It’s too late to end Premier League’s relationship with states
Even if City’s owners sell up, England’s top flight has already welcomed Abramovich and PIF with open arms, writes George Simms
George Simms
4 Oct 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport
So, you think nation states shouldn’t be able to own football clubs. An admirable cause. The right one, probably, though a little late, if I’m being harsh. Except, of course, in the Premier League’s eyes, this isn’t actually a problem, because no nation state owns any of its clubs.
Manchester City’s appeal, insofar as it extends beyond “I’m not sure you heard us the first time”, hinges on Sheikh Mansour and his Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) for Development and Investment’s separation from the Emirati government. This, as the independent commission already found, is about as distinct a separation as Tyler Durden and The Narrator in Fight Club, but is one that the Premier League maintains exists, as it has for the past 18 years.
Mansour is vice-president of the UAE, and the president’s brother. In a non-exhaustive list, City chair Khaldoon Al Mubarak is de facto prime minister of Abu Dhabi, CEO and managing director of a sovereign wealth fund, UAE presidential special envoy to China and its main liaison with the US, and chair of numerous banks and energy boards. Any government funding to City’s sponsors likely required at least some element of: “Do you fancy propping up this sponsorship deal, Khaldoon?” “Now you mention it, that sounds like a cracking idea, Khaldoon.”
Beyond Manchester, had Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (PIF) and its chair Mohammed bin Salman not been deemed sufficiently separate from the wider state of Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Newcastle United takeover would not have passed the Premier League’s owners and directors’ test. And yet it did, because ultimately the Premier League isn’t in the habit of turning down inordinate sums of money.
What would regulations to block any state actors from owning clubs actually look like? Money and power are inseparable, and buying a Premier League club requires a lot of one and at least some of the other. You should not be able to own a club if you hold any government position, sure, but what if it’s ceremonial, or if you’ve just stepped down? Should you not be able to join a consortium?
What if you’re a royal but have limited power or influence (imagine Prince Harry trying to buy Brentford)? What if you own, for example, the fifth-largest company in the world by market cap, one with numerous state contracts and significant influence, as well as a major national newspaper in your country?
Where do you draw the line? Roman Abramovich was close to Vladimir Putin, but no one earnestly believes Big Bad Vlad was deciding whether Chelsea needed a new No 9. Remember Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani and his £5 billion bid to buy Manchester United? From the little we knew,
Jassim was chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank, a publicly traded bank, son of a former Qatari prime minister and is the brother of the current Emir.
Jassim’s representatives always denied he was the soft face of a Qatari state bid, but human rights organisation FairSquare wrote to Uefa and the Premier League that “a basic study of Qatar’s political and economic system amply demonstrates the impossibility of any Qatari consortium proving itself independent of state influence”. Jassim’s bid included a bank guarantee signed by the chief executive of Qatar National Bank, half-owned by the Qatari government via its sovereign wealth fund.
So, should Jassim have not been allowed to own the club of which he appeared to be a legitimate, longstanding fan because of an ultimately unprovable connection to a government in which he holds no role?
The Premier League would have had sweet, sweet plausible deniability, and it is difficult to imagine a defensible set of regulations that would have blocked his takeover, short of an effective ban on anyone from most Gulf states owning football clubs. Anyway, luckily United swerved Jassim and got – checks notes – Sir Jim “I’m so worried about Britain that here are some verbal grenades from Monaco” Ratcliffe.
But perhaps the fundamental question today is: once you’ve invited the tiger for tea, once you’ve let it eat all your food and drink the taps dry, how do you ask it to Foxtrot Oscar back from where it came? This, in theory, is where the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) comes in.
This week, IFR chair David Kogan said it has “powers to assess the suitability of owners, directors and executives and we will use these powers where appropriate, in the interests of protecting the sustainability, honesty and integrity of English football where there is clear evidence of wrongdoing by individuals”. Of course, it is yet to demonstrate those powers, to clarify what assessing suitability actually entails, to prove it doesn’t matter that the prime minister would be “really concerned” to lose ADUG from Manchester.
Even if the IFR can expel Mansour and Al Mubarak, so long as the PIF owns Newcastle, banning state actors from the Premier League would be somewhere between incoherently hypocritical and logistically impossible, coupled with the complication of Qatar still owning Paris Saint-Germain. Of course, various human rights-based justifications exist for the IFR to strip Newcastle from the PIF and Saudi Arabia, but the vast majority of these also existed in 2021 when the takeover occurred.
And as with the UAE, stripping Newcastle from the PIF would trigger a major diplomatic incident with a British ally – we’re just over a decade on from government buildings across London flying flags at half-mast after King Abdullah’s death. English football, and particularly the Premier League, is really just reflecting the nation around it.
None of this is to say that nothing should change, that the Premier League’s ownership rules do not require fundamental reform, but this is a problem far beyond football, the problem that money – from state actors or your dime-adozen billionaire – buys impunity and silence and permission, that accountability is for the little people.
