Own goal! FA ‘can’t sell Wembley until 2057’

The FA’s plan to sell Wembley faces being blocked after it emerged Government ‘protections’ are in place to safeguard the interests of public bodies that ploughed £161million into the stadium.

The organisations insisted upon a series of measures to ensure the FA’s commitment to Wembley until 2057.

Unless those public interest protections can be retained or satisfactorily revised under new ownership, the £1billion deal to sell Wembley to Fulham owner Shahid Khan could be in jeopardy.

The FA are bound to retain a controlling interest in Wembley national Stadium Ltd for 50 years from the stadium’s completion in 2007. The company operates with the sole purpose of owning and managing Wembley – and was bound by measures detailed in a national Audit office report from 2003.

Although the ‘protections’ relate to the company, rather than the stadium, the two are inherently linked. The terms were designed to ‘safeguard the public interest by preventing the Football Association from appearing to profiteer’.

Sport england awarded a £120million Lottery Grant to the project, while the Government contributed £20million and the London Development Agency £21million.

All parties are willing to discuss how Wembley could change hands with these protections continuing, the Mail understands. Mr Khan, a Pakistani-American entrepreneur, is said to be aware of the protections.

Although he has plans to use Wembley as a base for his Jacksonville Jaguars American football team, he insists that the stadium would remain the home of english football. The FA have pledged to invest a considerable portion of any sale price into grass-roots football.

The FA declined to comment. A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said: ‘We want to be reassured that Wembley would remain the home of english football for generations to come.’