FootBiz newsletter #152: FSG's multiclub dream is over, so what next for Liverpool?

When Michael Edwards agreed to return to Liverpool as football CEO in 2024, he made one thing non-negotiable. FSG president Mike Gordon had already sent the email to staff explaining that the group was going to acquire another European club, and Edwards would be the man to run it. It was not a vague ambition or far-off dream; it was, as Edwards himself said, "one of the biggest factors" in his decision to come back.

Eighteen months, more than 30 clubs assessed and zero acquisitions later, The Athletic reports that FSG have scrapped the whole thing. No second club. No MCO empire. Just Liverpool… and an obvious question (or two):

Why? What happened?

The most mundane explanation — offered by Simon Van Kerckhoven, a former City Football Group consultant, to The Athletic — is simply that FSG is risk-averse and slow-moving as a group. FSG considered clubs in France, Spain and Portugal. They apparently discussed a partnership to invest in Monaco, per the same report. We know from other reporting and market chatter that they looked at Getafe, Malaga, Toulouse and Bordeaux.

At each turn, something gave them pause; debt structures, revenue projections, always something. Similarly, if you think English clubs get quoted a premium when they ask about players, you can only imagine what FSG get quoted to buy a team.

The best time to buy a club, Van Kerckhoven notes, is January to May when you can see where teams will finish and plan for the summer. FSG, apparently, could never pull the trigger fast enough to do that. A banker told me once that these club deals either happen very quickly or very slowly and nothing in between (which rings true in my admittedly limited experience) but if FSG aren’t capable of doing a quick one then the landscape may simply have been shifting too much for them to ever get anything done.

One FootBiz source with knowledge of Liverpool’s thinking suggested looking no further than the Crystal Palace case last summer. While you’d think that buying a club with this intention from the outset would mean structuring things correctly to avoid disastrous run-outs (as we assume Chelsea have done with their Strasbourg board) the Reds simply could not risk missing out on Champions League football and its gargantuan revenues because their feeder club had snuck into third in Ligue 1 or La Liga and been referred to UEFA or the Court of Arbitration for Sport by angry rivals. Part of the explanation, privately, for clubs no longer being able to drop from Champions League into the Europa League (or Europa into Conference) was because of the increase in MCO groups and trying to keep investment rolling in, but the risk of adverse outcomes has proven dissuasive for at least three ownership groups we know of.

Add those all up and having multiple European clubs becomes a lot less appealing.

There is another explanation that is gaining traction also. If you want to sell Liverpool — at the kind of valuation FSG believe the club is worth, which some observers now put at £6-8bn — a clean single-asset structure is a far simpler proposition for buyers than a sprawling group model with clubs in multiple countries, differing regulatory environments and complex MCO compliance headaches. The high-profile implosions of 777 Partners and Eagle Football Group have not helped the MCO sector's reputation, and I would still argue that the vertically integrated MCO model remains a utopian fantasy of investors that nobody has been able to execute. Either way, a buyer paying a record price for Liverpool does not necessarily want to inherit all of that tangled mess. They’d just be looking to buy a crown jewel global football brand without the extras.

The collateral damage from the decision is potentially significant and perhaps the most interesting thing in pure football terms. Edwards made the acquisition commitment a condition of his return and publicly admitted that. FSG have now publicly reneged on that commitment. Reports suggest Edwards is now reassessing his own future at the club, which would be a remarkable development given how much effort went into persuading him back in the first place.

It also raises broader questions about where FSG go from here. They are about to pocket up to $1.7bn from the sale of their Pittsburgh Penguins ice hockey franchise to the Hoffmann family. That is significant capital looking for a home. They will not buy another football club, apparently. So what are they building towards?

The answer may simply be: an exit. But the timing of that, and who the buyer might be, remains unclear.

For now, and for the foreseeable, it looks like Liverpool will in fact walk alone.

Table of Contents

• The doomsday clock is ticking loudly at Spurs

• Chelsea’s secret offshore payments

• Charlton sound alarm bells for English football

• Ligue 1 title challengers in fixture row

• Man United make formal PGMOL complaint

• Sir Jim’s boat row

• Khaldoon misses Wembley win

• UEFA blocks PL clubs bid for larger squads

• Argentina risk serious undercooking

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