So, you think nation states shouldn’t be able to own football clubs. An admirable cause. Though I doubt it will matter in the end.
So, you think nation states shouldn’t be able to own football clubs. An admirable cause. The right one, probably, though a little late, if I’m being harsh. Except, of course, in the Premier League’s eyes, this isn’t actually a problem, because no nation state owns any of its clubs.
Manchester City’s appeal, insofar as it extends beyond “I’m not sure you heard us the first time”, hinges on Sheikh Mansour and his Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) for Development and Investment’s separation from the Emirati government. This, as the independent commission already found, is about as distinct a separation as Tyler Durden and The Narrator in Fight Club, but is one that the Premier League maintains exists, as it has for the past 18 years.
Mansour is vice-president of the UAE, and the president’s brother. In a non-exhaustive list, City chair Khaldoon Al Mubarak is de facto prime minister of Abu Dhabi, CEO and managing director of a sovereign wealth fund, UAE presidential special envoy to China and its main liaison with the US, and chair of numerous banks and energy boards. Any government funding to City’s sponsors likely required at least some element of: “Do you fancy propping up this sponsorship deal, Khaldoon?” “Now you mention it, that sounds like a cracking idea, Khaldoon.”
Beyond Manchester, had Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (PIF) and its chair Mohammed bin Salman not been deemed sufficiently separate from the wider state of Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Newcastle United takeover would not have passed the Premier League’s owners and directors’ test. And yet it did, because ultimately the Premier League isn’t in the habit of turning down inordinate sums of money.
What would regulations to block any state actors from owning clubs actually look like? Money and power are inseparable, and buying a Premier League club requires a lot of one and at least some of the other. You should not be able to own a club if you hold any government position, sure, but what if it’s ceremonial, or if you’ve just stepped down? Should you not be able to join a consortium?
What if you’re a royal but have limited power or influence (imagine Prince Harry trying to buy Brentford)? What if you own, for example, the fifth-largest company in the world by market cap, one with numerous state contracts and significant influence, as well as a major national newspaper in your country?
Where do you draw the line? Roman Abramovich was close to Vladimir Putin, but no one earnestly believes Big Bad Vlad was deciding whether Chelsea needed a new No 9. Remember Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani and his £5 billion bid to buy Manchester United? From the little we knew,
Jassim was chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank, a publicly traded bank, son of a former Qatari prime minister and is the brother of the current Emir.
Jassim’s representatives always denied he was the soft face of a Qatari state bid, but human rights organisation FairSquare wrote to Uefa and the Premier League that “a basic study of Qatar’s political and economic system amply demonstrates the impossibility of any Qatari consortium proving itself independent of state influence”. Jassim’s bid included a bank guarantee signed by the chief executive of Qatar National Bank, half-owned by the Qatari government via its sovereign wealth fund.
So, should Jassim have not been allowed to own the club of which he appeared to be a legitimate, longstanding fan because of an ultimately unprovable connection to a government in which he holds no role?
The Premier League would have had sweet, sweet plausible deniability, and it is difficult to imagine a defensible set of regulations that would have blocked his takeover, short of an effective ban on anyone from most Gulf states owning football clubs. Anyway, luckily United swerved Jassim and got – checks notes – Sir Jim “I’m so worried about Britain that here are some verbal grenades from Monaco” Ratcliffe.
But perhaps the fundamental question today is: once you’ve invited the tiger for tea, once you’ve let it eat all your food and drink the taps dry, how do you ask it to Foxtrot Oscar back from where it came? This, in theory, is where the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) comes in.
This week, IFR chair David Kogan said it has “powers to assess the suitability of owners, directors and executives and we will use these powers where appropriate, in the interests of protecting the sustainability, honesty and integrity of English football where there is clear evidence of wrongdoing by individuals”. Of course, it is yet to demonstrate those powers, to clarify what assessing suitability actually entails, to prove it doesn’t matter that the prime minister would be “really concerned” to lose ADUG from Manchester.
Even if the IFR can expel Mansour and Al Mubarak, so long as the PIF owns Newcastle, banning state actors from the Premier League would be somewhere between incoherently hypocritical and logistically impossible, coupled with the complication of Qatar still owning Paris Saint-Germain. Of course, various human rights-based justifications exist for the IFR to strip Newcastle from the PIF and Saudi Arabia, but the vast majority of these also existed in 2021 when the takeover occurred.
And as with the UAE, stripping Newcastle from the PIF would trigger a major diplomatic incident with a British ally – we’re just over a decade on from government buildings across London flying flags at half-mast after King Abdullah’s death. English football, and particularly the Premier League, is really just reflecting the nation around it.
None of this is to say that nothing should change, that the Premier League’s ownership rules do not require fundamental reform, but this is a problem far beyond football, the problem that money – from state actors or your dime-adozen billionaire – buys impunity and silence and permission, that accountability is for the little people.
So, you think nation states shouldn’t be able to own football clubs. An admirable cause. Though I doubt it will matter in the end.
Commenti
Posta un commento