by Tom Bower
Allan Leighton trusted Ridsdale’s judgement, not least on financial matters, despite the value of the club’s shares sliding towards just 4p. Leighton did not appear to question whether the club’s increasingly perilous financial predicament was caused by the huge salaries approved by Ridsdale. In the 2002–3 season, the salaries bill at Elland Road was £53.6 million, just £16 million less than Manchester United, yet Leeds’s gross income that season was £82 million while Manchester’s was £140 million. Leighton also appeared to ignore Ridsdale’s own expensive lifestyle. He had authorized spending £600,000 a year for a fleet of 76 company cars for 250 staff. He had paid £70,000 recruitment fees for an executive who left the club after six months. And he was leasing a tank of goldfish for £20 a month. More pertinently, he was hiring private jets to fly around Europe rather than using commercial airlines, and occupying expensive suites in hotels rather than regular rooms. To stem the drain of money, Leighton agreed that four players would be sold. Ridsdale was optimistic of finding buyers.
On 19 March 2002, he returned from Rome convinced that Lazio was prepared to pay £16 million for Dacourt. The following day he met O’Leary at the training ground. ‘Good news,’ he told his manager. To his surprise, O’Leary flared in anger, protesting ‘Dacourt can’t leave.’ According to Ridsdale, unknown to him, O’Leary had flown to Turin and opened his own negotiations with Juventus to sell Dacourt. He had asked for £20 million but secured an offer of £10 million. The journey was particularly odd because O’Leary was accompanied by an agent and a solicitor. Ridsdale complained that the discussions were not revealed to him and says inexplicably that O’Leary offered to introduce Rune Hauge into the negotiations. O’Leary would convincingly deny the allegations.
In O’Leary’s version, Ridsdale authorized him to negotiate with Juventus but the discussions in Turin were fruitless. O’Leary’s reaction to the Lazio offer secured by Ridsdale was, he says, euphoric. Ridsdale’s misfortune was that Lazio had no money, a reality which to O’Leary’s surprise he ignored. Moreover, he was committed to pay £2 million in commission to agents if Lazio bought the player. Among the beneficiaries was Pini Zahavi. But since Lazio had no money and Juventus failed to make a firm offer, the sale of Dacourt and the other Leeds players – so critical to the club’s finances – became paralysed until the manager dramatically misplayed his hand.
On 31 May 2002, to the directors’ surprise, O’Leary asked to be present at a board meeting. He used the occasion to criticize Ridsdale and then departed unaware of his fellow directors’ intentions. His dismissal was agreed upon unanimously.
O’Leary’s removal from the club became easier after the Irishman criticized Ferdinand’s potential sale. ‘If Rio leaves,’ quipped O’Leary to journalists in late June 2002, ‘blame my plc board, not me.’ Since O’Leary had earlier supported the sale, Allan Leighton ruled on 25 June that he should be dismissed. On 27 June 2002, O’Leary arrived at Elland Road anticipating only his imminent departure for his summer holidays. Two minutes after entering Ridsdale’s office, he was fired. Ridsdale believed that the club would not need to pay £4 million in compensation to O’Leary by proving that the manager’s conduct had been a breach of his contract.
Ridsdale’s next chore was to appoint a replacement. To his surprise, on 5 July O’Neill made it clear he would not move from Celtic. The news sparked a flurry of telephone calls to Ridsdale. ‘Is Terry on the short list?’ asked Leon Angel, Venables’s agent, in a breathless telephone call. His client dreamt of a last chance to restore his reputation. ‘Yes,’ replied Ridsdale. ‘What’s his telephone number?’ The following day, 6 July, Ridsdale dashed to meet Venables in Alicante, Spain. There was no one else worth considering. Two days later Venables signed a two year contract worth £3.5 million. Venables, an epitome of football’s skulduggery and with a questionable record as a manager, was hailed as the saviour of a troubled club. For his part, Venables was tempted to complete his bid to finally capture a trophy that had been interrupted by his dismissal from Spurs in 1993. Leeds’ star players, he was convinced by Ridsdale, gave him the final opportunity to realize a dream.
