Q&A: Infantino, Gambling, England’s DNA and more | The Football Boardroom

0:04Well, CP, we have finally got round to diving into our mailbag. And before we get going on the amazing amount of letters and emails and comments that we've been getting on the episodes so far, talking of mailbags, talking of the owner of the Royal Mail, Daniel Kratinsky, on the back of a lot of your comments on the podcast, the emergency podcast we did on the West Ham situation. We've since discovered or learnt that he has sold 2 % of his shares to a friend of his from the Czech Republic. So is it checkmate?

0:47Henry:it's definitely a checkmate who he sold his shares to and it's a very interesting legal technical maneuver and i suspect we're going to see a bit of legal stalemate h and um this one could run and run and we'll keep our audience across it but just very quickly on that why is it a stalemate because he then can go and get 25 percent of or 25.1 percent of the gold family's shares without actually becoming a majority shareholder if i is that that is more or less the seeming objective yeah to um as we explained on our pod and please take a listen we recorded it 48 hours ago we alerted our audience to an interesting technical issue which is that um if daniel kratinsky owns 50 or more of west ham he would be obliged to buy the whole of the club for a huge valuation.

1:42Henry:Most importantly, having to buy out David Sullivan, the largest shareholder, with 38%, at a massive increase to the price Krotinsky paid when he first invested five years ago. And so the suggestion is that in the last 24 hours, he's reduced his current shareholding from 27 to 24 and a half, which means he could buy 25.1 and stay below 50 and not have to buy the rest at a huge value and all I will say on that is these these technical manoeuvres in takeovers all of them are heavily scrutinized all of them have legal technical ramifications and I suspect that the club and the other interested parties here will be pouring over that manoeuvre trying to figure out whether it can happen or not and as I say that often produces a bit of stalemate In this case, stalemate in the boardroom, but hopefully progress on the pitch.

2:39So final thing on that, stalemate or battle lines drawn between Kratinsky and Amanda Stavely?

2:47Henry:It would seem battle lines drawn. So more to come on Kratinsky and West Ham. But let's get stuck into the mailbag because we're thrilled that you've sent so many comments. Honestly, the volume of them has been remarkable. there's been a tsunami of comments particularly towards you uh well yes i think um very favorable actually rather annoyingly well we'll cut that for a start um no i think it's quite interesting that we have planned uh almost every week for about four months to do um to respond to this huge pile of incoming questions we get at last we can get to these questions and um right let's do it I think the first one I will go with so first up from Dan Potter and it's a great question and topical given the uh the recent news out of Manchester United particularly yesterday and this is from Dan Dan writes the gambling front of shirt ban has landed in the Premier League and judging by the numbers it's had an effect but has it actually reduced gambling exposure or just repriced it well I think this is a very interesting point what uh Dan's referring to here is this season Premier League clubs were no longer allowed to have betting brands on the front of shirt and this led to a lot of commentary that there would be a kind of sponsorship bloodbath for loads of Premier League teams who would find themselves scrambling around unable to find alternative brands non-betting brands to go on the front of shirt.

4:24Henry:I always thought this was a very misconceived policy from political pressure from politicians for two reasons really. The first is there was significant inconsistency in this policy. Whilst Premier League clubs were not allowed to have betting brands on the front of their shirts, the rest of professional football in Britain is. And secondly, and more importantly within the Premier League context age, Premier League clubs are allowed to have a betting brand on their sleeve or on their training kit. And talk about the law of unintended consequences. I think it isn't exactly complicated to figure out that betting brands have therefore shown a willingness to pay more money to be on sleeves, more money to be on training kit.

5:15Henry:And this has been exemplified by the fact that two of the big six, the clubs with huge global audiences, huge global fan bases, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. And let me say, big six clubs have really only dabbled in the betting market for many, many, many years because they didn't need to, because they had non-betting brands queuing up to get on their shirt and get on their other visible assets. Well, guess what? Tottenham Hotspur and Man United now have betting brands on their training kit, paying huge amounts of money, much more than other brands are paying to be on the front of shirt for non-Big Six clubs.

