First, there was Uncle Sam grabbing Ronaldo's shirt. Now, West Ham (another team in the English Premier League) who had already lost their shirt sponsorship when tour operator, XL Holidays went into administration are in even worse trouble. The Icelandic government took control of Landsbanki on Tuesday to prevent it collapsing and sacked the bank's board. That included Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson who was the chairman of the bank as well as chairman, major shareholder and primary source of funds for West Ham. (Iceland itself is now on the brink of bankruptcy.)
Overall, English clubs have about $3 billion in debt which is not a great position to be in especially since the holders of the debt are themselves in serious difficulty. Football Association chairman Lord Triesman believes the global credit crisis poses a "terrible danger" to clubs dealing with spiralling debts. He told BBC Sport: "They're beginning to see the edge of the hurricane - the art is to get out of the path of it."
Meanwhile, Leicester City (sponsored by Topps Tiles) are still top of Division One. As a long suffering fan , I had to share that.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The financial crisis as told through football
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2 comments:
When did Walkers Crisps stop being Leicester's sponsor?
Did you see that UEFA are considering banning clubs who are badly in debt from the Champions League? So no Man Yoo, Chel$ki, or Liverpool. More room for quality, well run sides like Villa
@richard: Walkers was a while back and, I think, that Alliance & Leicester was a sponsor after that. Both better (i.e. more associated with Leicester) than Topps Tiles.
I did hear that UEFA was considering banning those clubs and since AV now has the best manager that LCFC ever had (Martin O'Neill), I wouldn't mind them getting in and doing well.
By the way, the other team I support is Partick Thistle. They certainly won't be getting any Euro football any time soon hwoever many clubs are banned.
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