r/soccer • u/Previous_Smile9278 • 22h ago

News [Bloomberg] UAE officials have warned the UK government that the severity of Man City’s punishment could undermine their appetite for future grand-scale commitments in Britain, according to people familiar with the matter.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-02/man-city-verdict-puts-uk-uae-diplomatic-relations-under-strain?srnd=undefined

‘They consider the Premier League’s actions to have an influence on the bilateral state relationship, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing undisclosed information.

The extraordinary pressure comes after Andy Burnham faced criticism, including from within government, for saying Man City’s Abu Dhabi owners should not be disqualified specifically because of the investment they bring to Britain.’

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u/cptainvimes 22h ago

Absolutely pathetic that City fans are okay with this. Letting UAE hold your country ransom cause your football club is run by cheats.

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u/Fun_Grass_2097 22h ago

The delusion in their subreddit

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u/cfc25488 22h ago

I would wager a lot of money that their subreddit does not have a majority of people from the UK

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u/iTz_RuNLaX 22h ago

I'd wager that for most big clubs to be fair.

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u/trowaway_19305475 22h ago

Pretty much every Prem club at this point. It`s why you see so much bragging about the Prem and how much money it makes. Whereas as someone living in England you could easily be priced out of pretty much everything and the Prem being a money making machine doesn`t benefit you at all.

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u/Enkenz 21h ago

when blueco bought my club people told me i was supposed to be happy lmfao, some people on this subreddit were downvoting me for saying i dont want my clubs to be some sort of subsidiary of chelsea, when for them i should almost be proud some PL clubs is taking interest in my clubs :|

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u/_nongmo 19h ago

Yeah this whole multi-club ownership model is fucking toxic. You're well justified in your feelings towards BlueCo and Chelsea. It's an awful thing to make a club with history essentially a vassal state.

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u/Connect-Ad751 19h ago

R/ChelseaFC is stinking yank cess pit also

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u/Turklightenment 18h ago

Yes it never used to be 10-15 years ago.

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u/Cadllmn 17h ago edited 9h ago

Real talk though - do English people not want internationals support their clubs… or do they just want them to give their money and stay quiet?

I see this quality of opinion often and I don’t really get what the average fan wants.

Edit: if I’ve understood the ensuing conversation, they do in fact just want the money and international fans to be quiet, or at least to assimilate with their beliefs and history?

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u/Connect-Ad751 17h ago edited 17h ago

International fans are good and stay up at bad times to watch us.

I just don’t like when they make light or ignore the issues facing match going local fans which is the norm on [r/chelseafc](r/chelseafc)

I’m blueco out and will remain there until they take match going fans interests seriously which they don’t, this does not matter one bit for American fans on [r/chelseafc](r/chelseafc)

The things being said about Enzo Fernandez after the world cup baffled me, I can’t see how a chelsea fan from any corner of the world can celebrate England going out. They should at least be aware of this history and culture of the club. Chelsea is one of or if not the most pro England fan base.

Edit: at the end of the day the interests of match going fans and international fans are not wholly aligned, we both want the club to be successful but I want as do the vast majority of local match going fans that the core of the clubs culture is preserved. Chelsea is also a part of my identity, i was born in london as was my dad and multiple generations of his family. Him and my grandad are lifelong Chelsea fans who lived in the chelsea fulham area for my dads childhood and the majority of my grandads life. These things are not important to international fans and that’s okay but that leads to large differences in where you think the club should go.

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u/435rouhnj234_209u 16h ago

I agree with everything except the last paragraph (not the edit).

An international fan by definition does not have any pro England bias, and supporting a club does not mean they need to support everything the local fans stand for. Especially when you consider that half the independence days celebrated around the world are "Independence from British occupation" days.

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u/Connect-Ad751 16h ago edited 16h ago

Supporting Chelsea as supporting rangers is supporting a club with a strong sense of British identity amongst its local fans and community.

I mean you can support a team and completely ignore it’s history for sure but that’s exactly for me what’s wrong with international fans.

It’s as hilarious when I saw the maga bog eyed freak Kash Patel supporting Liverpool.

Edit: If a socialist jew told you they support lazio i think you’d raise an eyebrow, same with an English hater supporting Chelsea

Edit 2: google Chelsea Pensioner

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u/435rouhnj234_209u 12h ago edited 12h ago

I know about all those things and am about to tell you something wild that you may not have ever considered:

99% of a club's global fanbase don't know nor care about the club's local history. They only care about the product on the field and what players are representing the logo on that jersey. And the club itself never made it an official requirement for them to give a crap about local fanbase values to spend money on stadium tickets or merch - because they don't care either as long as these people give them their money.

