• Friday, March 29, 2024

Sport

Why football pundit Gary Neville hates to see American businessmen investing in English football: ‘They just don’t get it’

Gary Neville (Photo by Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

By: Shubham Ghosh

Former England footballer Gary Neville has spoken out against the idea of US businessmen investing into English football and called it a persistent threat after Chelsea’s American owner Todd Boehly made a controversial remark recently.

According to Neville, the Premier League authorities need to unite against what he called “clear and present danger” and put into place a regulatory authority to keep things under check.

In a tweet on Wednesday (14), the 47-year-old said, “I keep saying it but the quicker we get the Regulator in the better. US investment into English football is a clear and present danger to the pyramid and fabric of the game. They just don’t get it and think differently. They also don’t stop till they get what they want!”

He followed it with a red sign.

In May, it was confirmed that the consortium led by Boehly and Clearlake Capital officially completed their £4.25 billion-takeover of Chelsea.

Neville believes that the American owners are less bothered about the league’s betterment and more about profits. His disappointment became all the more visible after Boehly’s recent remarks that Liverpool star Mohamed Salah and Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne are Chelsea’s academy products.

He faced a backlash soon after as many football experts and fans slammed him saying he did not know much about his own club’s history.

Speaking about Chelsea’s academy, Boehly said, ‘”We have one of the best academies in the world. So if you look at what our academy has developed, our academy has developed Mo Salah, Kevin De Bruyne, more recently Tammy Abraham, Reece James, Mason Mount, Trevoh Chalobah.'”

However, Salah and De Bruyne are not Chelsea’s products as Boehly suggested. While the former was signed from Swiss club Basel, the latter was brought from Genk, a Belgian club.

Elsewhere, the fans of Manchester United have also come up against their US owners — the Glazers family — following unsatisfactory results over the years. Neville’s complaint against American owners in the Premier League is also caused by the state of his former club.

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