Where’s the Money Gone?: The Battle for the Soul of English Football
Adrian Goldberg
An enthralling read about the death of the beautiful game and how the lack of governance is allowing football club ownership structures to milk the game to death at the expense of the fans.
Like some sort of mirror reflection of the rampant capitalism that is wrecking the planet, football is running on empty whilst the owners stuff the cash into their bulging back pockets. Whilst the emperor fiddles whilst Rome burns narrative is mostly beyond the public gaze, Football is unique in that the massed army of fans are driven by passion and have a stake in their clubs and can see through the razzmatazz, and a general unease has fallen upon the game.
In the excellent book, West Brom supporter and fan campaigner Adrian Goldberg blows the lid on the greed that is killing his local club and extrapolates across the game itself whilst arguing for a new kind of governance that would return the sport back to the hearts of the community where it belongs.
It’s a riveting read that doesn’t pull its punches from an author who has a deep background in the sport, having been reporting on the state of football governance since he founded Off The Ball magazine in the mid-1980s. For the author, this slide into profit at all costs model has wrecked the game. Not just a writer but a diehard fan, he sets his case as not just an existential threat to the club he has been a lifelong supporter of with its current absentee owner but all across the sport itself.
The book extrapolates from this personal stake in the greed game of two halves of people’s clubs versus monolithic corporate giants and a future of brand name clubs divorced from their communities, trading on loyalties, becoming gonzoid Amazon v Google shapeshifters.
Blowing the whistle on the dirty tactics and cynical and poor governance, the book serves as a well-researched read and timely warning to not just football fans but society at large, with Goldberg showing the red card to the play-acting boardrooms and cynical, soulless corporate ghouls.
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