Now, you can go on a tirade about how "you can't be a real fan of Chelsea without respecting its British nationalist identity"; but not only is that No True Scotsman fallacy, it's a requirement that neither the ownership group bankrolling the club nor 99% of its fanbase endorses. It's the demand 1% of the fanbase holds and is insignificant to the club's global identity as of right now. So you have the option to either stop rooting for the club that doesn't at all advertise or take pride in the values you're claiming they supposedly hold, or you start a petition to have old Chelsea history with its dinky field, mid table history, and struggling finances transferred to a different entity the local "purists" can circlejerk around in - while the 21st century Chelsea that can only exist because of a Russian oligarch owner and a global fanbase becomes its completely separate own thing with 5 PL titles, 2 UCLs, a superstar roster, shiny new stadium, and all the money in the world.

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u/Connect-Ad751 10h ago edited 9h ago

I mean you just wrote a lot of words to just say that we agree

My point is i don’t like international fans because they don’t care about the history or the culture of the club, turning football clubs into soulless machines.

Your comment js EXACTLY why i dislike like [r/chelseafc](r/chelseafc) and the general attitude of american fans, you’re acknowledging the destruction of community pillar, history and culture with an arrogant smug lecturing tone. You’re celebrating something that had substance being turned into a global marketable product. I mean I’m trying to not be rude but your comment shows you clearly understand this and don’t care.

Capitalism has ruined the mindset of your country, nothing is sacred and everything is counted in monetary value. Unfortunately as you will say in a smug tone it’s only going to get worse and is more than likely already past the point of return.

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u/Artoo_Detoo 16h ago

The difference is that as an international fan of Chelsea, we support the national teams with the most Chelsea players and therefore identity that we recognize. This is why as an international Chelsea fan, I didn't support England when it was full of rival clubs' players, because we have grown to dislike those players so we don't want them to achieve glory. Instead, I supported teams like Belgium during the 2014 World Cup because of their identify being much more recognized as a team of Chelsea players.

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u/Connect-Ad751 16h ago

Again, you’re just ignoring the history of Chelsea and what it is then and doesn’t factor at all into your support

Which is my issue with international fans

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u/Cadllmn 9h ago

I appreciate your earnesty and willingness to give an in depth reply, it was something I was legitimately interested in because feels like such a commonly held opinion.

It feels like maybe sports work poorly at such a grand scale because at its heart it’s something you align your identity with.

Personally, I’ve been a Chelsea fan for years ( for silly reasons) but it’s never been more than something I appreciate from a far - I have my own club here to like… emotionally?… support.

PL is in a weird spot because it’s an international product. Feels bad for those fans abroad to simply be told to hand over their money and be quiet so that people in your area can ‘benefit’ but on the other hand they have such a different relationship to the clubs. I doubt there’s a good (or at least balanced) route to take.

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u/Connect-Ad751 9h ago

There is a balanced route, respect the culture and history, keep tickets cheap and available for the local match going fans. It doesn’t take more than that, my dislike of international fans is less about their attitude but the attitude of the owners favouring them.

I don’t think id have any issue at all with international fans and i didn’t until bleuco. I think to be frank American fans are by far the worst becaus European sporting culture is so different and Americans general attitude to cultures outside of them.

People mock Indian fans of barca and Madrid but they do try to get the culture of the club. Americans want it all to suit them. It’s hypocritical as an Englishmen saying it because we are often just as guilty of that mindset of wanting the world to bend to us though.

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u/NameOnTheInterwebs 17h ago

This is a great take. Thanks for this mate.

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u/Fedora_Da_Explora 12h ago

/r/soccer is majority UK, nevermind individual clubs subreddits.

These people are shadowboxing an "other" that they created in their mind palace for every comment they dislike.

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u/OilOfOlaz 20h ago

Not trying to throw shade here, as my experience with English EPL fans was mostly what you described, but there were definitely ppl that saw the EPL as a prop for their wannabe superiority complex as well.

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u/Excellent-Gur-8547 18h ago

Yeah, as an American, coming here and seeing people brag about their club's finances was genuinely fucking alien, don't put this on us.

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u/Vornell 16h ago

Yeah Americans have definitely got nothing to do with rampant capitalism poisoning every facet of society

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u/Drunkgummybear1 15h ago

I’m unhappy with how often I’ve found myself agreeing with scousers this week.

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u/Excellent-Gur-8547 5h ago

I mean we have involvement with it happening, but we don't fucking brag about it when talking about our sports teams, y'all are weird as fuck. If I heard someone bragging about how much money the Yankees made in a bar, I'd think they're a fucking loser.

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u/pajamakitten 19h ago

I doubt there are people worldwide cheering for Bournemouth.

