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Posts Tagged ‘kids’

• Prospective Roma buyer has stake in Liverpool ownership
• Uefa rules do not allow influence over more than one club

Will the takeover of Roma by the Boston-based private-equity investor Thomas DiBenedetto have any implications for Liverpool?

Digger only asks this question because DiBenedetto is also a stakeholder in the Fenway Sports Group, which owns 100% of the shares in the Anfield club. As the two teams’ respective leagues currently stand, Roma would qualify for next season’s Europa League. Liverpool are four points off qualification for that competition.

If both clubs qualify, then it is possible Uefa’s rules governing the integrity of its competitions would come in to play. These state: “No individual or legal entity may have control or influence over more than one club participating in a Uefa club competition”. This is defined as “holding a majority of the shareholders’ voting rights” or “being able to exercise by any means a decisive influence in the decision-making of the club”, among other things.

If any clubs fall foul of these rules the lower-ranked team (in this case Roma) would be excluded from the competition. It is possible that these rules would apply in this case, though one can not be certain because it is impossible to ascertain how much of the FSG DiBenedetto owns.

Last week FSG sent out a press release announcing that it would no longer be trading under its former guise of New England Sports Ventures LLC. However, NESV is still the name of the holding company that is registered with the Massachusetts Corporations Division. This official channel has no publicly available information relating to NESV’s equity structures. Neither does the Division of Corporations of the State of Delaware, where NESV is ultimately domiciled.

Usefully for investors who do not wish to disclose their identities or the nature of their investments, Delaware never does oblige them to make public this sort of information. The Premier League does oblige its clubs to make public the identities of any shareholders with stakes in excess of 10%. Regrettably, Liverpool does not do this, saying only: “The sole owner of the Liverpool Football Club and Athletic Grounds Limited is New England Sports Ventures, trading as Fenway Sports Group. John Henry and Tom Werner are generally responsible for the management of Fenway Sports Group.”

Ian Cotton, the Liverpool executive who deals with matters relating to the club’s ownership, could not be contacted. An email to FSG’s generic address went unanswered. So Digger asked the media department of the Boston Red Sox what it knew of FSG, the parent it shares with Liverpool. It responded that it would attempt to put Digger in touch with DiBenedetto (he did not call back last night either, although he was probably quite busy putting his deal for Roma together). It also said that the identity of the clubs’ shareholders and their respective stakes “is not public information”.

The one little chink of light FSG has recently shed on who owns it is as follows: “Fenway Sports Group is led by Principal Owner John Henry and Chairman Tom Werner, with additional ownership interests being held by a select number of prestigious individuals and The New York Times.” Why so secret? Surely fans are entitled to know who owns their club, whether they are baseball or football fans, because sometimes it just might have an impact on the integrity of a competition.

West Ham to upgrade Olympic stadium

West Ham United will spend £90m on a stadium upgrade in an effort to fix the problems suffered by other football-club tenancies of Olympic stadiums.

The Hammers take over the Stratford site after the Paralympic Games next year. Then they will direct a sum equivalent to that Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson spent on his ill-fated takeover of the club in 2006. The experience of other clubs who have moved in to purpose-built Olympic stadiums suggests West Ham have their work cut out in getting it right. The US private-equity investor Thomas DiBenedetto was quoted by the Gazzetta Dello Sport yesterday that the Stadio Olimpico does not serve Roma, the club he is buying this week, sufficiently well.

“The Olimpico simply just do justice to the fans’ passion; the stands are too far away from the pitch and the noise from the crowd is not the same at that distance,” said DiBenedetto. “A new stadium is a must, an English-style stadium so that it benefits the players too.” Roma’s difficulties may relate as much to the age of the stadium – it is 52 years old. However there have been similar complaints from Espanyol about their occupancy of the 20-year-old Barcelona Olympic stadium. West Ham insist their fans will benefit from a vibrant atmosphere, will invest in retractable seating and a new roof, in an effort to keep the noise in.