5:56Henry:So for me, a really misguided policy, inconsistent and therefore could not be described as being sort of a point of principle, but with significant unintended consequences. Really good question, Dan. And CP, if I can just add on the back of that, why do you think that from this political pressure, they basically allowed the EFL clubs, the 72 EFL clubs to continue? Is it because some of them are really close to the brink and they need that cash? Yeah, this was all going on in parallel to really the whole issue of EFL funding, post-COVID, post-ESL, in the lead up to the imposition of an independent regulator on the game.

6:46Henry:EFL finances were under the microscope of politicians. And so in a classic Westminster way, we see what I think is probably a compromise where they wanted on the one hand to make a statement on not promoting gambling to football fans and landed on the front of shirt of Premier League clubs being a real statement about that political point of view. But the compromises on other assets within the Premier League and ultimately deciding that the EFL, it would be so damaging to the finances of EFL clubs if they removed their ability to advertise on their shirt, seems to have ended up in this really messy situation where I can't see a consistent political conviction.

7:36Henry:advertising to football fans gambling is wrong and I can see that in fact the biggest club in this country Manchester United with huge audiences domestically and globally now has gambling on its training kit because training kit has been made so valuable and betting brands unable to get on the front of shirt have been attracted to Manchester United's training kit as an alternative and as I say, the visibility of that is much greater than what's been lost on front of shirts. A really disastrous policy in my opinion. Darren Palmer, a Bristol City fan. Oh, good. And this is a nice heated topical subject.

8:18Henry:How easy, H, is it to force Infantino out? Do you think UEFA are determined to do so come what may? How do they do it and who might be next? Wow. Well, first, Bristol City. Great club to go to. Love Ashton Gate. So, yeah, good luck to Bristol City for the new season. But definitely the opposite for Gianni Infantino. I think he's an embarrassment on football, on the great global game, on the back of what was a good World Cup. And I'll tell you what, if you were going to look at Infantino and you're a referee and you say, well, he's already on a yellow. Where am I going to give him the red card to finally banishing from this great game for good?

8:56Where would the totting up begin? Would you begin a year ago? with Lionel Messi and Inter Miami being parachuted into the Club World Cup. Definitely worth a yellow card. Second yellow. Second yellow. I've got about six or seven yellow cards, which should result in his expulsion. It's like my speed cameras, mate. But very, very quickly, just going through them, Cristiano Ronaldo taking away the two games so that he could start at the World Cup because you want the big stars there, of course. But, you know, where's the consistency on a disciplinary front and that FIFA Peace Prize? Nobel Peace Prize, don't give out Ballon d 'Ors.

9:32So why should, you know, FIFA should not be involved anywhere near dishing out peace prizes for Donald Trump, whether he deserves it or not. Stay in your lane, Gianni. And then we go into the the Balogun revoking of his suspension. We go into the hydration breaks. And then this horrendous plan broken to broken by my old colleague, Martin Ziegler, a brilliant journalist at The Times. that succession he should go and just coming back to to the point from our um our bristol city fan is that it has to be the fifa council i get uefa can put pressure on him they can throw around threats the football association the brilliant welsh uh football association with laura mccallister who's spoken so powerfully on this against infantino really it has to come down to the fifa council and they need 19 votes to trigger an emergency meeting and to effectively force him to resign so you need absolutely need that but it has to come from within from his former allies who increasingly speaking out against him because remember final thing on this 966 people work at fifa why should they be embarrassed by the act their leader the folly of their leader time to

10:51Henry:move on infantino go yeah well if it was um my old world corporate corporate britain if it was the political world of westminster there would be what they used to call the men in gray suits they would they would knock on his door and say look in the interests of all parties here gianni it's time to go and we can do this nicely or less nicely but probably best it comes from you and have somebody ready to go I'd like to believe that the world of football can't be that different to the rest of the world of power and politics that we love to talk about so let's cross our fingers I think I said on the day that this will quickly move from a terrible plan that's dead to how do we get Infantino out?

11:42Henry:I cannot see him surviving. Yeah, I mean, whether they're men in grey suits in Rabat, Morocco today, because Infantino has called an emergency meeting of FIFA executives, I think the most logical thing to do is for the FIFA Council to take charge and to put the Secretary General, Matthias Gravström, a very well-regarded, quite low-key Swede, completely different personality, completely different ego to Infantino. Just put him in charge, almost football club style, as a caretaker. And then run the elections next spring. Yeah, absolutely. And then you look at whether it's a Sheikh Salman from the AFC, whether it's an Al-Khalife from UEFA, although he's a PSG chairman.

