Football reform must seek to return the game to its rightful holders – the fans

I cautiously welcome the government’s white paper on football reforms as a small step in the right direction. Football is important to so many people, and it is vital that we preserve and strengthen the link between clubs and their communities.

For just over a century, governments have let football go its own way in terms of governance, making its own rules and laws, and it has, to a great extent, worked. In the UK, the home of football, clubs have played a key role in towns and cities throughout the country, developing young people’s skills, community pride and exciting competition. Great players have emerged, become folk heroes and earned a fair but modest wage in the process. Many forget that a maximum wage cap was in place up until 1961, which meant the likes of Stanley Matthews were limited to a take home pay of £20 per week (around £900 in today’s money).

But ever since the wage cap was abolished, money has flooded into the game via big business, turning the beautiful game into an investment opportunity for oligarchs and corporations, with a few rapacious agents acting as the middle men overseeing these spiralling costs. The division of wealth between the clubs at the top and the bottom of the leagues and between the leagues themselves has widened dramatically, to the point where the much-vaunted ‘football pyramid’ system is in dire need of repair.

The Council of Europe has had concerns about this for some years now, and last year, I produced the third report for its Parliamentary Assembly on reform of football governance. We came to the conclusion that governments, at both national and international level, need to intervene on a wide range of issues, in order to effectively protect players and ensure fans regain their position as the primary stakeholders in football.

Our report recommended curbing certain dangerous excesses in the game, beginning with the transfer system, where a limit on agents’ fees would help regulate club spending. FIFA agrees with this proposal, but a few powerful, billionaire agents continue to successfully lobby against any regulation.

We also recommended that fans and players should be given a greater role in football governance at all levels. There could be no football without the players, but supporters in stadiums make the game; matches played in empty stadiums during the pandemic reinforced this point.

Furthermore, there needs to be a new agreement to ensure that wealth generated by the game reaches the fan base. Our report proposed that this could take the form of a ‘solidarity fund’, which would use a small percentage of the vast and growing TV revenues to finance projects developed by fans.

The report also highlighted the need for continued and improved investment in protection of underage players and increasing gender equality, and some of this responsibility, undoubtedly, lies with national governments.

The UK government has been one of the first to take action, publishing a white paper, which follows up on Tracy Crouch’s report by proposing a regulator. This is a welcome move but is still a long way from comprehensive action, and I fear the vested interests in football will try to stop even this small improvement. Fans must unite to back it and call for even greater governance over their clubs. Otherwise, more of the smaller clubs will die with a disastrous effect on local communities.

The white paper’s proposals will encourage the global arbiters of the game to act more responsibly, but we need to go further. The ownership of clubs in the Premier League needs proper scrutiny, and players’ spiralling wages need to be controlled. If the home of free enterprise, the USA, can agree a ceiling on the wages of players in its national sport, why can’t the UK? Agents also require greater regulation, and we need to boost the role of players’ unions in protecting their interests.

I am glad to see the white paper recognises the threat that something like the European Super League would pose to the English football pyramid and has proposed giving the regulator powers to prevent English clubs from competing in non-competitive ‘break away’ leagues and tournaments. We now need the Scottish government to come up with a similar plan for Scottish football.

I am proud to be one of 8,000+ owners of Heart of Midlothian, the largest fan-owned club in the UK, but we need others to follow quickly to put football in the hands of the people. The UK government proposal has got the ball rolling, and it is now vital that we, the fans, ensure it gathers enough momentum to return the beautiful game to its rightful holders – the supporters.