West Ham

Insideworldfootball

The debate about the future of the Olympic Stadium illustrates a very simple sporting truth about this country. The one sport that makes money is football, but only at the highest level.

All other sports, including lower league football, struggle. Any attempt to make money and market a sport other than football, particularly athletics, is extremely difficult and can result in failure.

The Government forgot this sporting truth and the result is that the future of the Olympic Stadium is uncertain and the taxpayer may end up paying for its maintenance.

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Evening Standard

Street wise: Tony Fernandes is delighted to have bought QPR. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

Tony Fernandes has been a West Ham fan since he was eight but the new owner of Queen Park Rangers is glad that his failure to buy the Hammers led him to Loftus Road.

We are in his elegant town house in the capital and the 47-year-old owner of AirAsia is telling me of his many efforts to take over West Ham stretching back five years.

“I tried before the Icelandic guys bought it,” he says. “Then, when they had all their problems, I was in a bidding war with David Sullivan and David Gold but the Icelandic banks went for them. We approached them again when they got relegated in May and I upset Sullivan.

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Evening Standard

No pushover: Football League chairman Greg Clarke at his Gloucester Place headquarters. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

The business of football may be very tricky – at the Fifa level even corrupt – but chairman of the Football League, Greg Clarke, is confident his style of management can deliver the goods.

Clarke has just completed a year at the top of the world’s oldest football league when I tell him of comments from Barry Hearn. “These are difficult times,” said Leyton Orient’s owner, who fears his club are threatened by extinction if West Ham move to the Olympic Stadium. “The game needs strong leadership and Greg Clarke is not providing that.”

Clarke, the former chief executive of Cable and Wireless, smiles and says: “There are some people who would much rather I jumped up and down and made a big fuss in public. I haven’t run public companies turning over tens of billions by being a pushover.”

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Insideworldfootball.biz

Leyton Orient will move to the courts next week asking for a judicial review of the Government’s decision to house West Ham United in the Olympic stadium after the 2012 Games.

Orient chairman Barry Hearn’s decision to go to the law could, if successful, mean months of more discussion on an issue the Government thought it had finally settled last month.

Hearn, talking exclusively to me in Qatar, where he was attending an International Sports Security Conference said: “Our lawyers,Mischon de Reya have been instructed to proceed with all haste to a full application of a judicial review.

“We will make a written application next week.

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Evening Standard

Holding role: Lord Moynihan at the BOA’s Soho offices, where the focus is on London’s Games. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

If Gareth Bale still wants to play in the London Games come the summer of 2012, then the Wales star will have no bigger supporter than chairman of the British Olympic Association, Lord Moynihan.

Last week, the Football Association of Wales spelt out that they will oppose any moves by their players to be part of the Great Britain side, fearing it could jeopardise the status of the home nations teams.

However, given that only appearance Wales have made at a major tournament was the 1958 World Cup, it is not surprising that Bale — his country’s biggest attraction — would love to be on the stage the Games offers.

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