Friedkin Group completes Everton takeover, Manchester United cut steward bonuses
40:14 Share

Bada... Bada-boom! Sold! Huh? Just sold my car on Carvana. Dropping it off and getting paid today. Already? What, you still haven't sold yours? You told me about it months ago. I just... Is the offer good? Oh, the offer's great. Don't have another car yet? I could trade it in for this car I love. Come on! What are we waiting for? Ah, you're right. Let's go!

Whether you're looking to sell your car right now or just whenever feels right, go to Carvana.com and sell your car the convenient way. Terms and conditions apply. Decisions, decisions. Wait a minute. Are you still looking for cars on Carvana? Yeah. Decisions, decisions. When I used Carvana, I found the exact car I was looking for in minutes. Bought it on the spot. Electric or full diesel?

Decisions. Come on, you've been at it for weeks. Just buy it already. You're right. Crossover it is. Decisions decided. Whether you know exactly what you want or like to take your time, buy your car the convenient way with Carvana.

This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. With the Gemini app, you can talk live and have a real-time conversation with an AI assistant. It's great for all kinds of things, like if you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or brainstorm creative ideas. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today. Must be 18 plus to use Gemini Live.

Thank you for listening to The Price of Football. If you'd like to listen ad-free, get access to bonus episodes and have a monthly Zoom chat with me and Kieran, join The Price of Football Club today by going to priceoffootball.com. Hello and welcome to The Price of Football, the show that looks at the money behind a beautiful game. With me, Kevin Day, and Liverpool University's Kieran Maguire. I apologise if you can hear Kieran laughing in the background because that introduction was take two.

I've been up marking exams since six o'clock in the morning as well as researching the topics. Let's be honest, we're recording four shows back to back.

So, yeah, a bit more research than normal. But, yeah, tickety-boo, thank you. Yeah, probably slightly shorter shows than normal because it's a good bit of alliteration, isn't it? Slightly shorter shows than normal.

Because these are our Christmas and New Year specials, Kieran, because we don't like to abandon our lovely listeners. More alliteration. Over the Christmas and New Year period, the holidays, whatever you want to call them, I'm sticking with Christmas. Anybody who says the word Twixtmas is going to get a very hard, long Paddington's glare from yours truly. You don't need a word for it. It doesn't take long to say the bit between Christmas and New Year.

the lovely bit between Christmas and New Year. It is question days, Kieran. We do have a couple of news stories before questions, but I've got a question before that, and that is quarterfinal of the Carabao Cup, Kieran. No VAR. Discuss. Ludicrous. It does seem...

it's been inconsistency in that in FA Cup matches where a match is being hosted by a Premier League club, you can have VAR, but for the Carabao Cup, you can't. Now, it's

It could be that there's a logical reason for it. It's not as if they've got to install something new. All they need to do is to get – perhaps it was the PGMOL Christmas party on Wednesday night and they had nobody to man Stockley Park. Quite possibly, quite possibly. And then they also had nobody to tell the goalkeeper for Man United that there was no VAR. It's obviously –

He was insistent. The referee checked. He kept pointing at the big screen with his bad arm because somebody had jumped on his bad arm. Also, hats off to... He's not my favourite referee, Mr. Madley, but, you know, the Arsenal player fall down, referee blow whistle. That seemed to be the way the game was refereed all the way through. He might as well have given the whistle to Trossard, basically. Not that you could hear Trossard blowing the whistle for the amount of abuse he was getting.

from the away end simply because he used to play for a different team here and it seems a bit childish but there you are and we do have two big news stories kieran before this special christmas eve the questions pod and the first one as you predicted as mystic mcguire said only last week you said this would happen before christmas the rest of the press said no february the latest but you've got it absolutely right everton fans can probably sleep a bit more easily in their beds over the holidays

Yes, I think this is a step in the right direction. I don't want to come across as ITK, but I had awareness from a fairly senior source that the deal was going to go through. And I think we predicted when Friedkin pulled out about four or five months ago that don't say never when it comes to this particular deal because he had previous concerns.

