New York Times on Queens Park Rangers!
Fans Bewildered as Agents Run Club
By ROB HUGHES International Herald Tribune
The way soccer has run its business over the past two decades - with cash draining straight from the television windfall into the pockets of players - it seemed only a matter of time before players, or their agents, became the buyers of the clubs themselves.
A ridiculous fantasy?
There is an English club fallen on hard times called Queens Park Rangers. Like many a European club, QPR floats around the borders of financial ruin, paying out more than it takes in.
Currently, it is owned by business consortiums based in Monaco. The club's debts include a loan of £10 million, or $17.67 million, with interest at £1 million per year, from a Panama City lender to prevent other creditors, notably the British tax authorities, from taking over the club.
The day-to-day running of QPR, which is based in West London, is conducted by Gianni Paladini, a onetime Italian agent to players. Another former agent, Antonio Caliendo, is in the wings apparently in line for his turn as chairman.
Carlos Dunga, who captained Brazil to the 1994 World Cup title in Pasadena, is on the board looking after the interests of Barnaby Holdings, one of the consortiums involved. As a player, Dunga was always where you expected to find him - the hard man and enforcer in midfield. As an administrator he is invisible. He lives in Japan.
Are you still with me?
The money men are in Monaco, the Italians are in the boardroom, the Brazilian is on the telephone, and the team is struggling through a season of mediocrity in the second tier of English soccer.
Soccer and its clubs are no longer the preserve of the fans or the community. The three main clubs of West London are all in foreign ownership - and all happen to occupy what would be valuable real estate land if the stadiums were shut down.
Chelsea, as anyone remotely familiar with soccer knows, is the domain of Roman Abramovich, ....Further down Fulham Road you reach Craven Cottage, Fulham's quaint ground. ....
So into this scary triangle of multinational ownership comes QPR.
In the mid-1970s, financed by a second-hand car dealer and with the team coached by Dave Sexton, Rangers were unquestionably the best team in West London. Later, when it was under the patronage of Chris Wright, a musical entrepreneur, the reality that soccer was unlike any other business struck Wright where it hurt.
"You can't relate what is happening here to pop music," said Wright, who made his fortune with the Chrysalis label. "There are a lot of pop stars - household names - making plenty of money through royalties. But they have to sell to earn."
"We have players on three- or four-year contracts earning £100,000 a year. They are not in the first team, Premier clubs don't want them, and they are not going to drop down a division. So they stay."
They stay, and they siphon any profits the club might hope to make.
Driven off by the tax man, the other creditors and the underperforming players, Wright moved his sporting interests to rugby.
To pay back some of what he invested in Queens Park Rangers, the next board took on the crippling loan with the Panama City company. QPR was between a rock and the hardest place: insolvency.
The Panama company twisted the knife and increased the terms to 10 percent per annum.
Who would want the ailing club that is a more-than-century-old institution in its own parish? An Australian entrepreneur came and reckoned he could turn the one asset the club has left, its Loftus Road stadium, into a home away from home for Aussies and New Zealanders.
His scheme was to lease the ground to the national teams of his own people, giving the players a base in Europe, where the best of them play. He shook hands on the deal and was never seen again in West London.
Soccer clubs are like Mr. Micawber; they always believe something or someone will turn up.
Enter, last May, the Italians. Paladini was first in, trading in his agent's license to invest £650,000 to buy a significant share of the ailing club. Caliendo - who once boasted that of the 22 players in the 1990 World Cup final in Rome, a dozen were "his" - followed suit.
FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, does not allow someone to control a club and hold one of its agent licenses. The Italians, saying they are in love with QPR, renounced their licenses. Not everyone loves the former agents.
Caliendo had a run-in with the Italian tax authorities in 1991 and was given a 10-month suspended jail term for alleged corruption. He was also investigated, but not prosecuted, in connection with the collapse of the Hellas Verona soccer club in 1992.
The past is the past, and the agents-turned-guardians are now in London town. It is, however, hard going.
Last August, days after stepping up to the chairmanship, Paladini allegedly was accosted by four men who held a shotgun to his head and forced him to sign a letter of resignation. He signed, but the police arrested and jailed four suspects and their alleged accomplices.
Last Friday, they appeared briefly in court and a trial is scheduled in spring. Meanwhile, a £500,000 installment of money owed to the British tax authorities was paid to prevent a shutdown order. Meanwhile, the team, alas, is losing, though the Italians say they will work the market for better players in January.
The faithful fans, some of whom put their own money into hiring players two seasons ago, stand like children with their noses up against the shop window.
"All we want is the truth," one member of the supporters' club said.
