FIFA, governing body of football hate the G14, the group of powerful European clubs who have their own agenda - most notably that players should be paid by their countries when on international duty, and that clubs should be compensated for injuries on international duty at far beyond the current rates.

FIFA want UEFA to "sort G14 out".  However the UEFA and FIFA policy of refusing to recognise G14 and talk to them, means negotiations can't even start - which is why the issue of compensation for injury is happening the courts.

FIFA and UEFA will hit at any of the G14 clubs they can, but have turned their attention to Arsenal as from 2006 Arsenal will have the largest match day income of any club in the world and the 3rd largest income of a club in the world.

One step was to get David Dein's powerbase in the Premier League reduced, and this was successfully arranged in June 2006.

The method used was to release information to the BBC the day before the election - information that suggested that Arsenal had broken rules by having influence over another team - in this case Beveren in Belgium.

The link between the club was old news - indeed Arsenal has had a link to the web site of Beveren on its web site for years.  The loan Arsenal made via an intermediary to help keep Beveren afloat was also old news - not least because one of the people making the loan was the Arsenal manager, and it appeared in his tax return.

But the story was whipped up that Arsenal were going to be thrown out of the Champions League etc etc, and it lasted a day.

Indeed within 24 hours it descended into farce as FIFA told the FA to investigate the situation, and the FA meekly replied - "yes but what is the allegation".

Of course there was none - it was rather like saying, "this club has paid Henry money to score goals for them.  Investigate".   And the reply of course is "Investigate what?"

Clubs in different leagues have relationships - Chelsea are well known to have ties to Russian and other east European clubs, and premiership clubs are not slow to have built up links with feeder clubs.  Indeed FIFA quite likes this  as it is a way of helping the smaller teams.  You can't do it in your own country in case you are drawn together in a cup match - but beyond that, it is deemed ok - although having any control over a club would be a step too far.

We can expect more - if FIFA or UEFA were to go further G14 would declare independence and set up their own league (interestingly without Chelsea).  The fall out would be quick - a second division would be formed again outside UEFA - and UEFA's threat that these players would not play for their countries again would be meaningless - their championships without the best players in the world would be third division stuff.  The top teams would organise their own world cup, and at long last the old boys in the old boy ties would be removed from their rather pointless occupations. 

Last modified: February 23, 2008