Blazers hold key to Khan Wembley bid
A SPECIALLY convened Fa council meeting on october 24 looks like being pivotal to the proposed £600million sale of Wembley to Fulham owner Shahid Khan.
the Fa blazers no longer have the power to make a defining decision, but the percentage of those in favour of selling Wembley at that summit will influence Fa chairman Greg Clarke and his board. Clarke has said he will not go ahead with the sale to the billionaire Pakistani-american, who also owns NFL franchise Jacksonville Jaguars, if the Fa council have a majority against it.
only one major objection about selling Wembley was raised from the floor at the last council meeting, but there are understood to be a lot of unhappy blazers. the number of rebels won’t be clear until the meeting, because it’s customary for the blazers to talk up an issue in advance and then keep quiet in the chamber.
another obstacle is that the Football League are yet to agree to their mooted £150m share of the sale proceeds going into grass-roots community pitches via the Football Foundation, a joint initiative between the Fa and the Premier League.
the EFL would prefer to distribute their share through their 72 clubs, who operate at grass-roots levels themselves. Fa statutes decree that money from such a sale are shared equally between the amateur and professional games through an established funding formula. THERE is some annoyance at BBC 5 Live that BT Sport’s head of sport Simon Green should have launched a social media attack on Beeb presenter Anna Foster (right), especially as the two broadcasters share a number of pundits and commentators including Darren Fletcher, Jermaine Jenas, Robbie Savage and Chris Sutton. Green complained on Twitter that Foster ‘often drives it (5 Live) to be the Daily Star of broadcasting with trivial minority stories that are just tabloid sensationalism to get listeners.’ the International olympic Committee faction on the executive committee of the World antiDoping agency (WaDa) — who meet in the Seychelles on September 20 — are pushing hard for russia to be restored as WaDa compliant.
they have been non-compliant since 2015 when allegations of state- sponsored doping first emerged. But russia’s return is not going to happen until WaDa are allowed to examine the 2,800 samples in the Moscow laboratory and russia accept the findings of the IoC’s Schmid report which took a softer stance than the McLaren report that revealed much of the evidence. COLIN MONTGOMERIE, a winning Ryder Cup captain in 2010 and stellar playing performer in the biannual tournament, will be missing from Le Golf National later in the month. The Scot, who is no longer a regular Sky pundit for their big tournaments, having failed to agree terms, will instead be playing in a seniors event in the United States.
Bjorn reaches for Sky
SKY’S new strategy to squeeze every last drop out of their rights deals now includes staging build-up events at their Isleworth headquarters, as with anthony Joshua’s press conference before his Wladimir Klitschko fight and this week’s announcement of thomas Bjorn’s wildcard picks for the ryder Cup. european captain Bjorn was said to be in favour of doing something different from the usual announcement from the tour headquarters at Wentworth. But being hosted by Sky does mean that their requirements get priority and the print media are last in line. DEBBIE JEVANS resigned as chief executive of England’s Rugby World Cup organising committee in March 2015 — less than six months before the tournament — after losing a power battle with the RFU high command. But Jevans has recovered her sporting influence to the extent she has been appointed interim chairman of the Football League, replacing Ian Lenagan.