Dream come true for England mascots

The FA made it a once-in-a-lifetime experience for 10 young people who were the mascots at England’s game against Ghana on Wednesday night. Every one of them represented one of the FA’s charity partners: Action for Children, the Bobby Moore Fund, Coaching for Hope and Street League. The 10-year-old Jake Hancox, a sufferer of Asperger Syndrome, was one of Action For Children’s representatives. He had never been able to join his older brother in playing the game in organised matches but at Wembley the FA gave him the opportunity to do something in football most other kids can only ever dream of.

Follow Matt Scott on Twitter: @diggermattscott

LiverpoolRomaMatt Scottguardian.co.uk

• Bruce Dickinson takes Liverpool to Europa League match
• ‘I’d like to see Liverpool win again. They’ve had a hard time’

There are many ways to lift a team in crisis. Train harder, for example. Or appoint a new manager. Or go on a team-bonding boot camp.

Liverpool, however, have taken a slightly different route. They have been flown to Naples for their Europa League game against Napoli on Thursday by the Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. Iron Maiden have had hits such as Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter and, of course, Number of the Beast, although it is unclear whether the 52-year-old performed any of these songs before take-off or landing.

“I would like to see Liverpool winning again,” Dickinson told the Liverpool Echo. “They have had a hard time recently but they are such an institution and mean so much to so many people. It would be nice to see them with their tails up.”

Liverpool fans need not to worry, however, as Dickinson has been a pilot for over 10 years and regularly flies the Iron Maiden band members around the world when they are on tour. He had flown from Iceland to Orlando on Sunday night before taking the Liverpool team to Italy this morning.

Dickinson added: “When I was five, I had Airfix kits like everyone other boy, but I was always too busy doing music. Once I did find the time to fly I was completely hooked. I am not sure how I became a captain of an aeroplane.”

When asked whether he preferred singing or flying, he said: “I don’t know – that is one of those questions, like which one of your kids would you throw out of a hot-air balloon. Iron Maiden fans would lynch me if I stopped singing.”

LiverpoolIron MaidenMarcus Christensonguardian.co.uk

Jamie Carragher’s passion for Liverpool is undimmed after 14 years – now he’s trying to help recover their class and dignity

Jamie Carragher owns two restaurants in Liverpool and hopefully his next culinary step will be to host Come Dine With Me. The company and conversation would not be eclectic – his obsession with leading managers would produce a guest list limited to such names as José Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson and Fabio Capello – but the concoction would be unforgettable.

“There is still a mystique about these people for me,” he says. “The likes of Ferguson and Mourinho, I could talk to them all day if I had the chance.” Which raises the question of what the Liverpool defender would ask the Manchester United manager if the opportunity arose?

For once, Carragher pauses to consider a response. His eyes sparkle when it comes. “I’ll tell you what I would say to him. I’d say he never knocked Liverpool off their fucking perch. That’s nonsense that. Graeme Souness did that. United were competing with Norwich and Aston Villa for their first title. They weren’t competing with Liverpool, were they?” Why Carragher remains a prized interviewee requires no explanation.

Fourteen years after breaking into the Liverpool first team as a goalscoring midfielder, or so we thought, the 32-year-old stages his testimonial at Anfield this afternoon. He has invited an Everton XI to provide the opposition and Michael Owen to face the wrath of the Kop by swapping United red for Liverpool’s.

Both have caused a stir, though proceeds do go to his charitable 23 Foundation. The choices are unsurprising, however.

Owen is a lifelong friend, Everton are the team he loved, and he has never become the PR-moulded, bland character we now expect – but abhor – of our Premier League stars. It is the reason Anfield identifies with Carragher more than any other player of his generation and why, despite a wish to retain a low profile ahead of his big day, 10 journalists are waiting when he walks into the press room at Liverpool’s training ground.

Fourteen years of opening up with searing honesty, yet he still retains a capacity for revelation. Only when discussing the testimonial guest list does it dawn on Carragher that his mother, Paula, will watch him play today for only the second time in his life. Not the second time in a career that has yielded every medal bar the Premier League championship – his whole life.

“It’s just never been the done thing in our family” is the explanation. “She didn’t watch me as a kid. My missus doesn’t go to the match either. It’s a waste of a ticket. To my mum, I’m James. I suppose she’s kept me grounded. She still lives where we always lived and she does the normal things like going to the Asda. It’s funny, she went shopping the other day to the Lidl, which is the cheap one, isn’t it? And one of the girls on the till went: ‘What are you doing in here?’ She can’t go back now. She said she only went in to get a bit of fruit.”