when he acquired Roma. So that's where we are. The good news is that we now have an acquisition of all of Farhad Moshiri's shares, which are 94.61% of Everton Football Club. And on top of that, the club has issued some fresh shares to

to Friedkin and this is going to be additional cash. So that's going to allow the club to repay some of the loans and it looks as if

that the money which was due to the company called Rights and Media Funding, and I was always a bit twitchy about Rights and Media Funding, you know, to lend £150 million for a company which is, I think it was based in Altrincham or Knutsford, somewhere in Cheshire. It had, I think it had zero or two employees, and it appeared to be getting its money from businesses

BVI or Cayman Islands or somewhere similar and was then lending it to evidence. It makes you wonder what were the interest rates. So I think this is really positive. Again, I was talking to somebody

who has been quite open with us over the course of the last few months. And he was saying, well, yeah, the fear was that Everton's total interest bill was running to something like 50 to 60 million pounds a year. And for a club which has got

modest revenues because Goodison only generates less than a million pounds per match. Yeah, that was quite a sizable amount. So, yes, lots of positives. The new owners have come in. Certainly they've said the right things. There's a huge wave of goodwill from Evertonians as far as this deal is concerned. Farhad Moshiri, who has put in £750 million, right?

in various forms into Everton Football Club is going to walk away with less than 50 million. He might get 20 or 30. If Everton wins some trophies, there could be some step-ups, some add-ons to that. But he will have lost 95% of the money that he's put into the club. He seems to be, certainly in public pronouncements, he's smiling, which I wish I could smile if I lost 95% of an investment. But...

So all of that is good. The big question that we're being asked now, how does this leave the club when it comes to the January transfer window? And the answer is probably this.

no better off than before. It might be marginally better off if they can save some of the interest that would have been paid. So there's not an opportunity to go large as far as January is concerned. There was some modest wiggle room already as far as the finances of Everton were concerned. So they might be able to do deals

but there's going to be nothing significant as far as this particular window is concerned. So what we have is certainty. And there was a danger of administration over the course of the last 12 months, especially when 777 were involved. Then there was a bit of a farcical relationship with John Texter. I'm not his biggest fan. I'm not his biggest critic either, but he

He seemed to want to enjoy the limelight a little bit too much. So all of this put together, plus the fact that they're moving into the new stadium in another nine months, I think is going to make it a very relaxed and enjoyable Christmas for Everton fans compared to what could have been the case had either Moshiri stayed or 7-7-7 taken over.

I suppose from Moshiri's point of view, Kieran, it must be annoying to lose all that money. But when you're still left with 100 million, that probably takes the edge off it a little bit, I imagine. If I lost 95% of what I earned, well, NatWest Bank would be the big losers, basically. Any news on who the freaking group might appoint as chairman, Kieran?

They have appointed an executive from the Friedkin Group. So they've set up a new company. There's not a lot of detail about that. It's a classic company which was set up for one pound. Right, okay. So I will be monitoring that. I mean, the first thing they did, and again, I think this is smart business and it's good PR, was that they went to Companies House,

my little spidey senses started pinging away because I get updates on my company's house account and they repaid a load of the loans. So that looks good from a fan's point of view. They might have had to pay some interest penalties.

The Everton board certainly needs fleshing out in terms of people with experience. I think they'll be looking for a day-to-day operations person, but there is somebody coming in from the Free King group to assist on that. Well, there's a director of football that Man United have just released. He's probably sitting around twiddling his thumbs waiting for a job. Speaking of which, Kieran, we've reached a bizarre stage with our second news story that

Yeah, over the five years we've been doing this pod, there are certain clubs like Derby County and Reading, Southend, that we talk of time and time again. But they've been replaced by Manchester United, Kieran. It seems we're talking about one of the richest clubs in the world a bizarre amount of times on this pod. And

Again, there's another opportunity for them to email you with one of their angry missives because Jim Ratcliffe has done two things this week, one of which is good for him and one of which has annoyed the people of Manchester greatly. Yes, when Ratcliffe acquired...