On the same day, Ridsdale met Pini Zahavi. ‘Rio wants to leave,’ said the agent. Ferdinand was at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas with Wes Brown and two other footballers. For the first time in several years, he had not spent his holidays close to Pini Zahavi at the Hilton in Tel Aviv. Despite the distance, Ferdinand’s impatience for a transfer to Manchester United was the substance of repeated conversations with his agent. ‘I want to keep Rio,’ Ridsdale told Pini. ‘He wants to go,’ Pini replied. ‘Well, he’s not going for £20 million,’ snapped Ridsdale, irritated by the pressure upon him to sell the club’s jewel. There were rumours that Allan Leighton had threatened to dismiss Ridsdale if he failed to meet the deadline to repay £15 million to the banks. Although the chairman had earlier volunteered, ‘Rio will be sold if we can get £40 million’, Ridsdale announced after meeting Pini, ‘Rio’s not for sale.’ Ferdinand, he believed, could be persuaded to remain at Leeds while other players would be sold. The telephone call he received from Peter Kenyon was accordingly unwelcome. ‘We’ll increase the offer to £25 million,’ he said. ‘Forget it,’ Ridsdale replied, concealing his concern about jeopardizing his position while also puzzled about Olivier Dacourt’s obstinate refusal to consider a transfer to Lazio. Ridsdale suspected O’Leary’s influence; the former manager, he feared, had persuaded the player to reject Lazio and accept a transfer to Juventus of Turin. There were reports of secret conversations between O’Leary and Alessandro Moggi, an agent and the son of Juventus’s chairman, Luciano Moggi. O’Leary’s telephone records showed a mysterious pattern of calls to Turin and to an Italian agent in Manchester. Amid the swirl, Ridsdale’s trade of players continued to be paralysed.
On 14 July, Ferdinand and Venables met for one hour over breakfast at Pini Zahavi’s flat in central London. Venables’s charm and persuasion caused the player to hesitate. Two hours later, he reaffirmed his decision to accept Sir Alex Ferguson’s offer. Ferdinand’s dream had not changed. ‘You see all the faces on the wall,’ he said eloquently about his memories of Old Trafford. ‘People like George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton – and I just want to be part of it. I want to play alongside Juan Sebastian Veron, David Beckham and Roy Keane and players like that.’ Pini Zahavi passed the news to Ridsdale. Over the past week, Ferdinand’s signed letter requesting a transfer had been tucked into the agent’s briefcase.
‘I have no reason to doubt that Rio wants to stay at Leeds United,’ Ridsdale said emphatically two days later. ‘He has not indicated he wants to leave and, while it is purely hypothetical, if he were to hand in a transfer request, it would be firmly rejected by the board.’ The following day, Pini submitted Rio’s formal request for a transfer. The request was immediately rejected by Ridsdale: ‘We’ve had no offers for Rio Ferdinand so it amazes me he has a choice to make. He is going nowhere. Where does he think he’s going – into thin air?’
‘We’re offering £25 million,’ Peter Kenyon told Ridsdale the following day. ‘No way,’ replied Ridsdale. ‘Thirty-five million pounds or there’s no deal.’ Manchester United, Ridsdale knew, were desperate to sign Ferdinand, but equally Kenyon could not afford more. Events suddenly turned, characterizing the suicidal folly afflicting the football business.
On 21 July, Liverpool decided not to buy Lee Bowyer for £9 million and the sale of Dacourt collapsed. Rio’s fate was sealed. Nevertheless, Leighton and Ridsdale agreed that there could be no retreat from a headline price of £30 million. The businessmen calculated that Kenyon would not call Leeds’s bluff. Unlike Martin Edwards, a tough entrepreneur, Kenyon’s expertise was marketing. He lacked the sensitivity for poker-style brinkmanship. His club’s purchase of Juan Sebastian Veron for £28 million proved that Kenyon’s judgement was clouded by Alex Ferguson’s emotional demands. Similarly, on this occasion, instead of squeezing Leeds – unable to survive without the sale – to reduce the pric
e, Kenyon threw in his hand. He accepted a solution offered by an agent. Manchester United would pay £26 million plus an additional £3.1 million if the club won a series of championships. Despite winning the poker duel, Ridsdale’s announcement of the sale was mournful. ‘I’m not happy as a Leeds fan because I didn’t want him to leave. But when your captain says he wants to leave you have to listen.’ That same day, Leeds accepted £29.1 million, a British record. The excitement masked the continuing disaster for English football: most of the money would repay bank loans rather than percolate through a sport desperate for financial support. Ridsdale was unsentimental about that scenario. In common with other Premier League chairmen, he envisaged the closure of many minor clubs and the radical shrinkage of League football.
