Bernstein is embarrassed by City’s ESL involvement
FORMER City chairman David Bernstein said he has been ‘highly embarrassed’ by the club’s involvement in plans for a European Super League.
Bernstein was City chairman between 1998 and 2003, when he was heavily involved with the move from Maine Road to the Etihad Stadium. He later served as chairman of the FA.
He said: “I think the whole thing is an embarrassment frankly. I think all the clubs, six clubs, should be embarrassed. I think it’s been amateurish. I’m amazed that experienced people could get into such a crass mess as this. I think it smacks of incompetence.
“I was highly embarrassed that my club Manchester City should be involved in this. I’m very pleased that they’re one of the first two out and the others are following.
“I and Helen Grant and Gary Neville and Lord Mervyn King and others formed a group nine months ago and we published a manifesto called Saving The Beautiful Game, and this almost anticipated some of these issues and we’ve set out to illustrate that football has failed to reform itself not over 10 years but over 20 years.
“Lessons just haven’t been learned. Football has been riven by self-interest, lack of independence and it is we who have been pushing for an independent regulator and I’m delighted politicians and others are seeing the need for this.
“We need football to speak with one voice which it just doesn’t do. It has in the last 48 hours. It generally doesn’t do.
“[Florentino Perez] was saving Real Madrid, not football. We all know that Real Madrid and Barcelona, and maybe one or two English clubs, are in massive debts and they’ve handled their affairs very badly.
“There’s been no wage control over Covid and there’s been billions of pounds going out in wages which the clubs at the moment can’t afford.”