The Guardian Article. I agree that the club may have sold their soul to some sort of devil to achieve our desires of success.
No place for grass roots in shifting sands
What the future might hold for Liverpool under the rule of the Maktoums.
Marina Hyde
December 7, 2006 02:57 AM
It was, of course, the monopolies commission that did for Rupert Murdoch's attempted takeover of Manchester United in 1998, and not the then BSkyB chief executive's Denis Irwin moment. The commission - whose continued existence is still occasionally alleged in articles detailing the waving through of Mr Murdoch's latest schemes - ruled against the deal but there will always be a certain rosy-eyed strain in popular folklore that likes to fancy that it was Mark Booth's press conference gaffe Wot Dun It.
You'll recall that having listened to the chief executive's vision for the club - "they want to win the league, we want to win the league" - a reporter raised his hand and asked casually who played right-back for United. After a reasonably excruciating pause, Mr Booth elected to pass the question on, explaining that "naming players is not my area of expertise".
What a snapshot of a bygone era that moment now seems, harking back to a time when such a lacuna in a potential owner's footballing knowledge still had the power to shock. It is a mark of the sea-change in attitudes to ownership of football clubs that has since since taken place that it seems almost unremarkable that Dubai International Capital has opened takeover talks with Liverpool FC, and ludicrous in the extreme that the private equity firm's imperial overlord, Sheikh Mohammed, who moonlights as prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, would have the faintest clue who played right-back in Rafa Benítez's side. (Mind you, collectors of Benítez rotation-system trivia may care to know it was Lee Peltier on Tuesday night.)
These days barely a month passes without a figure almost as alluring as Mr Murdoch being linked with the purchase of a Premiership club, and with six of these 21st-century commodities already in foreign hands, we must once again reiterate the conclusion that the football club has made the encouraging transition from sporting fellowship to capitalist - often geopolitical - pawn in a very short space of time indeed.
It's barely a surprise that the latest target of a foreign billionaire are Liverpool, whose supporters have a strong claim to be the very guardians of the kind of roots-up passion and solidarity that is the best of English football. It was going to happen sooner or later. Do not forget that, as ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed has overseen the construction of at least seven soulless wonders of the modern world, like alpine ski resorts in the desert, and villa-studded, man-made archipelagos in the shape of the world map. His ownership of Liverpool may presage even greater miracles, such as Shaun Wright-Phillips getting a regular Premiership start.
Of course, there will be somewhat less appealing aspects to His Highness's involvement. Is there, perhaps, something rather jarring about the fact that when in the future the Kop resonates with the most famous football song of all, You'll Never Walk Alone, they will be singing a Rodgers and Hammerstein number in a stadium effectively owned by a man whose country refuses access to all Israeli passport holders? No doubt His Highness will graciously decline to extend this exclusion policy to Anfield when Israeli players such as Bolton's Tal Ben Haim journey to face the home side.
As for that business of the lawsuit accusing him and his brother of enslaving 30,000 young boys, many as young as six, to work as camel jockeys in Dubai - well, now Unicef have intervened and the children have been repatriated to South Asia and Africa, it hardly seems relevant to mention it. As far as gripes about working conditions go, the above (said to be "baseless" by their lawyers) is likely to throw Benítez's rotation system into sympathetic relief. Still, half close your eyes, and by comparison Mr Murdoch would almost seem a nice, avuncular sort of chap to own a football club.
Where politics is concerned, the recent Democrat wins in the midterm elections mean the people of Britain will now have to cast envious glances at the United States for an experience of proper democracy in action: congressional inquiries into the Iraq war, as opposed to spirit-crushing whitewashes by a placeman judge - that sort of thing.
And so in football, as more of our great clubs are annexed by unaccountable billionaires, supporters feeling undervalued will have to look longingly towards European giants such as Barcelona or Real Madrid, which are genuinely democratic organisations and each boast tens of thousands of voting members. More members, even, than Sheikh Mohammed has camel jockeys.