At Old Trafford, football’s perils were multiplied. Ferdinand signed a five year contract worth £18.2 million. He would be paid £70,000 a week and he retained his image rights. ‘I wouldn’t have come here,’ explained Ferdinand after signing his contract, watched by his parents, ‘if I didn’t think we could win the title, and I know the rest of the lads are as hungry as ever.’ Pini Zahavi smiled. Fulfilling the dreams of Ferdinand and Ferguson had made him £2 million richer. ‘Locheim,’ smiled Ferdinand to his agent, lifting a glass of water.
At 11 a.m. on 14 September 2002, Ferdinand returned to Elland Road with Manchester United for a League match. Serious commentators had anticipated that Leeds fans, ‘spitting venom’, would be rioting and lynching, and one foresaw the ‘end of the beautiful game’. The mood, everyone agreed, would ‘feel spiteful, vindictive and very, very ugly. Football will become the grotesque game.’ In the directors’ suite, the guests were eating breakfast in a mood that was unusually foreboding. Bobby Charlton’s arrival was barely acknowledged. On a previous visit, Charlton’s wife had been attacked by Leeds fans with scalding tea, but during his walk through the car park he had only been mobbed by autograph hunters. On the terraces, however, a banner had been unfurled bearing the inscription ‘Judas’, reflecting the aggressive mood. In his endearingly modest manner, the legend of England’s World Cup victory in 1966 lamented the transformation of rivalry between the two clubs and cities into ugly hatred. Charlton’s consolation was the expectation that, with Ferdinand’s help, Manchester United would, as in the previous ten matches, win.
Across the stadium stood all the qualities and faults of English football. Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate represented the game’s ‘rabble’; David Beckham epitomized the wealth, celebrity and some positive attributes of English football; Rio Ferdinand, a fine footballer, represented a reckless investment vulnerable to injury; in the Sky booth, mischievously employed as a commentator, David O’Leary appeared as just another of football’s forlorn casualties; sitting in his tracksuit on the edge of the pitch, Venables nervously waited to redeem himself; nearby, the grey-suited Ferguson chewed agitatedly, disturbed by the absence of Roy Keane, Manchester United’s £80,000-per-week captain and the unstable ‘author’ of a self-incriminating autobiography emphasizing his violence; and in the centre-seat, Peter Ridsdale talked to conceal his fears. The referee’s whistle at noon would reignite the competition of their dreams.
The magic of twenty-two men displaying skill, courage and stamina temporarily obscured the ills cursing the game. Their performance manifested the dreams of hundreds of thousands, most notably Alex Ferguson’s. The match was a trial of the manager’s skills rather than Rio Ferdinand’s abilities. After forty-five minutes the result was not encouraging. The spectacle had not been rabid hatred against Ferdinand but the sight of a crumbling giant gasping to forestall the death of a legend. After a spirited start, Manchester United collapsed; the swagger was replaced by collective fright. The aura was evaporating and the single, winning goal by Leeds suggested the death of a dynasty. Ferguson’s gamble had apparently misfired, mirroring the unpredictability and ills of the business.
Despite spending billions of pounds, winning worldwide acclaim for the Premier League, the heart of English football had barely changed. For twenty years, the same characters had equated money as the criteria for football’s success. The idea of Terry Venables’s redemption endorsed the domination by unchangeable reactionaries. Three hundred miles south, another fallen angel was enjoying his own unexpected revival. Under Harry Redknapp’s managership, Portsmouth was establishing a lead at the top of the First Division. Redknapp’s success contrasted with the plight of West Ham, bouncing at the bottom of the Premier League, still struggling to recover from his financial profligacy. All the ambivalence of football was represented by the resurrection of Redknapp and Venables. Their failures, waste and suspicious behaviour were ignored by their new chairmen’s lust for glory. Both proved the truth of Glenn Hoddle’s quip: ‘If you blink, you lose the game.’ The FA endorsed their appointments, their rivals acknowledged their status and the fans applauded their victories. Football remained a game without shame.
