Football needs more than a new regulator to save it from itself

About 15 years ago, I made a little film about a day in the life of a postman. It was an early start. As I helped him sort out his bag, we chatted about football. He was a Chelsea fan. I asked whether he had a season ticket at Stamford Bridge. I will never forget the look he shot me. It was like I had asked what kind of Ferrari he drove. “I can’t afford to go and see Chelsea,” he said. “I’m a postman.”

So here we had a football club owned by a fantastically wealthy Russian, which was pricing out a normal working man. Here, before dawn in a sorting office, somewhere in the generous sprawl of south London, this anomaly felt stark. In football, we always have a lexicon of cliches ready to go; I reached for one now as I said to myself: dear God, the game’s gone.

This isn’t to blame Roman Abramovich for everything. However ill-gotten his gains may be, he is not directly to blame for the pricing out of many ordinary football supporters by clubs up and down the country. But his entry into the game highlights the fault line at the heart of professional football’s problem: clubs can’t find a way of living within their means. That leads to desperation, which invariably leads to desperate measures. And that entails all manner of desperadoes getting involved.

Whether you are into football or not, it won’t have escaped your attention that some of the owners of these football clubs have a certain dodginess about them. Many are morally dubious; others are plain incompetent. Some clubs have owners who are both dodgy and hopeless, a terrible combination indeed.

England’s three football authorities – the Premier League, English Football League and Football Association – each have had their own tests for owners and directors. They are