DEPLORABLE
MPs deliver damning verdict on ‘gilded’ leading clubs over their response to the Covid-19 crisis
PREMIER LEAGUE clubs are branded “deplorable” in a damning new report for furloughing staff during lockdown while continuing to pay millionaire players.
In a grim portrait of football’s financial health, and its ability to survive the coronavirus pandemic, MPs warn “many more clubs will follow Bury” and go out of existence because the game’s business model is “not sustainable”.
And the influential Digital, Culture, Media and Sport parliamentary committee, chaired by Tory MP Julian Knight, is scathing about the lack of black people in boardrooms, and registers its “dismay” over the slow progress in tackling homophobia.
The DCMS cross-party report into the effects of Covid-19 says football needs to “reset” its moral compass and address the “culture of unfair pay” which blights the game.
But Knight’s panel reserves strong criticism for gilded clubs who used the shutdown to invoke the Government’s Coronavirus Job
Retention Scheme. Liverpool eventually led the U-turn, a step also taken by clubs including Tottenham, with Reds chief executive Peter Moore saying “we came to the wrong conclusion”.
However, the DCMS report concludes: “We firmly believe football must use its response to the Covid-19 crisis to ‘reset’. Towards the beginning of the crisis, the Premier League was hit by controversy when a number of clubs, including Tottenham and Liverpool, decided to use the CJRS and furlough non-playing staff while continuing to pay players’ wages in full.
“The Premier League remains the highest-paying league in the world at nearly £3.2million per player in 2019, so it is no surprise to us that some clubs – particularly Liverpool, the world’s seventh-richest club – faced fierce backlash.
“The crisis has shone a light on the culture of unfair pay in football.
The decision by some clubs to furlough non-playing staff was deplorable and we welcomed its reversal. Parachute payments must become a thing of the past and considerable work must be done to advance work on salary caps, which may seem radical to those inside UK football but seem to work well elsewhere.
“The current football business model is not sustainable. The Premier League is the main income generator of English football.
“If it does not step up to help the EFL, many more clubs will follow in Bury FC’s footsteps.”
Although players have taken a knee in recognition of Black Lives
Matter since the sport resumed, the DCMS points out that club owners and directors are almost uniformly white, saying: “Football must also become more representative. “The fact that no Premier League club, and virtually no English Football League club, has a black owner, chair or chief executive is a fundamental inequality at the heart of the game.
“We wish to add our dismay at the slow progress in kicking out homophobia from football. It is crucial everyone in the game is clear about the remaining barriers to players coming out.
“We will pursue opportunities in this Parliament to introduce legislation to outlaw homophobic chanting at matches.”