Islj 2009 3-4 - TMC Asser Instituut

sions and it is, therefore, difficult to understand or predict its corporate
mind and how it has reached these decisions!
What golf and rugby will actually contribute to the Olympic programme
remains to be seen, bearing in mind that both sports have
their global money spinning events - the Open and three other major
competitions and the Rugby World Cup respectively - and, therefore,
their ‘stars’ are likely to concentrate on them rather than participating
in the Olympics!
Rather than extending the Olympic programme, is it not time to
reduce it. In my view, the Olympics have become too big and, to
some extent, unmanageable - at least financially. Take the 2012
London Games, for example, they are already several billion pounds
over budget!
As a traditionalist that cares for safeguarding the integrity of sport,
is it not time that the Olympics got back to their Ancient Grecian
grass roots and that only running, jumping and throwing sports were
included in a slimmed down Olympic programme? At least, this
would be more in keeping with the philosophy which inspired the
founder of the modern Olympic Movement, Baron Pierre de
Coubertin, when he revived the Olympics in 1896 in Athens, in which
fewer than 250 athletes took part! His philosophy is still encapsulated
in the Olympic motto:
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win
but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph
but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered
but to have fought well.”
Nowadays, this motto is more honoured in the breach than in the
observance. Where winning amongst the athletes is more important
and success amongst the sponsors of the Games is measured in purely
monetary terms! The excessive and quite obscene spectacle of commercialism
of the Centennial Games in Atlanta - quite rightly dubbed
the ‘Coke Games’ largely through the sponsorship of Coca-Cola - is
still fresh in the memory!
Again, to reduce the costs of staging the Games and to provide a
permanent legacy of them, is it not also time to provide a permanent
venue for them? In this connection, a body of opinion to hold the
games in Greece - perhaps in Olympia or Athens - is growing all the
time and not, in my view, without some justification. Such a move
would also add credibility and integrity to them, which they are seriously
in danger of losing!
Is it not also time to get back to amateurism? Boxing is the only
Olympic sport that is practised by amateurs! As far as Coubertin was
concerned, the Olympics were always for amateurs and not professional
sportsmen and women. He drew his inspiration from the
English Public School system, which subscribed to the belief that
sport formed an important part of education; an attitude summed up
in the saying mens sana in corpore sano - a sound mind in a sound
body. In this ethos, a gentleman was one who became an all-rounder,
not the best at one specific thing. There was also a prevailing concept
of fairness, in which practicing or training was considered tantamount
to cheating. Those who practiced a sport professionally were
considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practiced it
merely as a hobby. Are these ideas and values too alien for the mores
of the twenty-first century? I think not! In any case, at least the IOC
has dropped the requirement of amateurism, which had become
hypercritical, from the Olympic Charter and with it the ‘shamateurism’
of earlier years, which did not bring much credit on the
Olympic Movement and Olympism and all that they are supposed to
stand for!
Conclusion
The Olympic Games are in danger, as mentioned above, of becoming
a victim of their own success! It is high time to reassess the organisation,
the size and the costs of staging them in the interests of sporting
integrity.
But will the IOC heed such calls? Probably not, because money -
as usual - will be the determining factor. But watch out - for as someone
once said: ‘money is the root of all evil!’
English Premier League ‘Fit and Proper Person’ Rules: Are they
Tough Enough and are they Being Strictly Applied and Enforced?
Introductory Remarks
Football is not only the world’s favourite game, but it is also the
world’s most lucrative sport. Indeed, according to Sepp Blatter, the
President of FIFA, football’s world governing body, football is now a
product in its own right. As such, the famous remark of Bill Shankly,
the legendary former manager of Liverpool Football Club, when
asked whether football was a matter of life and death, “Oh no” he said,
“it is much more important than that!” is not so far away, nowadays,
from the actual truth about the ‘beautiful game’!
With so much money sloshing around the game, it is not surprising
that football has attracted many investors, not least foreign ones,
a number of whom are unscrupulous and out for their own ends and
gains and not ‘for the good of the game’. Indeed, some of them are
down right criminals and could use their investments in football clubs
for money laundering and tax evasion purposes (see the author’s comments
on the OECD Report of 1 July, 2009 on ‘Money laundering and
tax evasion in football’ published on the official website of the TMC
Asser International Sports Law Centre on 17 August, 2009).
The English Premier League is not only the world’s most popular
League, but is also the world’s most lucrative one. And, with the
recent purchase of Portsmouth Football Club, by the Saudi, Ali al-
Faraj, half of the twenty English Clubs comprising the Premier
League are now owned by foreigners.
This fact and the controversial purchase and sale of Manchester
City Football Club by the former Thai Prime Minister, Taxin
Shinawatra, who is wanted in his own country on corruption charges,
as well as the number of Football Clubs that have gone into liquidation,
through reckless financial arrangements (especially highly leveraged
‘buy-outs’ such as the one that brought the Glazer’s to ownership
of Manchester United Football Club), has prompted the English
Football Authorities to introduce a ‘fit and proper person’ test to root
out unsuitable investors in English Football Clubs.
So, what are the rules?
The Rules
The ‘fit and proper persons test’ was first introduced in 2004 with the
intention of safeguarding clubs against falling in to the ownership of
unscrupulous owners, with nothing in place before that time to stop
those previously convicted of criminal offences, such as fraud, from
buying and running clubs.
Rules were established jointly between the English Premier League,
Football League and the Football Conference that any prospective
director of a football club or someone looking to buy over 30 per cent
of the club’s shares needed to satisfy them that they were ‘fit and proper’
persons to do so.
The details of the test are detailed and complex but the most
important points prohibit anyone with unspent criminal convictions
relating to acts of dishonesty or someone who has taken a football
club into administration twice from taking charge of a football club.
The only person currently known to have fallen foul of these rules is
Dennis Coleman, who, as director of Rotherham United, was responsible
for twice taking the Yorkshire club into administration (insolvency).
The exact criteria vary between the Premier League and the
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