12:26He doesn't, not the briefings, but the mood around him is maybe not him. Or Montagliani from CONCACAF. So many questions still for FIFA to answer. Another question for you, CP. This is from Tom Peake in Beckenham, south-east London. Yeah, Crystal Palace country, I would have thought. Given that Chelsea got away with fines and not points deductions for paying agents to push players their way, is there a danger that will set a precedent for Manchester City if they are found guilty of any of the 115 charges that City deny? Good question, Tom.

13:04Henry:I think that it's possible, certainly City's lawyers will be crawling over those two Chelsea verdicts to remind our audience. There was both a Premier League and an FA separate set of sanctions for those historic breaches of regulation that the current Chelsea owners self-reported. If you remember, these took place under the prior ownership many years ago. My feeling is, and this is probably rather technical, precedent is the key word. And there is precedent in the Premier League for clubs that have breached FFP rules to get points deductions. And buried in the 115 charges are definitely alleged FFP breaches.

13:59Henry:So I think that precedent probably would carry through. And these Chelsea offences were very different to those allegations against Manchester City. So, yes, I think they'll have a look at it. But I can certainly see an argument why they're not the relevant precedent for the City case. I get many messages from Everton fans on social media. And obviously it is different. To an extent, it's different jurisdictions. It's different offences. We acknowledge, everyone acknowledges that Chelsea self-reported the alleged offences of a former regime. But why do you have sympathy with Everton fans for them getting points deductions, which could have been calamitous, and Chelsea getting a fine?

14:48I understand it is very different, and Everton fans will acknowledge that. But fines mean nothing, really.

14:55Henry:Listen, if any of our audience want to go back and listen to the show we did in the wake of the Premier League verdict on these Chelsea offences, we could not have been clearer. and I think I double down on this in the wake of the FA, more or less falling in line with the Premier League and going for fines, not sporting sanctions. There is no football fan, commentator, pundit in the world who could possibly argue that those offences did not confer sporting advantage. And so if you believe that punishments should fit crimes, then you would have thought sporting penalties would have been more appropriate.

15:37Henry:I prefer to say that on any measure whatsoever, those penalties are very, very lenient. And I have every sympathy with fans of Everton or Nottingham Forest or even Leicester, who've been sucking up points deductions and looking at the charge sheet against Chelsea and wondering why they didn't. Me to you. OK, well, on the subject of Chelsea, this is from a Chelsea fan, Stephen Gould to UH. The phrase culture eats strategy for breakfast is well worn in the court. That's one of your Harvard lines. I've never heard of it. I'm sorry to say that. But Chelsea's mid-course correction, that definitely is one of my phrases on recruitment.

16:23Henry:Chelsea's mid-course correction on recruitment is a clear admission that the club strategy has been wrong for some time. would Chelsea be better served fixing the culture first and can you do one without the other wow good luck with that mate well first mid-course correction you quite rightly are very proud of that I spent half an hour thinking whether mid-course should be hyphenated whether it's adjectival or not and came to the conclusion that you were right and you've been subsequently proved even more right because Chelsea actually have had a mid-course correction so they were buying a lot of youngsters, putting them on long deals, and then looking to sell them on.

17:04Whereas now, I mean, it's not quite the antiques roadshow, but they've got some, should we say, mature, experienced, good characters coming into the building. And this comes to the heart of the question. Danny Welbeck, fantastic season for Brighton Hove Albion, good goal scorer, very good backup to Gio Pedro, better than Liam Dillard, better than the others they've got, other strikers they've got there. So I understand that. Jordan Henderson, I think, is there a little bit like where Thomas Tuchel took him with England. Is this a fix the culture signing? It's a culture. And one thing about Jordan Henderson is that watching England train at the World Cup in Kansas City during the summer, you would hear the coaches trigger the acceleration of intensity in a training session, and they would do it through Jordan Henderson.

