Oh deary me.
A-League set to revoke licence of Gold Coast United owner Clive Palmer
Tom Smithies
The Daily Telegraph
February 20, 201212:00AM
THE A-League will shrink to nine clubs next season after soccer chiefs finally grew sick enough of billionaire Gold Coast owner Clive Palmer's behaviour to tear up his licence.
After Palmer derided the sport in a newspaper interview yesterday, he will be presented with an ultimatum to either stump up enough capital to guarantee the club's future for two years under a new, arm's-length management, or have Gold Coast's licence revoked at the end of the season.
With the prospect of Palmer choosing the first option regarded as inconceivable, a bitter and expensive legal row is brewing as furious FFA chairman Frank Lowy demands his exit.
Although soccer fans were left frustrated at the time it took Football Federation Australia to respond to Palmer's comments yesterday, it was made clear that he was no longer welcome in the game.
Capping a week in which Palmer had suspended his own coach and made a 17-year-old debutant captain, Palmer said: "I don't even like the game. I think it's a hopeless game. Rugby league's a much better game."
Calling the A-League "hopeless", Palmer warned he might sue in the event FFA tried to revoke his licence.
Nonetheless that is what will happen, barring a startling volte-face from a billionaire who has reduced United's operating budget to almost nothing.
Yesterday afternoon FFA CEO Ben Buckley described Palmer's rant as "out of order" and "a lack of respect", adding: "The comments are offensive to the players, coaches, administrators and volunteers who are the life and soul of Australian football.
"I remind Clive that as a chairman and owner of a club, he has obligations to the competition, his fellow club chairmen and investors in the other nine clubs, and to the game itself."
Though that was seen as a relatively mild response, privately Lowy was said to feel humiliated by Palmer's conduct and ready to face him down. A charge of bringing the game into disrepute seems unlikely on pragmatic grounds, and Gold Coast will be allowed to limp to the end of the season.
By that stage it is almost certain Palmer will be told that he has breached his licence on a number of grounds, including the refusal to pay two players, Peter Perchtold and Robson, the money they were awarded by an independent arbiter.
Bizarrely that arbiter is among a host of people and companies facing legal action from Palmer, whose disdain for soccer's governing body is such that an expensive and drawn out battle over his licence is highly conceivable.
Palmer could also walk away now, though it's believed every club owner has to deposit a bond with the FFA that would be enough to cover the players' and staff salaries until the end of the season.
With no prospect of a west Sydney A-League team being ready for next season to take Gold Coast's place, a nine-team competition seems certain especially as FFA's TV deal with Fox Sports guarantees only an eight-team competition.
But that prospect is highly damaging to the negotiations for a new TV deal now underway, with Lowy having predicted in November that it would be signed off within six months.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 6275219190