Andy Burnham MP is also expected at Anfield, and his presence suggests Carragher’s claim to be interested only in “Liverpool football club and my family” is not entirely true. The Bootle-born defender donated £10,000 to Burnham’s Labour leadership campaign, having been impressed by the then culture secretary’s efforts to release internal documents on the Hillsborough disaster, though Carragher proclaims only a passing interest in politics. “I watched Tony Blair’s interview with Andrew Marr the other night and I’ll watch Newsnight, but that’s about it. I like Tony Blair. But [donating to Burnham] was because he is a local fella and I vote Labour and hopefully that would give him a good push. I like seeing people from round here doing well and it would be great if someone from round here was leader of the Labour party.

“He’s an Evertonian, though, isn’t he? I think he’s coming to the match with the leader of the council. It probably looks good for them as well, doesn’t it? I read Piers Morgan’s book on holiday and he was never out of Downing Street.”

Any fan of Blair must place an importance on image and Carragher is no exception, although only in the context of the club he serves. Proud though he is of his achievements at Anfield, and of a career of dramatic highs and lows on a collective and personal level, the defender admits the recent image of Liverpool FC is one that pains him.

“I care about the club because I’m a supporter as well,” he says. “It does bother me if things aren’t as they should be. I think a lot about the future of the club, the direction it’s going in, the way it is run and how it is perceived from the outside. There are some things that Liverpool should be doing in a certain way, the correct way. We should be a little bit different, and we need to get back to that.

“I’m not just talking about winning games, but the way we do things and the way we conduct ourselves. The class and dignity this club was renowned for. It’s the way Liverpool used to be seen by people and we should be aiming to recreate that.”

Carragher’s use of “class and dignity” is instructive. Those are the same words David Moyes used to describe Everton when responding to the former manager Rafael Benítez’s description of his Merseyside rivals as “a small club”. George Gillett and Tom Hicks have brought financial turbulence to Anfield and supporters on to the streets. Though Carragher refuses to mud-sling – “I’m not getting into why we lost that, but we do need to get back to it and I think we are” – it is clear he believes the American co-owners are not entirely responsible for Liverpool’s recent soap opera.

“I just think that over the last few years people didn’t like Liverpool. Other managers didn’t like us, we were always getting criticism in the press, obviously we were not doing well on the pitch so that comes with it, but everything was just negative Liverpool all the time.

“We’ve had situations like Martin O’Neill and Steve Bruce criticising Liverpool and they were right. We shouldn’t be getting involved with stuff like that. Everyone else should look at Liverpool and say they have dignity, class. I mean, like the way people look at Arsenal. They do things right and you think they conduct themselves in the right way. I think we have been a club who were like that and we need to get back to that, to do things right. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; that’s football. You can’t win all the time. But you can still behave in a way where people respect you.”

Though it goes against the grain for Carragher, a testimonial demands reflection and the vexed issue of what next? His son, James, is already at the Liverpool academy and while a step into management has always appeared natural, a reluctance to leave Liverpool does not make it a foregone conclusion. “If it was just me and the missus then I wouldn’t mind seeing the world or different parts of the country, but I’m very big on my kids being settled with their family,” he says. “I want to be a manager, it wouldn’t scare me, but I also think you could be sacked in six months and you’d have to take the kids back to school with your tail between your legs.”

He is, however, unequivocal about what he will not miss when the time finally comes to hang up the No23 Liverpool shirt. “People go on about how much players earn in the Premier League but once you’ve bought a nice house and car, what else is there to spend it on?” Carragher asks. “There is pressure, and I would never complain about that, but as players we put pressure on ourselves all the time. That’s one thing I won’t miss when I finally stop playing. It was my wife’s birthday party last Sunday but I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy it if we didn’t beat West Brom that afternoon. It was on my mind from the moment the whistle went. All through the game, I’m thinking: ‘We’ve got to win it, we’ve got to win it.’ “

Six hundred and thirty five appearances for Liverpool and still yearning for victory. That says it all.

Jamie CarragherLiverpoolAndy BurnhamAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk