Saudi golf war is a reminder of price Premier League football nearly paid

Ian Poulter tees off on the fifth hole during day two of the LIV Golf Invitational in London. Photo / Getty Images

A glimpse of football's alternate Super League came reality this week as some of the world's richest golfers gathered in England for a blockbuster series of press conferences, including some high-grade equivocation over whether any of them would play a tournament organised by Vladimir Putin.

Apparently, there was some golf too but by the time the talking about money had finished, the driving and putting barely merited a place on the highlights. This would have been elite European football's breakaway destiny too, had Florentino Perez, and assorted American venture capitalists, got their Super League way. Basically, an endless logjam of recriminations about the consequences. Mason Mount being quizzed about heritage European Cup winners marooned outside the closed shop. Marco Verratti's opinions on the dead hand of J.P. Morgan. Federico Valverde's position on the strength of Uefa's case in the European Court of Justice.

The benefit of the LIV Golf Series has been a vision of what sport is really like when it is sold off for the enrichment of a small elite, in this case in return for an incremental move on the dial of a blood-soaked regime's reputation. The old spell that sport casts, investing meaning and tradition in things that do not matter — and yet somehow do — is suddenly gone. All that was left in golf's case were a few taciturn multi-millionaires in baseball caps trying not to mention the money. At least the footballers opposed the Super League.

The Saudi Arabia incursion into professional golf will have felt familiar for the Premier League owners, chairs and chief executives who gathered last week for their annual general meeting. The Saudi-led consortium which finally gained permission to acquire Newcastle United in October led to the ousting of the Premier League chairman Gary Hoffman who had overseen the legal process, a cold serving of revenge by the many clubs opposing the takeover. By then the 20 had already lived through the storm of Project Big Picture and then the Super League breakaway — with all the division and rancour that brought.

Football's Saudi sportswashing was different: nobody wanted it other than the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sellers and the embattled Newcastle fans dreaming of liberation from Mike Ashley. Presented with the legal case that included the end of Saudi Middle East rights piracy, Government relations with Saudi, and assurances that the Saudi state would not run Newcastle, the Premier League had little option but to pass PIF on the owners' and directors' test and take their medicine.

Newcastle United fans wearing traditional Saudi garb and carrying a Saudi flag. Photo / Getty Images

It is why some even within the 20 are starting to wonder if the Premier League's owners' and directors' test (OADT) might be best parked elsewhere. It has become the most political of issues, and each big new takeover threatens to see the league's executives tipped overboard by jittery clubs in furious pettiness for admitting another fox into a chicken coup already dangerously overpopulated with foxes. The question is where the OADT goes. The Football Association — long regarded as a natural enemy for the Premier League — looks like the best place.

It would need true independence, including from a British Government now addicted to the threat of intervention. Even Tracey Crouch MP, author of the government's fan-led review, which is subject to all sorts of political weather, has been notably vague on whether her proposals might have stopped the PIF takeover. As sport, and football becomes the target anew for sportswashing, the OADT seems too big for the Premier League where the executive is always at the mercy of the clubs over which it tries to rule.

Looking back on its own battles with the Big Six and their breakaways, the league will view the PGA Tour's current crisis as a similar fight for survival. The tour's biggest talent is being targeted and its future is resting on, to no small degree, solidarity from its European Tour rival. In essence, the Premier League governs only by building alliances within its members to defeat other member alliances. The fall of the Super League has strengthened the hand of the 14 outside the Big Six but the power dynamics never stay the same for long.

This week, for example, the Premier League clubs agreed to sign up to the new owners' charter that prevents them from, among other things, launching a breakaway. It is less about new rules — most were already in place when the Super League was hatched — more a commitment to the spirit of the rules. In short, they have promised that rather than just sign up the rules, this time they may even obey them, which says a lot about how some of them have regarded the rules.

Even so, it is not clear whether the Premier League's fragile compromise can take another takeover from a regime or individual with unlimited funds and a shocking human rights back-catalogue. The owners of clubs want to attract new investment, just not the kind of new owner that denies them a Champions League place or condemns them to relegation. In short they want to sell-up if they get the opportunity, but do not want a rival to acquire a rich owner that would imperil their own status. They want to obey the rules — it is just that sometimes, as per the Super League, they do not want to obey the rules.

The tension can be overwhelming and the self-interest unbearable. In the middle of it is a league required to market its product to broadcasters, mollify and discipline its members, assess their compliance with profit and sustainability rules and also judge the appropriateness of new owners. All the meantime under the threat that an unpopular decision will see itself come under attack. It cannot do all those things. If the Premier League needed reminding, golf has shown this week why it is also wise not to rely on one's own key stakeholders just to do the right thing.

— Telegraph Media Group