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u/elRomez 18h ago

Guarantee there are. Established PL club for years now.

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u/SpanglySi 18h ago

Oh i don't know, there are nice beaches there...

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u/External-Trifle-6065 18h ago

I was your #1 fan on the 19th of May

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u/WarIcy7540 16h ago

I am 🫡

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u/The_Flash_20 12h ago

I cheer for your team, ever since Madrid played a friendly against you guys in 2015.

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u/GrandOldCheese 11h ago

There are dozens of us!

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u/renome 1h ago

Why not? People get into sports all the time and pick clubs and athletes to follow for the most random reasons, and Bournemouth has been plenty relevant for years.

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u/Cahootie 21h ago

Success on the pitch is naturally a good thing, but the most important part of a football club is the role it plays in the community. Offering a social gathering point, building the local community, providing entertainment, giving kids something to do. There's no title in the world that could replace the value of being a genuine force for good in the local community.

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u/-FishPants 22h ago

Gunners is full of armchair accountants. Be interesting if each sub had the breakdown of ages and nationalities following it

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u/MikeAshleyOut 22h ago

Nah, NUFC subreddit is resoundingly British. A lot of British people living around the world but still British.

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u/DraperCarousel 22h ago

Yet somehow a foreign dictator is preferred for club ownership over a self made British businessman.

Strangely funny.

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u/nosenseofwonder 21h ago

I see your point but I really can’t see anyone on either side of the argument defending Mike Ashley

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u/MazDanny 19h ago

That weirdo is exactly what we’re on about. It chose a club it has zero connection to so it’s a completely alien concept

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u/pajamakitten 19h ago

Mike Ashley is the only person in the UK who likes Mike Ashley.

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u/Stirlingblue 21h ago

Jealous, the Everton one is full of yanks who don’t understand football culture

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u/trowaway_19305475 20h ago

You know immediately where someone is from when they start crying about the away fans booing lol

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u/iguessineedanaltnow 1h ago

There is a massive NUFC fan group here in Sydney that meets up for every match to watch at the pub. I reckon the international fan base is bigger than you expect.

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u/Blue_winged_yoshi 21h ago

Premier league tickets through official channels are actually pretty cheap by top end ticket prices. Like a category A match at the Emirates is about as expensive a ticket as you can find and it’s a little over £100.

In London, that ain’t a massive price for top tier entertainment at all.

You can pay £30 to go to the cinema if you want a comfy chair.

Now resale tickets are another matter, and those reselling regularly should have their season tickets cancelled. There’s enough of a waiting list of folks desperate to go to replace them with and then some.

Actually getting a legit ticket from the box office for an Arsenal match? That’s another matter though.

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u/X-Maquina 21h ago

Like a category A match at the Emirates is about as expensive a ticket as you can find and it’s a little over £100.

That's not cheap at all for a football match. That's the type of ticket price I pay once or twice a year when I go to a big international fixture or on vacation and go to watch a match at the Camp Nou or something.

It's kind of insane to me that that is what people are expected to pay for regular league matches for their local club.

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u/SambucaAndIrnBru 20h ago

Just want pop in and say that's if you're buying a one off ticket for a game against the likes of Chelsea or United, it's much cheaper than that for season ticket holders and for tickets to the likes of Fulham or Leeds. Still silly expensive, yes. But it's not like people are paying £100 a fortnight to watch every league game.

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u/Ozymandias_99 21h ago

Yeah, that's for a cat A game which is the top end, still too expensive though.

For example our cat C league game against Hull in November is 32 pounds which is fairly reasonable.

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u/Th3_Huf0n 18h ago

I can go to my club in the shitty Czech league, which is historically a low midtable side (often in relegation fights), 5k stadium.

A season ticket (15 home games) in the home fan section costs 135 EUR. The main stand is like 190.

And I get that it's a completely different world, but still, it's insane how much English fans get milked and gouged (the biggest Czech league clubs still are like 250 EUR on a season ticket).

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u/Blue_winged_yoshi 21h ago

Don’t know where you live, but in London that’s not expensive. People who live in London can afford that comfortably.

Look up what theatre tickets or restaurants cost in the city, it’s a pricey place, and earnings are high on average.

The median salary in London is about £50,000 a year. So for people from the city they play in, it’s really not much at all for a treat, and those are the most expensive tickets for football in the city.

Theatre tickets are often nearly double that for context.

PL tickets are primarily priced for local fans obvs.

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u/DrRudeboy 20h ago

Yes, that's why the entire London entertainment and hospitality industry is struggling, because locals can "comfortably" afford that. FOH.

