Originally posted by HL
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The issue for the English is that they can't have their "cake and eat it too", i.e. wanting foreign investment dollars without giving the owners their due control. They have to change the model and make football a special category of business if that's where they want to go. The Germans have a 50+1 model, where no investor can own enough shares to ever take control of any football club, essentially, Germany has established football as a protected business category.
So, if England's fans want a say, legislation must be passed to create a special category of business for football, which will surely create legal and financial problems. But the one thing that governments have that will make any business person take their marbles and go home, is taxation. So it is possible that they tax football clubs differently, which would make it unattractive to investors who run their clubs for a shareholder profit motive without community representation and investment. That may be one way to put control in the hands of the communities.
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