17:52They would go, right, we step it up now. Jordan would start shouting or, you know, just getting everyone going. so I absolutely understand that and you could argue this is a this is a broader question we come back to culture eating was it culture eating strategy on toast for breakfast yeah

18:08Henry:very nice I think they're I think they're completely interlinked I'm not quite sure I agree but but just on the culture front Chelsea have had a problem with leadership whether it's in the boardroom or the dressing room and you could argue certainly in the dressing room since Tiago Silva left you didn't have a sort of like mid-30 something someone to organize some of those kids to help the kids across a busy road Thiago Silva was absolutely brilliant at that and I think well Beck Let's go back further than that in my time at the club when you go Petr Cech John Terry you know Didier Drogba Frank Lampard all leaders you know the ultimate spine and prolific trophies under with a team with that spine and that has definitely been lost and I think you're absolutely right I think that when we talked on this show four months ago about the need for a mid-course correction, we were driving towards balance in a team, balancing experience with use, balancing leadership with prodigious up-and-coming talent.

19:09Henry:And yes, the other element of mid-course correction that we referred to was this whole issue of allowing more or less sporting directors to run football and not having a grown-up manager. and I think everybody can see that they now have a real grown-up in Alonso. Proven track record, title-winning manager in Germany, carrying the title manager, which you always go on about. You love that interesting distinction between being called the manager and being called the head coach. But don't you think it's significant? Yeah, I do. Arteta's a manager, Emery's a manager. I think you've nailed it and Zabby's trying to slightly, you know, throw out the kind of inclusive language but we all know in his interview, he said unless i'm the manager i ain't coming so fair play to fair play to the owners okay um mid course strategy correction is a private equity term they've definitely done that and i expect them to go quite well this season mid course strategy correction i thought that was a cp copyright well no it's just it's that what people in your world just talk i don't know it's just what business people say isn't it i thought it was something you did on your yacht when you were going around the Adriatic.

20:22Right, mid-course.

20:24Henry:I haven't got a yacht, by the way. Shut up. That sort of stuff, people believe it. I've got a canoe. So it's me now. CP from Charlie Webster in Beautiful Lim. Now that the Premier League have unanimously voted to increase the amount of TV money they share with the EFL, good question, it's an important question, do you think this will be agreed and finally put to bed soon? If the EFL says no, what will the IFR, the independent football regulator do, can they force the Premier League to increase their offer? And will they even try? You have five minutes, not five hours on this. What a question. Important question.

21:04Henry:OK. 20-second explainer. Last week, it was announced that Premier League clubs have unanimously voted a new deal, an increase to the amount of money that they distribute to the EFL. The details of that deal were leaked by a very well-known corporate journalist called Mark Kleinman. And given that those details were very like the last deal I saw when I was still in the Premier League, approximately on average over 10 years, an extra 150 million quid a year. The key thing is the Premier League have taken a very, very long time, but have got there with unanimity amongst their membership to the idea of sharing more of their TV money with the EFL.

21:56Henry:But as this question implies, there's been deafening silence on the EFL reaction to that. And my sense, speaking to my network, is that the EFL do not think it's enough money. The position of the IFR is very unclear, but as our questioner implies, they do have the ability in extremis to say to both parties, we expect you to reach an agreement. Now, for that to happen technically, it is a bit convoluted. We're in the realms here of the bill, the law. This is what the football regulation bill actually says under the so-called backstop powers. essentially the EFL would have to make a counterproposal.

22:43Henry:And then the independent regulator can look at those two proposals and pick one or the other. That's how this goes if, shall we say, the EFL don't roll over and say yes in the short term. And I get no sense that they're going to do so. and it's extremely unclear whether the IFR have got the appetite to, as it were, invoke their backstop. What are they there for if they're not there to force things like this through when there's an impasse in football, which we've had for, how long has the new deal been around? Three years? Four and a half, yeah. Four and a half? Ridiculous. Yeah, it's gone on a very, very long time.

23:27Henry:Look, let's put it this way, OK, for our audience's benefit. I think unanimity in the Premier League ownership group of the need to increase their payments, DFL, is a hell of a result. OK, I can tell you, and you've regularly said so on this show, H, that there are plenty of Premier League owners who have a major problem with giving their money, as they see it, to potential future competitors, rich owners in the Championship who might be Premier League clubs next year and competing directly with them. So fair play to the Premier League, to Richard Marston and his team, for getting that unanimity.

