The 2025/2026 title race in the Barclays Wealth 888 British Soccer League went right down to the wire.
Abu Dhabi United withstood the late surges of Ladbrokes Life Celtic, Shoreline Energy Evertonian Toffees, Bet365 City and Key Sports/Legion Bromwich Albion to win their second consecutive title while, despite there being no relegation, the kudos of avoiding the bottom three positions was not experienced by Sports Direct Rangers, Kroenke Sports Gunners nor the Fenway Koppites.
This, the third edition of the Barclays Wealth Circus, was the most successful one yet in terms of profits, revenue streams and asset-stripping - Stan Kroenke took £21m out of his team with no invoices while the Glazers, Dermot Desmond and Mike Ashley took similar amounts out of their franchises.
With the average attendance in the league being just 2,472, the underground betting returns and global merchandising provided the majority of this financial take...
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In summer of 2015 the European Club Association (ECA) under the vice-like grip of chief executive and chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge pushed through significant changes to the UEFA governance model giving member clubs of the ECA far greater control of the European game and, as a necessity, markedly increasing the insider trading and matchfixing in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League.
Michel Platini helped to energise this breakthrough.
Unfortunately, the parallel power battle for control of FIFA meant that it became public knowledge that a £1.35m suitcase of money had passed between Sepp Blatter and Mr Platini without rhyme, reason or receipt.
This was obviously a major spanner in the works for German control of the European game.
The Deutscher Fußball-Bund (DFB) had previously gained the rights to the 2006 FIFA World Cup by handing over a non-invoiced £4.9m to the black hole of FIFA finances so the slush payment to Platini was seen as an issue of reputational management.
A meeting was called and the outcome was a bifurcation - Rummenigge saw nothing wrong with Platini's collection of brown envelopes (nor with the VW emissions scandal nor the rape of Greece by the Troika nor the close relationships between certain DFB teams and pharmaceutical companies).
Greg Dyke of the English FA (now disbanded) on the other hand realised that the murky prints of English corruption would surface if Platini decided to spill the beans and so his initial unilateral support for Platini becoming the next president of FIFA became nuanced and eventually "suspended".
With the benefit of hindsight this may now be seen as a pivotal tipping point in world football - the ECA took over UEFA, the British teams withdrew to set up the Barclays Wealth Circus and FIFA - under the control of human rights abuser Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa - based all subsequent World Cups in Offshore Financial Centres, OPEC nations and countries with close links to the underground betting markets.
The rest is history.
But, as ever, there is one curious throwback to the old days of corruption - the International Football Association Board (IFAB).
Responsible for setting the Laws of the Game, IFAB is under the control of the Barclays Wealth Circus (who took over the reins after the termination of the English and Scottish FA's, the imprisonment of Greg Dyke and Stewart M. Regan and the merging of the English Premier League and the Scottish Professional Football League).
As a result Barclays are able to decide the manner in which sport is played globally and Barclays Wealth still stand bravely against the introduction of video technology to aid the referees and match officials.
So, in some small way, all of global football still moves as one in the control of integrity by the now anonymised individuals who officiate matches from private match centres away from the ground, relaying their match decisions by screen to the 2,472 people in the stadium and the thousands more watching in betting shops and casinos worldwide as well as online after the bankruptcy experiences of BT Sports and Sky Sports following overpayment for television rights for a compromised product.
Everyone is a winner.
Apart from the game.
Football is no longer merely fixed, it is fecked.
© Football is Fixed 2006-2015