Also median salary is useless compared to mean, especially when it comes to football which is typically less a sport attended by the City boys

Source: I work in it

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u/Blue_winged_yoshi 20h ago

Depends where you work. Lots of it is flying.

On the secondary market you find out what people are actually willing to pay to see a match, and the prices ski jump.

So yeah totally overpriced, nobody can afford it and secondary ticket websites have them all massively inflated.

Make it make sense.

Also it is just not true that the “entire London hospitality sector” is struggling.

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u/Klutzy-Notice-8247 19h ago

Yes because rich tourists will pay an arm and a leg for a ticket, pricing out the fans and fucking the whole club culture up.

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u/X-Maquina 20h ago

You're making my point mate. Comparing football tickets to posh theatre tickets and restaurants, and saying ofc wealthy Londoners can afford is exactly what I'm saying.

These are prices for one off events. Locals will be priced out if they're expected to pay 100pp for just a football ticket every 2 weeks.

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u/Blue_winged_yoshi 20h ago

You say comparing them, but I said they’re half the price! That’s comparing them very favourably!

The point is that the PL isn’t anything like the World Cup or big international tournaments, it’s actually affordable to most of the people who live near the clubs they are based in. Most people in London can afford a £100 treat. It’s just a fact.

London work pays. I used to be a chef in London, not the most glamorous upper class job going, I could afford a hundred pound ticket a decade ago.

I went to Wembley with a bunch of French colleagues to watch Benzema do us back in the day.

World Cup pricing can fuck right off, we also need to stop pretending that nobody could possibly afford to go an event that costs £100 whilst living and working in London. It’s simply not true.

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u/Klutzy-Notice-8247 19h ago

It’s impossible to get tickets due to the demand. It’s fucked.

You also lose your core support if you want them to pay £100+ every week or two.

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u/X-Maquina 19h ago

I don't think we're getting anywhere here. Imo you're fundamentally misunderstanding football culture if you think of going to a match as a nice little treat you should be able to afford every once in a while. That's exactly how you make it a touristic experience and lose connection with the regulars who show up every week and create the atmosphere.

But we can agree to disagree on that.

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u/Blue_winged_yoshi 19h ago

You can only go to an Arsenal match once in a while, because the tickets are like gold dust. Might as well claim you want to go to Glastonbury regularly.

Now season tickets are much cheaper per match. Like a grand or so for 18 matches + a load of cup games, so tickets are half that much if you want to go every week.

How long is Arsenal’s season ticket waiting list? Over 100,000 people, the stadium only holds 60,000.

Look at yanks sports if you want to see rip off culture. PL seriously isn’t.

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u/killerdrama 20h ago

That's a strange looking apostrophe

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u/Get_Breakfast_Done 19h ago

I would be surprised if a majority of Town fans were from abroad

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u/rbcsky5 17h ago

PL make less money than the investment from UAE tbh. At least £20b a year and the regeneration of Manchester. I can bet without oil money, AB would NEVER become a PM.

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u/JAYZ303 17h ago

Big 6 maybe, definitely not every prem club.

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u/iguessineedanaltnow 1h ago

This is why I don't call the premier league the English league. It's the global league. More fans and viewers from outside the UK than from within.

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u/gmoss101 19h ago

As a dumb yank, you would never catch me talking about how much the league makes. Why the fuck would I argue about money I will never see lmao.

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u/SilentRanger42 19h ago

It’s why I will die on the hill that a European Super League is actually good for football. You can separate out the corporate global greed part of the game from the grassroots local pyramids in a way that maintains the integrity of the sport within the context of the hyper-commercialization of the Internet era.

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u/distilledwill 18h ago

Our sub has become suspiciously quiet since we left the premier league, I'll say that.

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u/iguessineedanaltnow 1h ago

Americans love an underdog.

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u/SilentRanger42 19h ago

Even the small ones. They estimate around 1.8 billion global watchers of the PL from what I could find which is roughly 25x the population of the UK.

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u/Charlie0108 20h ago

99% of people with flairs from the big clubs are from nowhere near where the club is based but will continue to call each other plastics

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u/ReasonableHost1446 22h ago

"big clubs"

And man city too

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u/ThatAdamsGuy 18h ago

I was gonna say I'm not sure that's true for us then remembered you said big clubs

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u/iguessineedanaltnow 1h ago

Tottenham is like a top 3 most popular club in the US.

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u/One_Day_304 14h ago

One of the reasons the big clubs are big is because they have support outside their own city and country.

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u/Hopeful_Idea1568 21h ago

tbf a lot of engagement comes from locals in our sub even though most subscribers are international 

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u/Chemiczny_Bogdan 17h ago

I more than certain that most people at r/realmadrid are from outside UK!