Once the fog of war clears, football must decouple from Big Money and rebuild – Football365

War is here. We are all Ukrainians now.

Once again, we have to oil the jaws of the war machine and feed it with our babies. In the fields, the bodies are burning as the war machine keeps turning.

As shocking, appalling and troubling as this is not least because a wider nuclear war in Europe is not the least likely outcome we need to use it as a corrective moment. To stop walking down this long road out of Eden and take a different direction. Obviously, this relies on the whole of western Europe not being a smouldering wasteland in the near future. And football looks small and puny in the shadow of mass destruction so maybe this isnt the time to talk about this. Yet it feels apposite.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime. That is the epigraph to The Godfather, by Mario Puzo, adapted from Balzac and illustrated every day by the modern football ecosystem with its litany of super-wealthy people, their companies, their countries, their states all buying up high-profile English and European football clubs to use for their own malign purposes.

Roman Abramovichs acquisition of Chelsea was the Premier Leagues first hit of the hard gear, injected into the games arteries, soon making the whole body of football addicted to Big Money. His vague, meaningless statement of Saturday nightwas an attempt to preserve ownership of an asset that, at last, the government believes is unacceptable.

It always has been. Pity the government and the football authorities did not think that before he was allowed to buy Chelsea. Pity they did not think that super wealthy foreign nationals, oligarchs, sheikhs and states owning our football clubs and much of the infrastructure and utilities of this country was actually surrendering our nation to powers who do not have our best interests at heart. Vladimir Putin wanted to destabilise and weaken the EU and he used Brexit and Donald Trump to do it. It made Putins self-belief stronger. Look at how he could manipulate the western fools. Now look where that has led.

The love of money and of football have been mated and spawned a monster. And we have laid down and let it happen, supine in the face of wealth, exactly as we have been taught to be by capitalisms false promise of contentment for those obedient to its dogma.

We were told we could not serve both God and mammon, so we made a choice and got into bed with the demon and, like an insatiable succubus, tried to f**k our way to football heaven.

We replaced community with cash. We sold footballs soul to whomever would buy it for the most money and we gained absolutely nothing by doing this, but were told time and again we had and so eventually many believed the myth. We tugged our forelock and got down on our knees and we fellated our oppressors, swallowing their seed like it was holy water.

As players wages and fees went ever upwards, did we get ever happier or content? No, of course not. Football doesnt work like that. Rather the opposite. A taste of the devils nectar just makes you want more and makes you feel like youre missing out on the real sweetness. Happiness is replaced with discontent as we seek ever more money to make ever bigger transfers and pay ever bigger wages. It could never deliver what it promised to deliver.

Moneys glow blinds us or, more specifically, weve allowed it to blind us. It sends us onto social media to defend it and to do, not merely its dirty work, but the foetid work of Beelzebub. Weve seen this time and again with fans of club after club.

It has been a lust for money that goes right to the top of government with oligarchs and petrodollar families funding political parties, buying up property all over Londongrad, putting their kids into expensive private schools, largely unaccountable and anonymous but shot through the whole of society like a poisonous mycelium.

Given this, its not surprising that the best league in the world is the sordid playground for crony capitalism and other repressive regimes. They never wanted our cultural assets for good reasons. And it should surprise no-one that people who actively support, or will not stand against murderous regimes, can also do altruistic things with their money. They can give to charity and back a warmonger at the same time. Mass murderers can have lovely manners, but they are still killers and they laugh at our slack-jawed obeisance.

Thats another habit we have to shed once the fog of war clears.

Now is the time to stop this madness. Kick the habit and return football to a more sane, modest financial regime. I know it is hard to stop this bingeing once you get a taste, but we must decouple from the mindset. Look at who we have hitched our wagon to to feed it.

After all, most of football in the UK is not part of this. It is only in the top flight and a few clubs further down that are so intoxicated by perverted wealth and prepared to overlook things that should never be overlooked in return for transfer money. Can we overlook war, murder and death for a higher league finish? If we can, we need to fix that.

