Gary Neville takes aim at Premier League "bullies" over move that could impact Liverpool
Gary Neville has taken a swipe at the Premier League, accusing it of acting like a bully in the face of a potential independent football regulator. The Football Governance Bill, which includes the establishment of an independent regulator, was introduced by the Conservative government in March and Labour is pushing ahead with it.
The call for an independent regulator in English football gained momentum after the Super League debacle. The government has stated that it will "protect football clubs" by "ensuring their financial sustainability".
If passed through parliament, the bill will grant a regulator backstop powers to intervene in soccer when necessary. Neville is a vocal supporter of an independent regulator and believes its introduction would safeguard the interests of English football fans throughout the pyramid, reports the Liverpool ECHO.
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The Premier League has been reluctant to see an independent regulator introduced but the organisation's CEO Richard Masters has warned it would be a "risk" for it to be formed. Labour has dismissed rumors that English teams such as Liverpool and Neville's former club Manchester United could be excluded from European tournaments with the advent of a new regulator, despite UEFA's policy against state interference in football governance, emphasizing its independence.
Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville has sharply criticised the Premier League for their reluctance towards an independent regulator, expressing his views during a Labour event on Monday. He exclaimed: "We have a Premier League that's entitled, they feel entitled. I'm not going to use the word greedy, but I just have."
He continued with a potent metaphor: "They are selfish and I can't understand that way of thinking. It's almost like they're the big brother that sit there and distribute scraps of food to the little brothers round the table."
Neville didn't mince words about the league's attitude, saying: "It's not what you do when you're in a family. Their mindset is such of a bully. Their mindset is such that they think they can influence the regulator once the regulator's introduced and they can get a better deal potentially the other side of the regulator. And what they're applying is their soft power and their influence to try and create scare stories and scaremongering, like we had a couple of weeks ago."
Meanwhile, speaking at the same Labour gathering, Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, dismissed the notion that English clubs could be barred from European contests as "ridiculous", condemning it as "really disrespectful to fans because it caused a lot of alarm which was really unnecessary".
Moreover, Nandy assured that any government action wouldn't be overbearing, highlighting a focus to tackle the issue of instability in certain levels of the football pyramid.
The Premier League has robustly defended itself against Neville's claims of acting like a "bully", emphasizing their ongoing dialogue with the new government concerning the football regulator. They've put forward the idea that "light-touch, targeted and proportionate legislation can be made to work", echoing CEO Masters' comments from the end of the last season.
Premier League CEO Masters shared his apprehensions: "My overriding concern is that the bill will reduce our competitiveness and weaken the incredible appeal of the English game. Our competition is the most watched and commercially successful football league in the world. Thanks to that success, Premier League clubs are able to give away £1.6 billion every three years 16 per cent of our total revenues — to the wider game, helping to make it the envy of the world."
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He cautioned: "It is a risk that regulation will undermine the Premier League's global success, thereby wounding the goose that provides English football's golden egg."
Masters also pointed out the risks involved in regulating an industry that is a global leader, particularly when its international rivals aren't subject to similar constraints. "Those competitors are relishing the prospect of the Premier League being uniquely constrained," he said. "Empires rise and fall and while I am confident about the League's immediate future, it would be a mistake to be complacent about our place as the world's most popular league.
"It is a risk to introduce uncertainty and red tape into an industry that relies heavily on a relatively small pool of investors, who often see club ownership as a passion project as well as a business. While the sport is buoyant today, it would be so easy to misstep and drive our world-leading investment elsewhere. Already, before it has even arrived, the promise of regulatory intervention in football finances has changed incentives for a new voluntary arrangement to be struck.
"We have spent the last year in discussions with the EFL about an even more generous financial settlement. But these talks have only served to highlight how destabilising intervention could be. The government claims its regulator will not interfere on the pitch, but by intervening in the carefully calibrated distribution of revenues and upsetting competitive balance, it is already doing exactly that."