Manchester United or his investment in Manchester United. He did that through a company that he set up in the Isle of Man called Trawler Limited. And that was his personal vehicle. If you took a look at the small print, there was an option for him to put in an extra $100 million before the anniversary of the acquisition of the club. And the deal went through on Christmas Eve.

which is ironic given that this show is going out on Christmas Eve. It went out on Christmas Eve in 2023 because it was about 3pm in the afternoon and

I'd been appointed by Father Christmas to go round and see my granddaughters just to check on their behaviour. And I do that in my Santa Claus outfit. So I was there with my bell and my sack and my Wellington boots. And Father Christmas was just on his way out, having checked that they were going to be good girls when the phone rang. And it was quite a few journalists. So I had to sneak into the spare room

at Step Daughters place and I was on Talk Sport Live. I think it was with Sam Matterface. Okay, you say Talk Sports Radio, but you and I both know quite often they like to do the interviews on Zoom. So there was me sanded up trying to have some gravitas, which I don't have a lot of to begin with, as you can imagine, dressed in the full outfit. So

The deal...

is now almost a year. Jim Ratcliffe has put up, put through that option. So he now owns around about 28%. So it's an extra $100 million, which has gone into the club. And I think this is the important thing, because when the takeover took place, the vast majority of the money went to the Glazers and the other shareholders. So Manchester United didn't actually get a lot of money from Ratcliffe's initially $1.3 billion.

So that is good from a cash flow point of view. We've been told that that money is going into infrastructure,

It sort of helps with PSR in the sense that it tops you up to the 105 million allowable limit. So, you know, that's fine. And that could have been a really good news story. And perhaps, you know, people would have said, well, you know, Ratcliffe is putting his money where his mouth is. And perhaps some of the criticisms about his other activities are perhaps too harsh. But what he's also done is that

He's cut the bonuses for stewards. And there used to be a steward of the match little award given and you get 50 quid. OK, so it's if you're on minimum wage and again, to be to be fair to Manchester United. And this was this decision which was made prior to Ratcliffe coming. And I suspect he wouldn't have endorsed it had he had it been after he came in.

that they have committed to the real living wage in Manchester, which I think is a fantastic thing to do and an appropriate thing to do. But he's saving £50 a match. Now, to put that into context, when you take a look at the cost to Radcliffe and Ineos, or whoever you want to describe them, for changing the manager,

That was £21.4 million. So therefore, this steward of the match bonus will pay for the sacking of Eric Ten Haag and the recruitment of Amaral, whatever he's called. It will take 17,120 years.

And we'll probably be at the FSA Awards chuntering about Barry Glenn winning. And we're still we'll be nominated, but we've not yet won 17,120 years. And you think, well, this is a classic case of penny wise and pound foolish.

And for me, it's indicative of a power trip by Iniesta. They can punch down. I've always believed in punching up, hold truth to power and all that sort of stuff.

But they can punch down against the stewards, against the staff in the canteen. They can take away all of the small benefits, which put a smile on people's faces and be very, very smug and self-satisfied. And yet...

21.4 million pounds to change the manager. We've got no idea how much it's going to cost them to pay off Dan Ashworth. You've got them flying out executives on private jets to tell Ten Hag that he's still got a job and then five months later sack him after extending his contract. It's a strange way to run a business.

This is a paid advertisement for Shopify. I feel like I'm missing out because it seems like everyone is either starting a side hustle or becoming their own boss. And you know what they're hearing a lot? It's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. Shopify is the commercial platform revolutionising millions of businesses worldwide.

Whether you're selling bespoke doggy treats or even yeast extract and cheese-related bakery products, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can successfully grow your business.

Covering all your sales channels from a shop-ready POS system to its all-in-one e-commerce platform. Shopify even gets you selling across social media marketplaces like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Full of the industry-leading tools ready to ignite your growth, Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your brand without learning new skills in design or coding.

And thanks to award-winning help and with an extensive business course library, Shopify is ready to support your success every step of the way. Sign up for a £1 per month trial period at shopify.co.uk slash priceoffootball, all lowercase. So go to shopify.co.uk slash priceoffootball to take your business to the next level today. That's shopify.co.uk slash priceoffootball.

With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. In the same way, Kieran, every horse race you see, there's a prize for best turned out horse. 98% of the people at the race course don't hear the announcement, not bothered about who the best turned out horse is.

But the groom of that horse gets, I think it's 100 quid. So it's a great little bonus. And if you were to take that away, people would be very... I just don't understand how you would justify doing this. I don't understand how he even gets to find out that there's a 50-pound prize for steward of the match. And why, upon hearing that news, he'd say, well, we've got to stop that. That's 50 quid. We're smoking up the wall. I just don't get it.