About what?
"How long do you have?" he asked. "We can't get straight answers to anything, from the future of the stadium to the day we might expect Carlos Dunga to put in an appearance at Loftus Road."
http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2005/12/21/sports/IHT-21SOCCER.html
Welcome to QPR REPORT - A completely unofficial and unaffiliated fan site focusing on G-d's Chosen Team, Queen's Park Rangers (QPR) FC. (Visit also QPR Report Messageboard and Follow on Twitter.) QPR Report accepts no sponsorship, advertising or financial contributions. In 2008, QPR Report was named as one of the top two blogs in the Football League
QPR Report Twitter Feed
Blog Archive
-
▼
2005
(77)
-
▼
December
(77)
- Additional Match Reports
- Post Match Comments re Game and re his Job
- Match Reports
- QPR Defeat Crewe 4-3
- No Jim Smith to QPR According to Paladini
- Team Lineups for Crewe vs QPR
- Dario Gradi on Holloway...Crewe's Varney on QPR
- Jim Smith Returning to QPR?
- Past QPR Managerial Speculation
- Crewe's Perspective
- Ex-QPR (& Chelsea!) David Webb Buys Yeovil
- QPR vs Crewe
- "The Top 20 Players Outside the Premiership"
- QPR reportedly set to appoint Jim Smith Director o...
- Langley - Cardiff Fans Spat at Him....Holloway on ...
- Injury Update
- The Chairman Speaks "QPR are now sailing in safe w...
- Cardiff's Jones Unhappy with Welsh FA for Banning ...
- Cardiff's Jones Unhappy with Welsh FA for Banning ...
- Cardiff's Jones Blasts Welsh FA For Leaving him wi...
- Ten Years Ago Today - 17 Year-old Nigel Quashie De...
- Langley's Pre-Match Comments re Cardiff
- Managers' Comments!
- Match Report
- League Table!
- QPR Beat Cardiff 1-0
- Tonight's Teams: QPR Make 5 Changes
- Cardiff Preview - Bean Talks
- Looking to Cardiff...Purse Set to Play
- Ainsworth on Brighton & Future Prospects
- Frank McLintock Approaching 70!
- Injury News Update
- Jamaica Reportedly Want to Play England
- Richard Langley Turns 26
- Other Match Reports & Comments
- Holloway's Post Match Comments
- Brighton Defeat QPR 1-0
- Brighton vs QPR - The Teams
- Brighton Look to QPR Game...Leon Knight's Brighton...
- Mark Devlin Q&A re QPR's Finances- Rereading QPRNe...
- Another QPR Hero's Birthday...Brian Bedford
- Stan Bowles...Almost 60!
- Rumours of Unpaid Bills & Non-Playing Staff Depart...
- Team News Update
- Holloway on the Brighton Game & Possibility of Pla...
- Q&A with John Hollins
- Tax Bill Update from QPR1st
- "Court Hearing" Update from QPR1st
- Queens Park Rangers' Situation as reported by the ...
- Holloway on Not Knowing What's Going on at QPR
- QPR Preview Brighton Game
- Additional Match Reports - QPR 0 Coventry 1
- Holloway's Post Match Comments
- Match Reports - QPR 0 Coventry 1
- Holloway on QPR Injuries/Selection Problems & hamp...
- Gnohere set for Ipswich Trial
- Paladini Recounts how he saved QPR from winding up...
- On this day.. Tommy Docherty's QPR drew at home to...
- or Ex-Newcastle, Spurs and England Forward Turns 3...
- Les Ferdinand Turns 39!
- Coventry Look to QPR...Stern John is Back
- Injury News Update
- 1 year ago...3 years ago...6 years ago...8 years a...
- QPR - Coventry: Coventry Perspective
- Shimmin Out for maybe Three Months....Furlong Susp...
- Four in Alleged "QPR Gun Plot" Have Friday Court H...
- Coventry Look to QPR...Seek First Away Win...and T...
- Defeat in the FA Cup for Ex-QPR's John Beck's Histon
- Holloway Bemoans Difficulties Posed by New Transfe...
- Marcus Bignot on QPR, Holloway & Criticisms of Hol...
- Ex-QPR's John Beck Profiled (currently at non-Leag...
- Gerry Francis Profiled
- QPR Reserves Lose to Gillingham
- In Charge of QPR: "Chairman- Gianni Paladini. Non-...
- Gianni Paladini, Marc Devlin & Bill Power on Unpai...
- QPR Report Returns: Some Old Postings Recovered
- QPR Report Resumes Anew
-
▼
December
(77)