24:02Henry:Now over to, I would say, over to the IFR to persuade the EFL to be reasonable here. It has taken nearly four years, over four years to get the Premier League on side. You know, let's not have another four years waiting and let's not descend into a very, very convoluted technical legal process if we can just get in a room and get a deal done. And I really hope we do. I do think we should finish by pointing out that these are not enormous sums of money in the context of the Premier League. We're dealing here, I think, more with a point of principle than we are with really substantial economic changes.

24:47Henry:By which I mean the point of principle is that our two top divisions are interconnected in sporting terms with the free movement of promotion and relegation. And the economic arrangements should be updated to reflect very significant increases, particularly in Premier League money in recent times. But nobody could sit here and pretend that, you know, 150 million quid is a huge amount of money per year in Premier League terms. And I think what Rick Parry and Trevor Birch would say is that 150 million quid a year split between 72 EFL teams doesn't add up to a transformational amount of money for any of those football clubs.

25:28Henry:That is the nub of the argument. And that argument, I think, has got more to run. OK, next up. Harry Wells asks, is Vinicius Junior a risk for Arsenal? Is this deal even real? further what does it tell us about how transfer business is actually done do clubs deliberately misdirect others uh well not necessarily in this case but uh clubs do uh this direct others i mean you see them being linked with one player when they're going for someone else i mean that's classic sort of decoy uh i think in this case i mean from the word go i thought this is about the contract dance between Vinicius Junior and Real Madrid.

26:14So did I. Because he's a player at his peak. Two Champions League, three La Liga titles. Does he necessarily want to leave the biggest club in the world? OK, Arsenal, attractive proposition at the moment. Champions, absolutely. They're going places. But Jose Mourinho came out in a very well-sourced piece by Sam Wallace in the Sunday Telegraph saying that he wanted Vinicius Junior to say. I can't imagine Florentino Perez would want to lose a Galactico of Vinicius. I understand all the technical, tactical things Mbappe likes playing off the left and issues like that. I personally can't see it necessarily happening, but stranger things have happened.

26:55I can see why Arsenal would absolutely love him because they have a hole on the left. Trossard has gone nowhere near Vinicius' standard. Martinelli hasn't trained on enough, nowhere near Vinicius' junior's standard. If he did go, there would be an inflationary impact on wages. You've been in boardrooms, you know what happens when big names come in and how others react. And also, he doesn't really track back the intensity of the Premier League. I mean, Arteta will get him working on that. But personally, I think it'd be fantastic for the Premier League and obviously for Arsenal if he came. I just can't see it.

27:30Henry:Yeah, well, I think the deliberately misdirect point is interesting because it cuts two ways. I, like you, suspected this was more about Vinicius negotiating a new deal at Real. But I also think, and I can think of no names, no pack drill clubs over many years in the Premier League who quite like to be linked with mega signings to look like they're busy, to look like they're ambitious, to look like they're taking it seriously. And yeah, I don't think it hurts Arsenal to be linked with a player of that magnitude. But I'm pretty suspicious it won't happen. Right. Let us move on. Matthew Carter, thank you for your email.

28:05CP, definitely one for you. Unai Emery feels like more than a head coach given what he's achieved at Villa. Rather than simply asking how much Villa should pay him, I wondered, this is Matthew Carter, I wondered how clubs can make someone like Unai feel like a genuine long-term partner in the project. For example, could the club's owners realistically offer him something like a gradual ownership stake or some form of equity-style upside linked to the growth of Villa? Is that even realistic for a manager in football?

28:35Henry:Matthew, I think it's a really, really imaginative and clever question. I must say, in all my time in the game, I was never asked by a manager, a prospective manager or his representative, whether equity in the club was on the table. footballers and football managers and football agents okay have a very like a laser-like focused on getting paid and getting paid off the top by which I mean you know getting paid big salaries big bonuses out of revenue and perhaps prioritizing that over the longer term less certain outcomes associated with being paid in a form of shares. So I suspect in smaller clubs, there might be some of that going on.