NLP says... We don’t need to sell Wembley to grow the game

With Shahid Khan withdrawing his interest in purchasing Wembley Stadium this week, many felt it was another door being slammed shut in the face of grassroots football, with the lower levels of the game set to benefit financially had the national stadium been sold to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham owner.

I myself was always sceptical of the sale, mainly because I questioned whether the figures that were being bandied about would actually go back into grassroots football – there were far too many other people in the queue wanting their slice of the pie. But the non-sale has irked people because they saw this as a great opportunity for the FA to actively do something for the grassroots game, and let’s face it, something needs to be done because some of the statistics make for grim reading whether it’s 67 per cent of pitches deemed not to be of ‘adequate’ quality or the startling lack of 3G facilities in the UK compared to other European nations.

Those who opposed the sale believe more Football League and Premier League clubs should be helping out, and that we should not need to sell Wembley to inject funds into grassroots. But the FA doesn’t have the power to instruct clubs to do that, and this is where the government must step in because they have neglected the game and simply passed the buck to others. They are almost saying: this is your problem, sell you house and all the furniture and be done with it!

The money from the Wembley sale, even if it had come down to the lower levels of the game, would merely have served as a plaster on an open wound. Measures must be put in place to ensure more money comes down from the Premier League, whether through taxes on a player’s wage or a percentage of an agent’s fee.

By selling Wembley and giving the grassroots game a chunk of the money, it is only ignoring the continued impact the Premier League should be having on the development of the game in this country. There are success stories of them helping out, but let’s not begin to kid ourselves: they aren’t doing anywhere near enough.