A Qatar-based media firm has written to the Premier League and its clubs asking that the proposed takeover of Newcastle United by Saudi Arabia be blocked because of alleged breaches of regulations concerning broadcasting rights.
On the one hand, it’s a dry, legalistic sentence. On the other, it’s a sentence that makes you stop and wonder. When those original members of the Football Association met in the Freemason’s Arms near Covent Garden in London in December 1863 to draw up a set of amalgamated laws, was this what they thought their sport would become? When mill-workers and stonemasons and railwaymen were arguing for the right to be paid to play football 20 years later, was this how they thought it might turn out?