It’s our beautiful game... we must have regulator to take back control

FOOTBALL isn’t just another business. It can’t be treated like any other business. Football clubs are constituent parts of our communities. There is such a thing as society and the national game is a vital part of what makes it up.

We discovered during lockdown that we need our regular meeting points, our communities, our places to gather. Those institutions are the glue that binds us together.

So let’s put aside all talk of football being left to find its own way in an unregulated free market. To deal in the new football market, you will have to respect the new rules that will set it apart from supermarkets or other such businesses.

I believe you can be a capitalist and have compassion. I also believe you can be a socialist and believe in business. And football is a good vehicle to demonstrate what a regulated, fair and rule-based free market might look like. We need an independent regulator for football which is: truly independent of the game; empowered to reform and modernise the Football Association; equipped with financial and regulatory expertise; can work closely with the game’s stakeholders but empowered to broker and or step in to impose solutions where necessary; tasked with handing back football governance to the FA in the future once they have been modernised, reformed, equipped and are sufficiently independent. It is clear that football can’t regulate itself, particularly in moments of stress. The game is so riven by conflicts of interest and it’s also clear that the FA are in no position to be that referee in its current form.

Football’s regulator should be wholly independent and insulated from the influence of the elite in the Premier League. However, it should work to reform and modernise the FA. It would have financial and regulatory expertise, similar to the Financial Conduct Authority. It should work closely with the game’s stakeholders but should also have the power to step in and make decisions when shareholders are left paralysed by their respective self-interests.

At some point in the future, if the FA was a reformed and modernised representative of the key stakeholders in football and with independent executives, I would hope it would be able to hand back the governance of football to the FA. An FA properly resourced and empowered, could govern the game. But, for now, that isn’t possible.

We need a referee to take control and hand the ball back to the people and a new independent regulator is a must. If my book achieves one thing, I would hope that we all recognise the future of our game, which is part of our nation’s heritage and history, cannot be controlled by oil-rich nation states or American investment funds.

The People’s Game isn’t the property of John W Henry, Joel Glazer, Stan Kroenke, Sheik Mansour and Joe Lewis. It’s our game, our beautiful game.