Captain Marvel deserts the glory game

ONE night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble, insisted Murray Head in 1984, around the time Bryan Robson was spanking Diego Maradona’s Barcelona 3-0 at Old Trafford.

In fairness to Head, perhaps he has had few dealings with real hard men like Captain Marvel. And maybe he spent little time in the backroom of the Thai capital’s Manchester United bar either.

Nevertheless, after Channel 4’s How To Buy A Football Club exposé last Monday, Head’s is a theory discredited. There were no humble men in Bangkok on any of the nights the Dispatches hidden camera popped in. There was only big talk and loose plans to divide up English football’s clubs between Asian business consortia.

The C4 boys posed as reps for Indian investors looking to climb onto a low-hanging branch of the football money tree. They met a bunch of fund managers and Joe Sim — a well-connected Thai fixer who seemed unhealthily infatuated with Alex Ferguson.

Somewhere in the middle of it was Robbo — an “advisor” — perhaps not as central as in his playing days, but still capable of getting on the end of a good build-up.

“If you build a club up from nothing and say it was worth 3,000,000 when you bought it and now you can sell it for a 150,000,000, that’s great business by you.”

The camera was offered an a la carte menu. “Cardiff City won’t come cheap,” warned Robbo, but Leeds, Leicester, Oxford and five more all came with chips.

In the end, Sheffield United was dish of the day. Sim would do the deal, his “friend” Alex would loan them enough players to secure promotion, Robbo would “manage the manager”. The return would be quicker than Mitch Ward in his heyday. “I think we can get out by two to three years.”

For smoothing the Blades, Sim would take 5%. “We need a PR company because the fan is also a headache. We have to do PR for them to accept the new owners and so on.”

Naturally, as is the fine tradition with these things, the C4 lads made their excuses and left before a deal could be sealed. Afterwards, Fergie was quick to distance himself. Need any of it have concerned us? They wanted us to be shocked when Robbo lowered his glass to preach his new testament: “I disagree when people say football is a sport. Football lost all its sporting thing when the money started going up and Sky TV and that.”

It was sad to hear alright, from as committed a footballer as we have known. But still, so far no alarms and no surprises. Through the ages; rich, shadowy men making a buck has become as much a part of the game as offside.

It was when the Dispatches crew asked to buy two clubs that you saw the real possibility for damage. No problemo, said the money men. But there would have to be “sub-funds”, “special purpose vehicles”, “people to front the clubs”.

Robbo, like the old days, was more direct: “It’s how you name it, because you’re only allowed to own one club.” The conflicts of interest are clear.

“Obviously we need to keep this anonymous and we need to stay as much under the radar as we can,” said money man.

“We have to get two people to be the owners that are fit and proper,” mused Sim, not unduly concerned by the Football League’s ideas of properness.

League chairman Greg Clarke pointed out that it was impossible to know who really owned the clubs in his jurisdiction. “It’s very difficult to get to the bottom of economic linkages between organisations. Who are the owners of the owners of the owners?”

And then you realised that it’s not just football fans that should be unduly worried about this caper. It’s the money men themselves. Haven’t we been here before in a boom a little wider than football’s? Where nobody truly knows who owes what to whom.

Some day soon, when money men are passing articles of association round a boardroom table like Panini stickers — I’ve got both Sheffields, swap you for Leicester — somebody will unwrap a rolled-up investment and find something toxic inside. And I don’t mean Joey Barton.

We saw in Italy that money disappears quickly enough when a game loses its credibility. When the money goes, it will still be hard enough to kill a football club that doesn’t want to die. The fan will see to that. Look at Wimbledon, Cork, Rovers. It’s the money men, however, that will have the headache.