I just don't get the fact that there's nobody there saying to him, look, come on, boss, just in terms of PR, this is a ludicrous move. Well, if you're surrounded by sycophants, then you think that every word that you say is glittering with gold and people are stroking their chins. I was about to say chins. Chins. And going, oh, chins, yeah, you're a soothsayer. And, yeah, this won't have been made by Ratcliffe himself. It will be...

the sort of the storm troopers from Ineos who are going around and sort of they are the clipboard kids monitoring everything um and it's a classic case of they will know the cost of everything and the value of nothing okay let's get into the questions Kieran on this uh

because people have got stuff to do. They've got sprouts to pre-prepare. We need to get this thing done. I had, and I don't like sprouts. I was out with my lad. My lad's vegan. So it's finding a restaurant in Manchester. I was out with him a couple of days ago because I was up in Manchester. And he said, Dad, just try this. I know you don't like sprouts. Try a sprout bhaji. Oh, good grief, Kevin. It was transformational.

Absolutely amazing. So even at my age, I can be persuaded to jump ship on certain things. Well, you know what you need to do, Keir. You're probably making the mistake everyone makes in your parboiling the sprouts beforehand. Don't do that. Char them. That's what you want to do. Cut them in half. Put them cut side down on a very hot pan for a minute or so. Just get a char going.

And then do what you're going to do. That's properly transformational, Kieran, when it comes to sprouts. Right. Oh, well. Tips from the top. A little bit of sesame oil. Oh, my God. Anyway, Randy Eshelman has our first question today. Great name, Randy Eshelman. Yes. Randy says, I use the Flash Score app to follow live scores. And then rather sweetly does my job for me by going, other similar apps are, of course, available. Yes.

Well, I imagine Randy might work in broadcasting then. Within the app, says Randy, all relevant logos and badges are represented, minus the Premier League logo, oddly. Additionally, so are most player photos. On top of that, some matches even offer unofficial live audio commentaries and video highlights.

My question is, is any of this licensed? If so, what kind of license is involved? As the app doesn't seem to have any geo limitations. And if not, do the major and minor sports leagues simply allow it to go on? I took a look into this organization called Flashscore and it's based in Czechia. Is it now? No, I think it's Czech Republic. Czech Republic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's got 100 million subscribers. So you would assume that it has an official license. I took a look at the Premier League website, couldn't see anything. And as you rightly say, to not have the Premier League logo does seem a bit strange. As far as the unofficial live audio commentaries, what we are increasingly seeing

Sit-alongs where you've got somebody who is watching a football match on a screen and was talking the way through it. And I think for people like ourselves, we don't particularly see the attraction, but it is a generational thing.

And you have grown men who have realized that throwing tantrums to a YouTube audience or to a TikTok audience is actually a way of building up a huge following and huge sums of money. I've got the accounts of all of these organizations because Companies House is my friend, as we both know. And they're making millions out of it in some cases.

So I don't know the exact position as far as FlashScore are concerned, but they are involved in around about 30 different sports around the world. So I would have thought that they must have some form of relationship as far as the Premier League is concerned, because otherwise it would look...

very awkward for them if the Premier League was to take some form of legal repercussion. But I can't formally find anything. And ironically, I was out with my friend Paul on Thursday night. And Paul's a big Spurs fan, but he's old school like us. We'd originally agreed to go out for a meal with our wives.

And he says, if it's first in the diary, the fact that Spurs are playing Manchester United at home and I'm a Spurs season ticket holder. No, I said I was going to do it. He's a proper old school shake of a hand type of guy. But he was watching the match on Flash score and it had a second by second sort of text narrative as to what was happening. But there doesn't appear to be any formal agreement, but you would expect...

But from a legal point of view and from a reputational point of view, the Premier League will have signed off on this. 150 million subscribers. I wonder what their Patreon situation is like, Kieran. That would be a lot. Talking to people on screen, Kieran, keeping us up to date with scores, it's very good news to hear that Chris Kamara

is going to be back for Amazon on Boxing Day after being very unwell. And Chris Kamara is very excited about this because Jeff Stelling is fronting the Amazon football coverage on Bettson Day. So the old Chris Kamara, Jeff Stelling duo are back in harness. That's put a little spring in my step to learn that Chris is well enough to go back to doing that. So we wish him the very best. Cameron Thompson is our next question.