The manifestation of those flaws was the developing crisis within the FA itself. During October 2002, the Premier League chairmen had become irritated by Adam Crozier’s management and style. The 38-year-old marketing expert appointed to modernize the Association less than three years earlier had alienated those who demanded a servant rather than a chief executive displaying independence, who, they complained on occasions, exercised apparently uncontrolled authority. The simmering grievances of the clubs’ chairmen reached a climax. On the FA’s behalf, Crozier was accused of entering into contracts with sponsors on behalf of the Premier League’s star players without, it was alleged, adequately consulting the clubs. Not only did those sponsorship contracts potentially undermine the individual clubs’ financial relationships with their own sponsors, but they aggravated another grievance, namely, that the star players, paid up to £100,000 per week by the clubs, were risking injuries while playing for England without any tangible benefit accruing to the clubs. The secrecy which Crozier shrouded over his negotiations and tentative agreements upset men accustomed to total control. And the notion of FA bureaucrats enjoying an increasingly expensive, unregulated lifestyle in Soho at the clubs’ expense had become intolerable to those beleaguered by their own self-inflicted financial troubles.
The identities of the leading critics were not surprising. Ken Bates loathed Adam Crozier for the humiliation he felt had been heaped upon himself over Wembley’s original development, a scheme which subsequently had been in large measure endorsed by Crozier himself. Peter Ridsdale was irritated by Crozier’s secrecy and his decision to disperse too much of the Premier League’s money to help football’s grass roots and the stricken League clubs. Retrenchment and even bankruptcies caused him little concern. Richard Scudamore was angry that Crozier withheld information affecting his terrain. Other Premier League chairmen disliked the FA’s attempts over the previous two years to assert its regulatory powers. Few could recall Crozier visiting their grounds to establish a close rapport. All were united by the threat to their own club’s financial security; they were rightly fearful that the next Sky contract might not deliver the same fortune as previously, and bewildered about how to recover from their squandering habits. Bates and Ridsdale symbolized the financial perils facing the club chairmen. All were unwilling to embrace the FA’s chief executive, whose salary had increased to over £600,000 a year and who suffered none of the burdens afflicting his paymasters. Hitting at the smooth, costly Crozier was an easy palliative and regardless of his achievements, he had lost their confidence. None of them saw any personal advantage in repairing a fragile relationship.
Their solution was the creation of a Professional Game Board to manage the professional clubs, abandoning the amateurs to their fate, and decimating the FA. Crozier saw that proposal as the deliberate destruction of the national sport and its finances. He assessed the proposers as a self-interested and transient lobby afflicted by amorality and myopia. Everything New Labour’s Task Force was intended to prevent, to cure the lack of commitment by the Premier League to the long-term he
alth of football, had occurred.
In a battle between the FA and the Premier League, Crozier might have hoped for support from Geoff Thompson, the FA’s chairman who had formally appointed him, but he was disappointed. The faceless and mute symbol of the FA’s traditions preferred to oblige the twenty chairmen despite the detrimental impact on 43,000 other clubs. At the crucial moment, even David Dein, Crozier’s champion, remained practically silent, unwilling to confront Bates and Ridsdale. The irreversible division between rich and poor clubs was on the horizon, encouraging the grass roots to wither away, while the Premier League clubs managed their businesses free of even the semblance of control. Crozier resigned and not a single chairman of a major club publicly mourned his departure. An ugly spectacle of vanity and greed among frustrated warlords was souring the popular dream and no salvation was in sight. Sadly, those faded, aspiring grandees mirrored pertinent truths about modern Britain.
POSTSCRIPT
‘Money is football’s oxygen,’ exclaimed Pini Zahavi, holding court in Les Ambassadeurs, an expensive restaurant off Park Lane. ‘Forget about the sentiment. Without money there is no football.’ Anticipating that football was slipping into unusual turbulence, especially after the announcement that the contracts of nearly 600 players across the league would be terminated, the Israeli sensed the opportunity of profiting from uncertainty. Some self-proclaimed heroes, he observed, were on the verge of being toppled, while those who had been discredited were manoeuvring for a come-back. West Ham, Zahavi noted, could be an interesting investment in the distant future, but only after the managers and owners of Premier League clubs, wrestling with the demons of money and inquiries into suspected misconduct, had either survived or met their doom.