James Lawton: Dein's devotion pales next to those men who saw value in football beyond price

01 September 2007

There is no question David Dein did well for Arsenal, and may do so again in the future. Identifying the talent of Arsène Wenger, then protecting it fiercely while the Frenchman made successful, and beautiful, football was a brilliant contribution indeed.

However, he is in danger of pushing beyond the threshold of credibility if he bangs on much longer about his divine mission to fuel Arsenal's future with roubles and dollars or any other loot that is waiting to be picked off the financial tree of Babel.

For some, anyway, the more he strikes an altruistic pose, the more he tells us about his life-long passion for the club, the less likely they are to forget that if he has done well for Arsenal, it is not half so well as he has done for himself.

Dein invested a little less than £300,000 in the club 24 years ago. This week he cashed in his chips to another passionate Arsenal fan, the Russian steel mogul Alisher Usmanov, for £75m.

No one, with the exception of Martin Edwards, whose stake in Manchester United came from his father Louis, has waxed fatter on England's national game than Dein, though you could say that picking out the ability of Wenger meant rather more than Edwards' own claim to fame at United, the stunning innovation of executive boxes.

The point is that while we bemoan the fast-approaching total foreign colonisation of English football, we should remember precisely why the game has slipped so profoundly out of domestic control.

It is that in the more significant reaches of the English game you can count literally on three fingers the big money men who came to their favourite football clubs with one hand in their pockets and the other on their hearts.

Jack Walker did it for Blackburn Rovers and won a title. Sir Jack Hayward did it for Wolves and lost a substantial part of his fortune. Steve Gibson continues to do it for Middlesbrough despite years of discouragement that would have sent so many of his contemporaries running for cover.

Elsewhere, the stories of "passionate" owners whose love was handsomely repaid in their bank accounts is so long it reduces rather sharply the mystery of why foreign control is now so near to being absolute.

English football's misfortune is that it has failed to attract more than a smattering of big money men whose devotion to the game transcends their own profiles and income. You could say that David Moores was besotted by Liverpool, and was generous with the fortune he inherited from the profits of Littlewoods football pools before selling out. You can say that the Everton chairman, Bill Kenworth, is a true zealot, but of course he cannot produce the financial clout of the American invaders from across Stanley Park.

Roman Abramovich at Chelsea, Sacha Gaydamak at Portsmouth, the Glazers at Old Trafford, Thaksin Shinawatra at Manchester City, and now, if he should take control at Arsenal, Usmanov have moved to take over English clubs for various reasons, ranging from amusement to investment, but they are united in at least one way ... all have benefited from the lack of disinterested passion and financial strength in those who ran so many of the major clubs.

Consider some of the men who have had the biggest boardroom profiles in English football over the last decade or so. Martin Edwards, in two sales of his shares, amassed a profit of £80m on the back of the work of Sir Alex Ferguson, a man he once accused of not knowing about money. In the early days of Ferguson's regime Edwards was ready to sell United to Michael Knight for a fraction of his own eventual share sale profits.

Sir John Hall was known as Mr Newcastle but when he sold out he made a huge profit, as did one of his successors, Freddy Shepherd. When Ken Bates sold debt-ridden Chelsea to Abramovich, he made a cool £17m for himself.

Sir Alan Sugar waged war against Terry Venables, the man who had recruited him to help save Tottenham, and sometimes could scarcely contain his contempt for football, once notoriously throwing down the shirt of the White Hart Lane favourite Jürgen Klinsmann. But when the time came he too was happy to make his profit.

English football is so largely foreign-owned simply because there are not enough rich Englishmen who care enough about the game.

There is nothing to do about it. There is no Lord Kitchener to get on a poster and point a finger and say, "Your country needs you". Who really cares if a deposed Thai prime minister who has drawn the censure of human rights organisations and is wanted at home on charges of corruption takes over one of the nation's most beloved old football clubs? Football is in the marketplace and it goes to the highest bidder, whoever he is and whatever his origins and motives.

Perhaps, though, as ancient mist begins to surround the days when English football was owned by Englishmen, and the men who played the game were largely treated with the dignity normally given to serfs, we could do worse than remember the meaning of men like Walker and Hayward and Gibson.

The late Jack Walker, the now disillusioned Hayward, and, still, Gibson, represent all those who have ever wanted to repay football for what it gave them in their youth and their spirit. They didn't attach ties or clauses and they certainly were not looking to augment their fortunes. Men for whom football had a value that was beyond price. It is a distinction that David Dein, for all his understanding of the dynamics of the modern game, might ponder the next time he decides to lecture us on the way forward.

Ohuruogu's glory should not conceal blinkered attitudes to drug testing

Many column inches, you don't have to be clairvoyant to know, will this weekend be devoted to the glory and the innocence of Britain's World Championships heroine Christine Ohuruogu, who won 400 metres gold in her fifth race after serving a year's ban for missing three drug tests.

Some of this coverage will no doubt help to shape the decision of the British Olympic Association when it reaches a verdict on Ohuruogu's appeal that, against the association's regulations, she should be allowed to compete in next year's Beijing Games. Ohuruogu herself set the tone that the athletics establishment seems certain to apply to anyone who has raised doubts about the integrity of her triumph. She said: "People in the sport are supportive. They understand the system. Many have missed tests. It is those outside the sport you have to educate."

But in what exactly? Complete disregard for all that has gone before, presumably. If we are to believe that Ohuruogu is such a scatterbrain that she cannot remember one of the basic duties of a modern athlete to inform drug testers of her whereabouts on specific days, surely her coach and management are guilty of terrible neglect. Missing a drug test should, in the climate that has been created by years of the most relentless cheating, be the equivalent of failing one. Harsh, draconian, unrealistic? Only in the minds of those who wish to forget that the scandal of the drug factory known as Balco was uncovered not by anti-doping procedures but the information of a defecting coach.

Ohuruogu's problem is not the ignorance of those outside the athletics "system". It is precisely the opposite. It is the caution that comes from being lied to so many times. It may not be her fault, but then nor is it the public's. In this case the identity of the true victim has to be a moot point.

Dare Galaxy heed Marsh warning?

It has fallen to Rodney Marsh, formerly of Fulham, Queen's Park Rangers, Manchester City and Tampa Bay Rowdies, to capture most completely, however unconsciously, the absurdity of the latest chapter of the David Beckham story.

Writing from the American shore where he knew popularity as a ball-juggling star of what was always doomed to be a minor league sport, Marsh declares: "David is being treated like a piece of meat, pushed and pulled in every direction. Everywhere he goes there's a TV camera in front of him and a microphone under his nose.... He is such a smashing lad. He will sign every autograph and pose for every picture." Marsh adds that the American league programme is demanding – "and this is before you take in his England appearances".

LA Galaxy have guaranteed Beckham £24m. Only a sadist would send them the Marsh piece.