www.studs-up.com
No, really. Liverpool is poor. Because? A couple of weaselly American financiers (businessmen being too generous a term) bought the team in a heavilly leveraged buyout in 2007 and saddled the team with debt.
When Tom Hicks and George Gillett arrived, they portrayed themselves as the friendly and benevolent Americans, smiling humans compared with the odd-seeming Glazers of Tampa Bay and Old Trafford. They were not going to “do” a Glazer and load debt on to the club; they would build the new stadium on Stanley Park, which would allow Liverpool truly to compete with United; they would honour and respect Liverpool’s heritage.
At Liverpool the debts are lower but the club can ill afford them because of Anfield’s smaller capacity, not a brick of the new stadium having materialised almost three years after Hicks and Gillett arrived. Their latest figures showed the club had borrowed £313m, including the costs of the takeover, and last year paid out £36.5m to the banks in interest alone – that is Xabi Alonso plus £6.5m, gone. That helped push the club into a £42.6m loss at a time when vastly more wealth is flowing in than ever before.
What does this have to do with Clinton? Nothing. Except now you know that the greed, excess and idiocy that led to the recent financial meltdown is still echoing across all walks of life the world over. And that I am having a miserable time watching soccer this winter.