Football is a simple business and it need not be a big business attracting money from the darkest corners of hell. Many, indeed most clubs are still run as community organisations by decent people for the enjoyment of decent people. The lives of those who watch these clubs are no less rewarding than those watching teams built with the bloodiest hands. If we think otherwise, we need to fix that as well.

Let this vile, irrational, insane war give us a new perspective. No more leveraging wealth to create success because that success is no success at all when it is intravenously connected to the economics and morality of evil people. We should not feel good if our team wins on the back of dirty money. And Big Money is always, always, always the dirtiest money.

The calls for Abramovich to be dethroned from Chelsea and his assets taken off him are right, but it will make no difference if the same mindset exists afterwards. Say goodbye to one monster, say hello to another. Oh, they may have a cleaner veneer or more honeyed words but remember: Behind every great fortune there is a great crime. We dont want football invested in that great crime and for too long, at the highest levels, it has been. We need to fix that.

On Friday, the UAE abstained along with China and India from a vote at the US Security Council demanding Moscow withdraw its troops. Saudi Arabia has not reacted to the Ukrainian invasion, much like the UAE, Bahrain and Oman. Kuwait and Qatar have only denounced the violence, stopping short of criticising Moscow. But some of our football clubs are dancing to these peoples tunes. On top of that, Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA, is so far in blood with Putin that he ruled Russia must play World Cup play-offs in a neutral venue, under a different name, without anthem, fans or flag. That will obviously not be acceptable to anyone and shows how FIFA is not fit for purpose and its president is a corrupt and compromised idiot.

It is the desperate craving for cash that has led football down the wrong road. It has led it into the arms of bloody dictators and their pals. It has led us into the arms of exploitative sports investment portfolios, into the death grip of middle-eastern autocracies, into Russian oligarchs who support war against the innocent and steal money from their own people. We have accepted Chinese capi-communists whose state has a vested interest in undermining ours. And then theres the out and out corporate profiteers for whom only the bottom line matters, no matter the economic collateral damage.

It has led to welcoming money from the energy supplier of an oppressive state, from global corporate brands whose products come with a side order of political and economic oppression. The sports governing bodies have been riddled from top to bottom with corruption of every flavour, all bending over backwards to accommodate the super-wealthy and the powerful. We need to fix that.

This mindset has got us all into this crippled, addicted state. So crippled and addicted that clubs and their fans will take money from literally anyone, even from people who are known to be violent, bloody oppressors and supporters of war mongers who will happily kill us, the way they are murdering our Ukrainian sisters and brothers. And why are we craven to them? To buy more expensive players and pay them ever more money. Thats a terrible deal. We need to fix that, too.

Familiarity may breed contempt but more often it breeds complacency. When something is so common, we stop seeing it for what it really is. Now it doesnt even seem weird if a gulf state buys a football club. We just shrug. But underneath, most of us know its wrong.

When this is over, lets start again. Let us call for and support fundamental change in the governance and finance of football. Lets put a different head on. Lets stop craving Big Money. Let us defenestrate the oligarchs, petrodollar states, international finance groups, sports portfolio investment groups and murdering bastards, enact a fundamental restructuring of the game without the stench of rotting and corrupt institutions like UEFA and FIFA. Replace them with an open, democratic, accountable, transparent, modern organisation. Introduce sensible financial levels, limited by legislation to ensure footballs finances resemble a grapefruit instead of a very tall pyramid.

With fairness, equality and togetherness as our motto, after the war, we can rebuild in a more modest fashion, not craven to the next friend of a bloody warmonger. Because it still is the peoples game. Fixing it requires fixing our attitude to money. I might be a nave idealist, but profound change is possible. A new world can emerge from the ashes of the old. That is one thing that war teaches us, one big thing we can fix. So lets fix it.

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Once the fog of war clears, football must decouple from Big Money and rebuild - Football365