Chelsea FC Buyers Reveal The American Takeover Of ‘The English Game’

As Chelsea FC looks poised to become the latest English soccer club to be owned by Americans, spare a thought for one of the first; Terry Smith.

The North Carolinian arrived at Chester City back in 1999, an era where the foreign manager was a new-fangled concept to the ‘English game,’ let alone the idea a club could be owned by someone from overseas.

It started well enough, fans of North West England’s perennial strugglers greeted Smith, a former American Football player, enthusiastically when his takeover saved the club from extinction.

Before he arrived there was a real threat the club would not participate in the league that season, it took assurances from Smith and his fellow American investors to the Football League for Chester to compete

When asked why he’d bought a club in the fourth tier of English soccer the former New England Patriot reserve list player told local press: “Along with my fellow investors, I have been looking to break into various sports and, because we are establishing ourselves in England, we decided it must be football.

“We have been looking at a number of clubs, although we’ve been watching the situation at Chester closely for the last month and we really like the city.”

Unfortunately, the honeymoon didn’t last long.

Although his coaching experience had come entirely in the American brand of football, as manager of Manchester Spartans and then the Great British team, it didn’t take long for Smith to decide he was the man to manage the club and lead Chester City from its position at the bottom of England’s lowest professional division.

“All coaching is 90 percent the same, regardless of the sport,” was his explanation to reporters at the time.

Often seen sporting a baseball cap and armed with a clipboard, NFL coach style, Smith used American Football terms and, with the team struggling under his leadership, soon faced a mutinous fan base.

A chaotic season finished with the team relegated from the Football League all captured in a documentary called ‘Chester City: An American Dream.’

The program brought Smith’s time at the club to a wider audience and has ensured that the legend of the bizarre episode remains to this day

Years after he’d departed, English soccer viewed Smith as an example of how those on the other side of the Atlantic just didn’t understand the ‘English game.’

It’s a notion that has held firm over the years.

Despite being meteorically better qualified to be the manager of Swansea City than Smith was of Chester, Bob Bradley faced a level of derision and criticism that it’s hard to imagine a coach from a ‘soccer nation’ encountering when he was appointed.

Even today, the trope of the Americans misunderstanding soccer remains so strong Apple built a hit TV show, Ted Lasso, on the premise.

Leeds United might have an American coach in the form of Jesse Marsch, but he is constantly forced to address the “stigma” coaches from the US have and deal with repeated Ted Lasso comparisons.

But, while Smith’s reign in the dugout failed to be a forerunner for more of his compatriots getting jobs in English soccer the opposite has been true in the boardroom.

When it comes to English club ownership having Americans in charge is often seen as desirable.

Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal already belong to people from the other side of the Atlantic.

And now Chelsea’s shortlist of prospective owners is made up of; the part-owner of the LA Dodgers Todd Boehly, a consortium backed by Josh Harris and David Blitzer of the Philadelphia 76ers, Chicago Cubs proprietors the Ricketts Family and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca.

The irony is that, just like Smith, the qualifications all these prospective buyers possess lie in their American sports experience.

But how did it get to the point where the majority of England’s most powerful clubs are owned by Americans?

How the Americans won

If Terry Smith was the ill-fated pioneer of American takeovers in English soccer, the Glazer family were the colonialists.

The greeting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers owners got when they pitched up at Old Trafford as the prospective owners of Manchester United couldn’t have been more different from the positive reception Smith received down the road at Chester, but it last lasted far longer.

It was nearly 17 years ago that Joel, Avi and Bryan Glazer left their first game in police vans as 300 angry fans blocked the exits chanting “die, Glazer die.”

Few would argue that, in the nearly two decades that have passed, the Americans have won the fanbase round, but what they have indisputably demonstrated is the commercial potential of English soccer to the US sports investor.

The lack of regulation in England compared to the heavy restrictions in US-sport was embraced by the Glazers and it helped them turn Manchester United into a corporate juggernaut.

So successful have the family been at creating a revenue-generating machine, that the team’s on-field struggles during the second half of their tenure have failed to stop this exponential growth.

These successes paved the way for Fenway Sports Group to take over Liverpool FC and for LA Rams owner Stan Kroenke to become the main shareholder at Arsenal

Not that the business-first mindset, that these owners are known for, is embraced by everyone.

Kroenke and the Glazers face near-constant criticism by their respective fanbases for lacking ambition and prioritizing profit.

But, more broadly speaking, American owners have become a lot more palatable to English soccer in the eyes of journalists, other club owners and the governing bodies.

This is because, in a sport where unsustainable spending threatens the future of many clubs and owners with ties to regimes with questionable human rights records are accused of using soccer to launder their reputations, having someone who prioritizes profit is a lot safer and easier to handle.

Ultimately, the reason there are so many American owners in English soccer is that the communities these teams represent no longer have a say in who runs the club.

When Terry Smith arrived in Chester he knew he needed to win over the locals, that it was essential to success.

Chelsea’s buyers don’t even need to give a second thought to that.

The Chelsea Supporters Trust might have released a statement expressing concerns over the Ricketts family taking over the club, but the truth is they will be powerless to stop them from doing so.

A throwback to the power of fan action came when protests hastened the European Super League’s demise. But it was telling that the protests at Arsenal and Manchester United over their ownership failed to have anywhere near the same impact.

That plan, to remove the element of risk from European competition, might have failed, but it’s not the end of that battle.

With more American owners establishing themselves across the continent, as well as in England, the likelihood is that they’ll be more efforts to turn European soccer into something that resembles the NFL or NBA.

So it may well be it’s Terry Smith who has the last laugh.