The past few years have seen an influx of investors from the Far East, India, and the Middle East looking to break into the English game. Worries about diluting the purity of the English game have become the issue du jour.
These sentiments are not restricted to England. Italy has struggled with the introduction of “others” into Italian society. France’s inverse love affair with African and Arab populations is well documented. This same narrative can be found in immigration debates in the United States where conservatives continuously harp on about our immigrant nation losing itself through, well, immigration.
It is in this environment that Blackburn’s latest suitor attempts to enter the English Premier League. Indian businessman Ahsan Ali Syed is well into the due diligence process to snap up Blackburn Rovers for a reported £300m. His goal over fifteen years is to make Blackburn fashionable, debt-free, and winners once again. Admirable enough.
But it’s hard not to see the writing on the wall. The issue won’t be the money considering he’s worth £8b. The issue will be what happens when English club ownership becomes as saturated with foreign owners as the clubs are with foreign players. Already we have a narrative and consistent pouting about foreigners taking over the game on the pitch. What happens when a Chinese-owned Liverpool, a Middle Eastern-run Manchester City and Blackburn, and an American-owned Manchester United and Aston Villa are the norm? It’s easy to imagine where all this could be heading in a country that already cyclically yearns for an English manager shortly after schizophrenically concluding that foreign expertise is required. Hire English. Complain at results. Hire foreign. Complain at results. Repeat.
But the themes invoked when foreign managers don’t make the grade are clear. Rarely can it ever just be personal or tactical, particularly for high profile positions. Culture is always implicated. At some point, the debate over the place of foreigners in domestic games will hit a fever pitch, and the debate will mirror the same debates that take place all over the world when developed nations begin to feel threatened by outsiders. The writing is already on the wall.
From what we hear, Syed’s aspirations for Blackburn are admirable:
The first step is to maintain Premier League status, enhance the capabilities of the academy, see if there lies potential to increase the seating of the stadium, help Big Sam [Allardyce] with the transfer budget and to market the club rightly in other parts of the world, specifically in India, the Far East and Middle East. (via The Guardian)
But even as the Syeds of the world attempt to do many of the same things that most clubs are or will be aspiring to do, tolerance will wane, particularly if they aren’t successful. As clubs shift their focus to foreign markets, foreign owners especially are prone to claims of bastardizing the fabric of clubs. It hasn’t happened yet with newly-rich Manchester City, but anti-American sentiments are everywhere around neighbors Manchester United where business practices rather than nationality should be the focus of scorn.
Foreign owners are ready-made scapegoats. While many local fans still view their teams as local clubs, the reality is that local clubs are now global businesses, which is a trend that will only accelerate without the introduction of restrictive rules and regulations. Success will be tolerable. But failure will be met with varied levels of xenophobia that have become all too familiar ever since foreign players started coming into the English game in noticeable numbers.
The ironic part of all this is our selective intolerance. For instance, we’ve grown accustomed to the fact that almost everything we consume now comes from China. Although some are admitedly up in arms, most people have just continued consumming, caring more about affordability than the origin of their goods. But when it comes to soccer clubs, where failure is more common than success, foreign participation will be harder to accept, perhaps simply because soccer owners are more visible than owners of industry, making them easier targets. And foreignness is an easy thing to target when things don’t go according to plan.
It will be interesting to keep an eye on these trends in top leagues, and particualrly in England. As we’ve seen across the developed world, societies have a hard time coming to terms with globalization. The byproduct of national existence is that nationalistic rhetoric becomes the easy retort to problems that are much more complex than nationality. Being English doesn’t inherently make one any more proficient at playing or coaching or owning. The right approach is much more valuable asset than the right passport. But you wouldn’t get that sense if the last few weeks or even years are anything to go by. For many people, Englishness seems to be disproportionately elevated above other vital skill sets regardless of how many Englishmen have failed in the past.
We’re only at the beginning of the discussion about foreign influence in domestic leagues. This is the 21st century Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and this time, Sidney Portier isn’t the dinner guest. This time the man coming to dinner is an Asian businessman coming to marry your soccer team. But if the intentions are right, could these new guests really be any worse than some of the owners that have blessed the game in the past?
