible if loss-making clubs do not get a grip on high wages and transfer fees. “The clubs have been spending too much and the club owners were looking for richer people to buy the clubs and take on the losses,” he said. “But we are in a different climate now, where the football clubs have to realize it is back to the fundamental basics of managing their costs. The supply of richer people has proved to be finite.”