Cameron Thompson says,

They're the same clubs with the same pool of players and are presumably gaining the same sporting advantage in Cups as they are being sanctioned for in the league. Defeated Cup opponents will be losing out on prize money, gate money and potential TV revenues. So would they have any right to compensation or is it just bad luck? Very good question, Kevin. Again, one of those questions, a simple one that's never occurred to me. They get points deducted, but they carry on playing in the Cups.

Yes, they do. And part of the reason for that is that we have too many cooks in football in the sense that we've got three governing bodies, the Football Association, the Premier League and the EFL. I'm increasingly coming

around to the view that what the premier league has achieved to date is spectacular what it did was probably the right thing at the right time but there's no need to have a separate premier league in efl um i know that won't go down well because if you merge the two then jobs will be lost and egos will be uh impacted because you can't have two chief executives and so on um but looking

at this there are no financial fair play rules operated by the football association itself so therefore it cannot have a sanction does that mean that could you have a club in the seventh tier of football be acquired by a wacky billionaire who says we're going to win the fa cup this year

and signs up 20 of the world's best players to play for Curzon Athletic or something, and they enter the FA Cup and they could go through to win it. I think conceptually they could. Whether you could get those players together, whether you get a decent coach and all of that would be a separate issue. The Champions League is a cup competition and that does have sanctions.

So you can be banned from that. And as far as the Carabao Cup is concerned, that comes within the remit of the EFL. But I've never seen any indication of penalties for that. And the reason for that is because whilst it's run by the EFL, it is open to clubs from the Premier League. So if you had a Premier League club, which did a breach of the financial fair play rules, it couldn't be...

It couldn't be sanctioned by the EFL because the EFL is not entitled to see the accounts of the Premier League clubs. Again, it's an unintended consequence of creating this breakaway product and having an additional governing body within the domestic game. Do you know what, Keir? I've temporarily forgotten. Of course, it's the old League Cup, isn't it? The Carabao Cup. Yeah, yeah.

In that case, why are Premier League clubs in it? I was about to say that Arsenal should be kicked out, but I just remembered Palace were a Premier League club as well. That wouldn't work. I mean, that Curzon Athletic scenario is an unlikely one, Kieran, but what a sitcom that would make. Yes. Imagine that, episode one, Ronaldo and Messi sitting in the dressing room, Curzon Athletic looking at each other in a mystified fashion, trying to get hold of their agent, but there's no signal because it's a corrugated iron roof. LAUGHTER

Rhys has our next question. Just Rhys. You know, I'm not a fan of just one-name questions, but as it's Christmas Eve, and I'm in, of course, a very jocular mood. Rhys says, I remember reading that Wrexham said they were making a loss on the temporary stand they put up while they were waiting for a new stand to be built. Are temporary stands at football grounds usually loss-making, or do clubs normally make a profit on them? Well, it depends how temporary.

is temporary. As I support Brighton Hove Albion, who moved to a temporary stadium at Withdean, the Theatre of Trees, which was supposed to be for one or two seasons and turned out to be 12, that probably paid for itself. Although, what happened to the temporary stands at the Withdean? Brighton were so skint

was that in the summer they would send them to wherever the British Open Championship was being played, and Brighton's temporary stands were then used for the 18th hole or the 17th hole of the golf tournaments. And that's one of the, I guess, the upsides. It is actually a portable product. So a lot would depend, Rhys, on...

the the extent of this damage if it's if it's simply a case of and sometimes you'll see this at cricket matches as well you know if you get to the the quarterfinals of the semifinals I was about to say the Benton and Hedges Cup which really really was showing my age but I can remember going to those competitions um at Hove to watch Sussex and they put in temporary stands um

it does just about pay for itself if it's just seats. Now, if it's sort of a proper stand with a roof, which is then going to be knocked down in a few years' time,

then you're probably going to be losing money as far as the overall deal is concerned. But at least you've helped to develop that rapport and that relationship between the football club and more fans, which hopefully will carry over when the new stadium or the new development takes place.

You were there for 12 seasons at the Whip team? Yes. Wow. I would have said three. You were there for 12 seasons. Yes. Oh, my Lord.

What was the hospitality like? How did they back in the quinoa? It was a porter cabin. Was it really? Yes. How did they back in the quinoa van? Was there a chute to deliver the quinoa in, like a coal hole? I'm still chuckling at the idea of you dressed as Father Christmas talking to Talk Sport. I feel I should confirm for the benefit of our listeners that you are not dressed as Father Christmas as we speak.

