Get set for ultimate EPL game of shame
AS RUSSIA’S howitzers continue to bombard the cities of Ukraine and our TV screens show us pictures of bodies frozen in the snow, the Premier League will invite us to turn, for light relief, to Chelsea’s match with Newcastle at Stamford Bridge this afternoon. Make sure you have eaten your Sunday lunch well before you switch it on. Otherwise, you may struggle to keep it down.
Football is supposed to be about escapism. But this match will not provide any of that currency. Chelsea v Newcastle is the Premier League’s game of shame. It is a meeting that embarrasses English football and the people who run it.
The Premier League allowed Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich — described by the Government as a ‘pro-Kremlin oligarch’ who has had ‘a close relationship for decades’ with Vladimir Putin — to hide in plain sight at the pinnacle of English football since 2003. They did nothing to restrict his role in the game even when his ally sent Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine.
The Premier League can claim one distinction at least. An unlikely first. When it came to finally confronting the ignominy of the amount of dubious Russian money swilling around the English establishment, they were even slower than the UK Government.
The Government finally imposed sanctions on Abramovich last week. The Premier League? Still silent, until, eventually, they disqualified him as a Chelsea director yesterday.
The Premier League also waved through the Saudi Arabian state takeover of Newcastle last October, knowing that the Saudis were involved in a long and destructive war with Yemen that is said to have caused 233,000 deaths.
That war has not garnered the same attention as the war in Ukraine, perhaps because it is backed by British weapons and because Boris Johnson is planning a trip to Riyadh this week to plead for more Saudi oil. But we did sit up and take notice when the Saudis murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in their consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 and cut up his body with a bone saw. The Premier League did not see a red flag there, either, apparently.
All in all, then, what an uplifting meeting is in store for us at the Bridge. Perhaps Amanda Staveley, one of Newcastle’s minority owners, will repeat the expressions of sympathy she voiced for Abramovich 10 days ago when she said she did not think it was ‘particularly fair’ he had to sell Chelsea. We did not learn how ‘fair’ she thought it that Abramovich’s ally, President Putin, was bombing Ukraine back to the Middle Ages.
Until then, we have to sit back and endure spectacles like the one that will unfold in west London today, a proxy battle between an Abramovich in exile and Saudi Arabia. One is a sportswasher whose investment has finally failed him, the other a sportswasher right at the beginning of its journey to wipe away the traces of its actions through English football.
Newcastle, in particular, will not relish today’s collision and the harsh spotlight it will cast on them. The damage is done to Chelsea already but the war in Ukraine seems to have finally opened the eyes of those who did not previously want to see what the Premier League has become. The league is a haven for the dirty money of despots, tyrants and gangsters’ molls.
It is a place where everyone has looked the other way for too long.
The fall of Abramovich must change all that. The ruin that Chelsea face must change all that. It is time for the Premier League to accept what it has become and accept it needs to be corrected. It is time for a reset. This is an opportunity to stop nation-states buying clubs and turning them into hostages to fortune.
Manchester City are majorityowned by the deputy prime minister of the UAE, who refused to condemn the Russian invasion. Their playing style and the genius of Pep Guardiola has insulated them from greater scrutiny so far.
Saudi Arabia should never have been allowed to buy Newcastle and now that Abramovich has been sanctioned for his activities outside the game, surely it is time to take the same attitude with the new masters of St James’ Park.
The Premier League has proved beyond doubt that it is not up to the job of fixing the problem. The whole sorry farrago provides yet more evidence that it is time that English football was governed by an independent regulator.
There is still scepticism about a regulator. Mainly from those who would have limits imposed on their greed. But when Chelsea are reduced to pleading for their football life, surely those still resisting the idea of a regulator have to ask themselves one question: how much worse than this can it be?