Fit and Proper Persons

The Lies and Fall of Owna FC

James Cave, Martin Calladine

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing
• eBook ISBN:
  9781801502092
• Year: 2022

In 2019, an app called OwnaFC hit the market promising football fans the chance to buy and run their own club. Just a few months later it collapsed, leaving customers hundreds of thousands of pounds out of pocket. Fit and Proper Persons tells the story of the business that was supposed to revolutionise the game, the people who lost out and the violent consequences suffered by those who tried to hold OwnaFC to account. The book uncovers how poor regulation and the financial structure of English football make clubs easy prey for unsuitable owners and how, time and again, the fans are left to pick up the pieces. With the aborted launch of the European Super League, there is finally widespread recognition that billionaires, venture capitalists, broadcasters and tech businesses must no longer be allowed to dictate the future of the game. Fit and Proper Persons is a powerful exposé of the state of football and a call to properly protect clubs and to involve the people who really love them - the fans - in how they are run.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• 1. Vive la révolution
• 2. A football-shaped hole
• 3. A childhood dream
• 4. Beware of geeks bearing gifts
• 5. Stuart Harvey AFC
• 6. All to be revealed
• 7. The owners of last resort
• 8. Aggressive, intimidating, abusive or unprofessional
• 9. Another brick in the arch
• 10. The bones in my face
• 11. Daniel
• 12. The unfailable test
• 13. Fail again. Fail bigger
• 14. The Wider Interests of Football Limited
• 15. More money than sense
• 16. A modern-day Michael Knighton
• 17. He’s taken us as far as he can
• 18. Not a single fuck is given
• 19. We will come back better prepared
• 20. Be more than a fan
• 21. I regret to inform you
• 22. That’s what football is all about
• Endnotes