Scotland’s most successful soccer club is trying to attract potential investors with an eye on someday playing in the English Premier League.
Rangers, the record 54-time Scottish champion, feel less loyalty to their homeland after being forced to start again this season in the fourth tier as punishment for a financial meltdown. Now the Glasgow club’s new ownership believes an exit route from the Scottish leagues is becoming possible as UEFA explores changing cross-border rules.
“The [Scottish Premier League] SPL told us face-to-face, ‘We don’t want you, you aren’t welcome,’” Rangers chief executive Charles Green said in an interview ahead of the club’s planned flotation on a London Stock Exchange market.
A planned revamp of the SPL and three professional divisions below could be Rangers’ chance to escape. The overhaul was announced during the offseason just as Rangers were going into liquidation with tax debts exceeding US$30 million.
“What we understand is that any restructuring will also revisit the taboo,” Green said. “A bit like, ‘Don’t talk about the war to the Germans.’ ‘Don’t mention Rangers and Celtic leaving Scotland.’ It was always ‘Shhh don’t mention that.’”
“I think the taboo of that is going to be lifted ... Scottish football without Rangers and Celtic might actually become more competitive within the remaining clubs rather than having these two monsters sat above them,” he said.
Rangers are due to float on London’s AIM market by the end of the year, and Green has been trying to persuade financial institutions that the club has a realistic chance of playing in the English Premier League.
“As a football club, if Rangers were in the Premier League only Manchester United would be bigger, because Arsenal haven’t got more fans than Rangers ... the fan base is so big,” he said.
However, the barriers to joining the world’s richest soccer league are also vast, with the English Premier League already resisting previous overtures from both Rangers and Glasgow rivals Celtic.
“I don’t believe the Premier League are hostile towards it because I think it’s a generalization,” Green said. “Speak to Manchester United. They are not hostile to Rangers joining.”
However, United disputed Green’s claims.
“We are not in favor of it at all. We are against it,” United spokesman Phil Townsend said. “Our view is it’s the English Premier League and should remain that way.”
Green pointed to the financial advantages of United being able to play at the 50,000-capacity Ibrox.
“Why would Man United want to play Southampton? Why, when they could play Rangers? Sixty percent of the Premier League don’t want Rangers. Of course they don’t want Rangers,” Green said.
“Why would Southampton, Swansea, Wigan, Aston Villa? Why would any of them want Rangers or Celtic in their league. Why would they? he asked. “It threatens their existence ... but if you asked the big clubs, ‘Would you like Rangers?
When Paddy Dwyer arrived in China in 1976, crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of him and his companions — the first Western soccer team to play in the country. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and on the brink of market reforms that would take the country from economic stagnation to explosive growth. “All we could see was lines of people running beside our bus, trying to look in the windows, to see their first visual of a white person,” he said. “It was all bicycles,” he said. “There were very few cars to be seen.” Dwyer,
A new NZ$683 million (US$404 million) stadium that was a symbol of Christchurch’s struggle to rebuild after a deadly earthquake struck the New Zealand city is to host its first match tomorrow in front of a sellout crowd. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 185 people in February 2011 and toppled or damaged buildings, including the city’s old Lancaster Park. The stadium, which hosted international rugby and cricket, and was home to the Canterbury Crusaders, was badly damaged and never reopened. It was bulldozed in 2019 and turned into sports fields, leaving the Crusaders without a permanent home. Government funding for a new stadium was
Some of Clearlake Capital Group’s largest investors are growing increasingly concerned about how much time the company’s co-founders are spending on sports investments as they have struggled to complete the fundraising for the private equity firm’s latest flagship fund. One of Clearlake’s co-founders, Behdad Eghbali, has been spending what some investors described as a disproportionate amount of time on the firm’s investment in Chelsea Football Club in recent months. Now, co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, are nearing a record US$3.9 billion deal to acquire the San Diego Padres. That personal investment by Feliciano has set off the latest
The Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburg Penguins on Wednesday put a squeeze on the penalty box in Game 3 of their NHL playoff series — with 11 players cramped inside their designated punishment areas. Each could have snapped a team photo after a melee broke out in the second period of the Flyers’ 5-2 win over the Penguins in their Eastern Conference first-round series. “It was a party in there,” penalized Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler said. The celebration extended into the joyous locker room after the Flyers took a 3-0 series lead. Penguins forward Bryan Rust slammed Travis Konecny to the ice behind the
RSS