Our final question on this Christmas Eve questions podcast, Michael Clayton. And Michael simply says, what's the latest on the collapse of Chinese football? It would be good to get your take. Could the same thing happen in Saudi or is that just wishful thinking? Well, I'll deal with those two questions in turn, Michael. What has happened as far as the Chinese Communist Party is concerned?

was that originally it was their aim to host the FIFA World Cup in 2030 or 2034. China has only ever appeared in the FIFA World Cup on one occasion. I think that was 2002. And they didn't trouble the scorers. I think it was three matches, three defeats, three...

And Chinese people are very proud, just like everybody is. So what the Chinese government wanted was, A, to host the tournament, and B, effectively set themselves a target of getting out of the group stage, getting into the knockout phase. And then from a national pride point of view, it could have been seen to be a broad victory. And in order for that to be the case,

they wanted what we sometimes refer to as a knowledge exchange, i.e. they wanted to improve their coaching, they wanted to improve their facilities to look at the latest in sports science. And one of the ways of doing that was to have relationships with European football, South American football, and so on through bringing people across. And that's what we saw in 2016 with the rise of the Chinese Super League.

There was then a rethink. The conspicuous consumption, players earning more money than anywhere else in the world doesn't really fit easily with some of the

philosophies of communism. And we effectively had a bit of a U-turn and a rethink. So players' contracts when they were expired were not renewed. They introduced a luxury tax on transfers. So if players came from outside of China to China, you had to go and pay an additional sum of money.

And the viewing figures were moderate because Chinese fans, like many overseas fans, they love the Premier League. They love La Liga. You know, there's huge fan bases for Manchester United and Liverpool and Real Madrid and clubs of this magnitude. So the game started to effectively slide away. And then there was a few cases of clubs going bust.

which didn't help things any further. And you put all of these things together and yeah, the Chinese super league is still tootling along, but it's not generating the level of interest. Um,

You know, we've got historic legacy issues as far as China is concerned in terms of previously we've had the one child policy. And from a parental point of view, if you had your one child, you wanted them to be a successful engineer or a medic or to go into finance.

And there wasn't the same degree of enthusiasm, I think, for the parents to say to children, we want you to go and train to be a professional footballer two or three nights a week that we sometimes have here in English cities. So I think there was very much a cultural issue on an individual basis. And there was a cultural issue as far as the state was concerned, both of which meant that

enthusiasm for football dropped. And of course, China has not asked to host the FIFA World Cup. And I don't see under President Xi that changing. I can remember seeing a photograph. It was Sergio Aguero, David Cameron and the Chinese president all smiling for a selfie at the Etihad. And that was quite prominent at the time. And I think that there's been a rethink. Right.

And what about the Saudi question, Michael Clayton's wishful thinking? Sorry, I forgot myself there. There is no way that this is going to happen in Saudi. Saudi is, first of all, it's committed to the hosting of the World Cup. So it's gone that much further along.

Saudi Arabia has a young population. That population wants to be entertained. Mohammed bin Salman says, well, football is the biggest sport in the world. So we have seen the approval for these new stadiums, which are going to cost an absolute fortune.

the hosting of the Qatar world cup, probably in the region of 120 to $150 billion. I think we could be looking at twice, three times that for Saudi Arabia in, in 2034. So there's also the issue that Saudi Arabia has qualified for probably five out of the last six FIFA world cups. And again, what they will be trying to do is, is to improve the, uh,

training facilities, opportunities for local players because their target also is to proceed from the group stages. A bidding war between China and Saudi Arabia for the World Cup would have been a good thing to see, Kieran.

Imagine the size of Infantino's erection if that was to happen. That'd be incredible, wouldn't it? If you have a question you'd like answered on the show, email us at questions at priceoffootball.com. Don't forget, you can follow us on Twitter X and find us on our YouTube channel. And if you'd like to buy our book, you can find details on our website, priceoffootball.com. We'll be back on Boxing Day with another short pod for you because that's how professional we are.

despite the fact we're recording this on the Friday beforehand. In the meantime, have yourself a Merry Christmas. If you're a member of the Price of Football Club, have yourself a very Merry Christmas. That's the sort of extra you get when you pay that £3.99 a month. We're giving that away, Kieran. We are literally giving Price of... That's just astonishing. Have a lovely time, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.