Full article by Sam Wallace.
The Premier League was created, back in the early 1990s, out of the flames of the conflict between the Football Association and the Football League – a forgotten grudge which feels like ancient history now but dominated much of 20th-century English football.
The biggest clubs in the English game played off the FA against the Football League to get what they wanted. Famously, Greg Dyke, then negotiating on behalf of the broadcaster ITV, recalled later in his years as FA chairman that the governing body’s priority in 1992 was to inflict maximum damage on the Football League instead of securing the guarantees that were theirs for the taking.
In the early 1990s it was the big five of the era who led the breakaway - the two Merseyside clubs, the two North London rivals and Manchester United.
Thirty years on and attempts to re-mould that same Premier League – now the most powerful, and the most lucrative, sport league in the world – has echoes of the way in which it was created. The Premier League’s executive and all but its two most famous clubs, Manchester United and Liverpool in conjunction with the EFL chairman Rick Parry, have been bypassed.
But for Parry this is a scheme 25 years in the making. Three years after the Premier League began, in 1995, the Football League board spurned a second opportunity, backed by all bar one of its clubs, to share in the riches of its much more profitable sibling when, as Premier League chief executive, Parry offered to take over the negotiations for the Football League’s television rights and give a percentage of their combined income in return.
When, in 1995, the proposal was put to the 72 Football League clubs, 71 voted in favour of throwing their lot in with the Premier League. But the Football League board rejected it and insisted on negotiating alone.
Now the same offer forms part of these proposals. The EFL clubs themselves were mostly unaware of the strategy being pursued – many of them finding out when The Telegraph revealed the plans at lunchtime on Sunday. Before then Parry says that he has, at different times, alluded to the plan he had in mind, arguing that systemic problems mean clubs are not able to respond properly to the Covid crisis.
Indeed, talks have been ongoing for three years involving some of the most powerful owners in the Premier League. Among them was the American billionaire John W Henry, Liverpool’s principal owner and a key figure in what would become “Project Big Picture” and later the “Revitalisation” document.
So too Mike Gordon, another in Liverpool’s Fenway Sports Group, and one of those credited with the club’s recent transformation into European and then English champions. Parry was also speaking to Joel Glazer who has overseen a rather less successful ownership of Manchester United since his late father, Malcolm, bought the club in 2005.
Why did those billionaire investors, who control the most powerful clubs in the English game, choose Parry to help them restructure the sport? Among other things, he is regarded as a man who – as his interview The Telegraph reveals – is prepared to say the things that other figures in the game may believe privately but fear to utter. With Parry in charge of the EFL, United and Liverpool also believe that he can deliver consensus from his 72 very different members.
But this is a major gamble. Over the course of the three years, Parry worked in secret with the two biggest Premier League clubs to come up with a plan. He cares less about the power it will give the wealthiest clubs and more about the 25 per cent annually of Premier League revenue that will flow to his impecunious members. Others may be more conflicted but Parry regards this is an unprecedented concession and he is not afraid to say so. In the meantime he has secured agreements from his members for salary caps which he says will be an end to the ruinous spending of years gone by.
For United and Liverpool, the pay-off is not a greater share of the revenue from the Premier League’s television deal – they are insistent that will not happen. Instead those two clubs say they want the power, along with the other members of the elite to shape the rules of the league and also to have more matchdays to compete in a potentially expanded Champions League. Those who oppose them are much more dubious that it will not deliver a greater share.
The authors of “Revitalisation” are on their 17th draft already. Optimistically they want to see it in place for the 2022-2023 season. On the question of how the Premier League would come down from 20 clubs to 18, there is no firm proposal yet. The league’s original reduction from 22 clubs to 20 took three years because the Football League was not ready to accommodate the extra clubs until 1995-96.
Parry has shared his plans with just a few close confidants, including the Stoke chairman, John Coates, and his Middlesbrough counterpart, Steve Gibson. “They are 100 per cent supportive because it is for the greater good,” Parry said. “Those two are genuinely up for it. They are excited, and passionate about it. In a time when everyone is panicking how we will emerge from it you need a long-term vision and you need hope.”