What the future might hold for Liverpool under the rule of the Maktoums.
Marina Hyde
December 7, 2006 02:57 AM
It was, of course, the monopolies commission that did for Rupert Murdoch's attempted takeover of Manchester United in 1998, and not the then BSkyB chief executive's Denis Irwin moment. The commission - whose continued existence is still occasionally alleged in articles detailing the waving through of Mr Murdoch's latest schemes - ruled against the deal but there will always be a certain rosy-eyed strain in popular folklore that likes to fancy that it was Mark Booth's press conference gaffe Wot Dun It.
You'll recall that having listened to the chief executive's vision for the club - "they want to win the league, we want to win the league" - a reporter raised his hand and asked casually who played right-back for United. After a reasonably excruciating pause, Mr Booth elected to pass the question on, explaining that "naming players is not my area of expertise".
What a snapshot of a bygone era that moment now seems, harking back to a time when such a lacuna in a potential owner's footballing knowledge still had the power to shock. It is a mark of the sea-change in attitudes to ownership of football clubs that has since since taken place that it seems almost unremarkable that Dubai International Capital has opened takeover talks with Liverpool FC, and ludicrous in the extreme that the private equity firm's imperial overlord, Sheikh Mohammed, who moonlights as prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, would have the faintest clue who played right-back in Rafa Benítez's side. (Mind you, collectors of Benítez rotation-system trivia may care to know it was Lee Peltier on Tuesday night.)
These days barely a month passes without a figure almost as alluring as Mr Murdoch being linked with the purchase of a Premiership club, and with six of these 21st-century commodities already in foreign hands, we must once again reiterate the conclusion that the football club has made the encouraging transition from sporting fellowship to capitalist - often geopolitical - pawn in a very short space of time indeed.
It's barely a surprise that the latest target of a foreign billionaire are Liverpool, whose supporters have a strong claim to be the very guardians of the kind of roots-up passion and solidarity that is the best of English football. It was going to happen sooner or later. Do not forget that, as ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed has overseen the construction of at least seven soulless wonders of the modern world, like alpine ski resorts in the desert, and villa-studded, man-made archipelagos in the shape of the world map. His ownership of Liverpool may presage even greater miracles, such as Shaun Wright-Phillips getting a regular Premiership start.
Of course, there will be somewhat less appealing aspects to His Highness's involvement. Is there, perhaps, something rather jarring about the fact that when in the future the Kop resonates with the most famous football song of all, You'll Never Walk Alone, they will be singing a Rodgers and Hammerstein number in a stadium effectively owned by a man whose country refuses access to all Israeli passport holders? No doubt His Highness will graciously decline to extend this exclusion policy to Anfield when Israeli players such as Bolton's Tal Ben Haim journey to face the home side.
As for that business of the lawsuit accusing him and his brother of enslaving 30,000 young boys, many as young as six, to work as camel jockeys in Dubai - well, now Unicef have intervened and the children have been repatriated to South Asia and Africa, it hardly seems relevant to mention it. As far as gripes about working conditions go, the above (said to be "baseless" by their lawyers) is likely to throw Benítez's rotation system into sympathetic relief. Still, half close your eyes, and by comparison Mr Murdoch would almost seem a nice, avuncular sort of chap to own a football club.
Where politics is concerned, the recent Democrat wins in the midterm elections mean the people of Britain will now have to cast envious glances at the United States for an experience of proper democracy in action: congressional inquiries into the Iraq war, as opposed to spirit-crushing whitewashes by a placeman judge - that sort of thing.
And so in football, as more of our great clubs are annexed by unaccountable billionaires, supporters feeling undervalued will have to look longingly towards European giants such as Barcelona or Real Madrid, which are genuinely democratic organisations and each boast tens of thousands of voting members. More members, even, than Sheikh Mohammed has camel jockeys.
I wonder what club she supports 
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