⚽️ The Incredible Demise of Reading Football Club

The Long Play is levelling up week-by-week.

I’ve released 40 shortform videos to date and my biggest struggle as a creator is not having enough time in a 60second video to:

• Get sufficient detail to the topic

• Maintain a flow to the content

• Keep it entertaining

To counteract this I released my first two longform videos this week to YouTube. Both topics are very intriguing to me so I made two detailed videos about them both.

Ironically, they both centre on overseas ownership of English football clubs and todays newsletter is on the same topic. Last week I saw crazy scenes at the Madejski Stadium Select Car Leasing Stadium where thousands of Reading fans rushed the stadium DURING a match in protest.

I often make jokes about Everton Football Club being the worst run club in the country but I’ve got a humdinger for you today.

Strap in, today I speak about Reading Football Club and their owner Dai Yongge.

Check this video out 😭

This was in the 16th minute of Reading’s Match with Port Vale last week.

The match had to be abandoned.

Fans of Reading Football Club are so fed up that they began protesting against their owner, Dai Yongge, the chinese multi-millionaire to the highest level yet,

Dai Yongge took over the club in 2017. His investment was announced in May 2017 to a buoyant Reading faithful at the then Madejski stadium. Since then, the ownership from Dai has been nothing short of a complete disaster.

Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) outside of the lower leagues permit clubs to lose £13m pre-tax every year. In the five years to June 2022, Reading have posted Pre-tax losses of £146m!

As a result, the timeline of events has been dire:

• November 2021: Six points deducted for failing to meet PSR rules

• October 2022: Failure to pay player wages

• November 2022: Failure to pay player wages… again

• April 2023: Six points deducted for failure to pay player wages!

• May 2023: Reading relegated to League 1 (for the first time in 22 years) largely due to their points deduction

• August 2023: One point deducted (Reading started the new season on negative points)

• September 2023: Three further points deducted as Dai was instructed by the Football League to put 125% of Reading’s expected wages into a holding account as a guarantee… he didn’t do it

It doesn’t end there. As a result of failing to pay company taxes in a timely manner, Reading have been placed on a transfer embargo for many years. They have not signed a player for a fee since June 2020!

They also made Andrew Sparkes the assistant manager and Eddie Niedzwiecki their director of player development redundant a few weeks ago and also expect to sell a few of their key players at lower-than-market-value to generate income.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like this before.

When I was reading into this topic I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Until I learnt that Dai Yongge and his wealthy family have struggled to get money out of China for years due to very tight capital controls from the CCP back in China.

However, this has been a thing for many years and doesn’t wholly provide an excuse that Reading fans are willing to accept.

Especially as it was perfectly fine when he spent £120m to buy the club seven years ago!

They have called upon the English Football League to force Yongge into selling the club, but that cannot be done due to constitutional laws behind the EFL.

Their best bet is for Yongge to accept a bid to sell the asset to save any further turmoil but so far there hasn’t even been a hint of any talks of a sale.

Infact, there hasn’t been a hint of anything. In the last 4 years of his ownership Dai Yongge has never conducted a public interview. Never spoken to the media. Never spoken to the fans.

A crazy turn of events for one of England’s most famous clubs.

Also a stark reminder that foreign ownership is not all it’s cracked up to be sometimes.

@moorrgs

an app that tracks all your flights 💅🏼 season 3 ✅ #tennistour

I leave you this week with a great TikTok from the girlfriend of World #12 Tennis player Taylor Fritz.

She posted this vid on TikTok showing the amount of travel she did in 2023 as a partner to a top tennis player in the world.

Alot of mileage! The side of sport you don’t often consider.

Speaking of TikTok, I crossed 1000 followers over there last week.

Thank you to you if you made it this far and have interacted with my content.

Salud.