Why we’re stuck with a Premier League in the clutches of the global mega-rich | Jonathan Wilson

There’s little prospect of the model changing in a country that welcomes wealthy international owners with open arms Football, the world’s most popular sport, played by laws drawn up in London in 1863. The Premier League is the UK’s greatest soft power export.

Premier League clubs are owned by a deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi, the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia, a billionaire based in Monaco for tax reasons and a disappointing assortment of investors and private equity funds. And what, really, could be more British than that? Football truly is the national game. What the Manchester City case has exposed is just how difficult it is to regulate some of the richest and most powerful bodies in the world. While the wait for the verdict was frustrating, it was perhaps…