A simple game with complicated ownership

...particularly the paragraph saying:

"This structure is complicated, and features both offshore entities and discretionary trusts.  Together with the initial hesitation of the club’s ultimate owners to identify themselves, this made for a lengthy and at times difficult process."

We'll pass over whether Fit and Proper should not include full and unequivocal co-operation with the League, and well instead on whether ontop of fit and proper owners and fit and proper business plans, we need to add fit and proper structures.

The only argument often made is that such complicated structures are either 'necessary' or a simple facet of modern corporate life. Football would do well to remember that such opaque structures of investment trusts, special purpose vehicles and anonymous owners lay at the heart of the inability to identify and manage risk in the financial world, and is asmuch as they are a feature of that world, they are generally reckoned to have been an unhelpful one. And necessity? When something so complicated is necessary, you have to start questioning whether the benefits outweight the costs.

Football, it's often said, is a simple game, and it's difficult to see why on earth ownership structures should or need be complicated. Clubs, being community assets, should be owned simply and transparently, with the people making the decisions and the people providing the money known to all, with clear relationships and lines of control. Or are we missing something?

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