#it's not that the rich British businessman previously common type of club owner isn't also an awful person

[fearlessstateofmind]

Ooh Great post!

Even Akufo's involvement asside I found the framing/casting of the people in this scene deeply fascinating as a choice the show made because it's also just no longer the case that most premier league clubs are owned by local-ish businessmen who have done well with massive social climbing types like Rupert is meant to be.

We are like two steps on from that reality having gone through smaller time russian oligarchs and Chinese and American businesspeople to the current situation where the heavy hitters are American hedge funds, middle Eastern oil companies, and more than one team that's effectively owned by a very rich gulf country...Rupert's type of rich is no longer the establishment in this space and hasn't been for like 20 years it's gotten a lot more wealthy and largely a lot younger. (The russian oligarch presence is alluded to but as an outlier amoung them?)

And, Rebecca's 'but remember when you all grew up as kids enjoying football' doesn't work at all in that situation - even to the suspension of disbelief on this working on people this was true for etc. Because the current ownership crop (in the premier League and increasingly in contental Europe and the lower leagues) largely didnt get into club ownership for this reason but purely because it was the most profitable business decision.

for ted lasso fans who aren't football fans, the akufo league subplot was pretty directly inspired by the april 2021 announcement of a proposed european super league founded by 12 of the richest clubs in europe competing in a closed group against each other plus 8 other teams tba.

the enterprise was cancelled very quickly after its announcement, but the differences between how that played out in ted lasso and the story as it played out in real life are.....hmmmm interesting choices to say the least.

the esl wasn't proposed by a cartoonishly villainous ghanaian billionaire. it was launched by a c-suite of white european and united states billionaire businessmen/team owners. - real madrid president florentino pérez spearheaded the proposal and claimed CEO position with andrea agnelli (owner of juventus), joel glazer (owner of man u), john henry (owner of liverpool), and stan kroenke (owner of arsenal) making up the rest of the proposed executive board. -these five are worth $2.3B, $13.5B (agnelli family), $4.8 (glazer family), $4B, and $12.9B, for a total of 37.5 billion dollars.

the esl proposal was formally announced on 18 april 2021 and by 21 april all 6 epl founding clubs had publicly announced their planned withdrawal from the league. this wasn't because of a rich white lady giving a heartwarming speech to a room of other rich people, it was because of a mass movement of working class fans denouncing the move as the capitalist greed and exploitation that it was, with some calling for fan ownership of clubs entirely:

i get using real events as inspiration and adapting them to fit a narrative purpose within the story, but i think it's worth it to know what the story line was based on, especially considering the specific racial and class changes that were made reframing the villains and heroes of this particular story.