Khan pulls plug on £600m deal
Fulham owner abandons stadium bid after FA’S shambolic campaign to sell home of football
Shahid Khan dramatically abandoned his £600million bid to buy Wembley last night after red-faced Football Association executives arranged a crisis meeting with the billionaire to tell him their shambolic campaign to sell the home of football was doomed.
Martin Glenn, the FA chief executive, is facing severe criticism from grass-roots chiefs for failing to win their trust over the deal, even after promising a £1.5billion spending spree on amateur facilities if the sale went through.
Both Glenn and chairman Greg Clarke are said to have deemed the deal “dead in the water” when members of the FA’S 127-member Council quibbled with their figures behind a 20-year cash injection for local facilities during a heated meeting at Wembley last Thursday.
Khan, who had been in talks to acquire the home of English football for NFL games since April, withdrew his offer yesterday, citing shock at the “divisive” atmosphere among the 47 county FAS which were due to share the windfall.
He is understood to have been told at a meeting with the FA this week that a decisive council vote next Wednesday was almost certain to fail to deliver a 70 per cent mandate required by the board.
Khan said in statement: “At this moment, following last week’s FA Council hearing, it appears there is no definitive mandate to sell Wembley and my current proposal, subsequently, would earn the backing of only a slim majority of the FA Council, well short of the conclusive margin that the FA chairman has required.”
The Pakistani-american owner of both Fulham and the Jacksonville Jaguars had agreed an outline deal for operational limitations, including that no sponsor could gain “title” rights, such as renaming the stadium or adding a corporate brand alongside that of Wembley.
The deal’s collapse comes after a disastrous week during which the FA parachuted in Gareth Southgate to support the bid in an apparent effort to calm waters ahead of the hostile meeting with the council.
The Government had given its full backing to the deal. Tracey Crouch, the sports minister, said she was “very disappointed” by the decision, calling the offer “a huge opportunity to boost funding into the development and maintenance of artificial and grass pitches up and down the country”.
One senior member of the FA Council said: “It’s a disaster for the grass roots, and the worst thing of all is that we have ourselves to blame. We quibbled the figures and the FA failed to convince us. Ultimately, this is Glenn’s fault. The message was to take the deal, but it wasn’t explained adequately.”
Announcing his decision, Khan said he could not rule out tabling another offer in the future but he is said to have been bruised by the response to his approach by footballing figures. Last week, he was forced to deny claims of “systemic corruption” from a disgruntled former employee at Fulham. Yesterday, Craig Kline, the club’s former assistant director of football, filed his allegations to employment tribunal lawyers.
FA executives now face the severe headache of filling a £1.5billion funding gap at local level. Mark Burrows, the FA chief financial officer, said every region in England could expect 330 improved grass pitches and 31 new changing pavilions as a result of the deal.
An FA blueprint seen by this newspaper shows the promised £71million for each region – totalling £3.3 billion across England – was based on FA accountants securing a series of so-called trigger payments from the deal.
About £590million was due to be invested in high-interest accounts over 20 years, combined with an extra £613 million of “matched funding” from Football Foundation grants and about £1.8 billion in existing grass-root funding plans.
The Football Foundation, the charity due to distribute the funds, bemoaned the loss of what it called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, but Glenn, who had lobbied hard for the deal, added that the “iconic venue will continue to thrive under the ownership and direction of the FA” and noted that the debate sparked by Khan’s offer had “raised awareness” of the need to upgrade England’s community facilities.
However, Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, told The Daily Telegraph he was glad the deal had been shelved as he called for a review into football funding.
He said: “I was concerned it wasn’t the right deal and the formula didn’t seem very clear. There seemed to me a danger the money could have gone unspent in some of the areas that needed it most.”