Kevin McCabe, the man who built the modern Sheffield United then lost it to a Saudi prince in a legal dispute, recalls Kevin Brewster as he discusses the lost local influence in the boardrooms of English football.
Brewster is a long-time season ticket holder at Bramall Lane whose family was shattered by the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017. His daughter Kelly was among 22 killed. Another daughter Claire and a granddaughter Hollie were seriously injured.
As he did what he could to help the family put their lives back together, McCabe arranged for their seats to be moved from the Kop behind the goal to a suite in the John Street Stand so Hollie could avoid the busiest and noisiest part of the ground.
There was more room for her wheelchair and there was match-day hospitality, but once co-owner Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad al Saud won a High Court case to take full control, Brewster received a call from the ticket office to say match-day privileges handed out by McCabe were being withdrawn.
‘I don’t think Abdullah means to offend, he just doesn’t have a feel for it,’ says McCabe. ‘Kevin Brewster went through hell and any football club worth its salt would look after one of its own in those extreme circumstances.
Former Sheffield United co-owner and chairman Kevin McCabe fears the club has lost its ‘local touch’ under Saudi direction
‘Sheffield United is a working man’s club, that’s something to be proud of and the duty of the owner is to look after those people who come to support the team. You can’t guarantee results but you can try to get it right for them. I don’t think some of the foreign owners get it. Look at ticket prices.
‘Sheffield United have been deducted points for not paying other clubs, I would never have let that happen. It’s something to be ashamed of but I don’t think they care. I don’t think they know what they’re doing.’
The top two tiers of English football are now mostly in the hands of foreign owners. In the Premier League this means sovereign wealth funds, American sports tycoons and hedge fund billionaires attracted by the success of the competition for their own ends, be that sportswashing or personal profit.
The Championship is mostly stacked with owners from overseas full of those gambling to reach this. Local owners are in decline. Delia Smith is the latest to go, selling her controlling stake in Norwich City to Americans.
Some of these new waves of owners have taken great care to nourish their club’s community links. Others, not so much. There have been good, bad and indifferent foreign owners just as there have always been good, bad and indifferent local owners.
‘A lot of the new owners, because I don’t think Abdullah is on his own, can’t see what they’ve got,’ says McCabe. ‘They only see the first team. It’s a narrow vision. A football club is an institution for the city like a university.
‘United and Wednesday are of massive importance. They serve Sheffield. They’re part of the whole framework for the fourth biggest city in England. You can never get away from that.’
McCabe was the epitome of a local owner. He was born in Sheffield and raised in Sharrow, a district which includes Bramall Lane, built a fortune in commercial property, joined Sheffield United’s board in the 1990s and took control later in the decade.
The club should be ‘ashamed’ of getting deducted point for not paying other clubs under Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad al Saud, he thinks
For 20 years, his mission was to make them bigger and better than Sheffield Wednesday, developing the stadium, improving training facilities and the academy. They produced England players such as Kyle Walker, Harry Maguire and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
He invested an estimated £100m although things did not always go to plan. There were six years in League One and five defeats in the play-offs but by the time he was ousted in 2019, the Blades were back in the Premier League and the Owls were languishing in disarray with fans raging at Thai owner Dejphon Chansiri.
Five years on from the court ruling and what still rankles with the 76-year-old as much as a lingering feeling of injustice is evidence of his work in decay.
‘I drove around Sheffield and saw our old junior academy just closed down,’ he says. ‘It’s gone backwards so much. It takes time for people to notice because the normal fan will go and watch no matter what.
‘It is a big club, and it needs to retain the local touch. Wednesday haven’t got it under Chansiri and United haven’t got it under Abdullah.’
McCabe has written a book about his time at Bramall Lane. It includes a chapter on the case of Ched Evans, the club’s star centre-forward convicted of rape, who spent two-and-a-half years in jail before returning amid storm of protest and was later acquitted after a retrial.
Another contends with what became the Carlos Tevez Affair and dominated back pages for weeks in 2006/07. West Ham were guilty of breaking third-party ownership rules and fined £5.5million by the Premier League but spared a points’ deduction.
They seemed to be going down regardless until they rallied, winning seven of the last nine. Tevez scored six in those nine, including the only goal of the final fixture at champions Manchester United to complete a remarkable escape.
‘Sheffield United is a working man’s club. A football club is an institution for the city like a university. I don’t think some of the foreign owners get it’
Sheffield United were relegated on goal difference. McCabe always claimed the Blades were wronged by Premier League.
‘Tottenham or Chelsea would not have been relegated in those circumstances,’ he says. ‘West Ham aren’t much bigger than Sheffield United but they are London and they do have Bobby Moore, Martin Peters, Sir Geoff Hurst and Sir Trevor Brooking whereas we’ve got Tony Currie and Alan Woodward.
‘Put that into context now with Sheffield United deducted points for not paying on time for players they’ve bought, something quite trivial compared to something quite massive for which they didn’t deduct any points. And bear in mind it took me 12 bloody years to get Sheffield United back into the Premier League.
‘The big teams rule ever more don’t they? How long have they been trying to get Manchester City’s charges sorted out?’
McCabe went on to win a compensation claim against West Ham, whose Icelandic owners were by then in financial meltdown so he let them pay over several years rather than demand the damages up front which would have crippled the London club.
‘There’s no way we wanted to send West Ham under and I was conscious of that outcome. This was still West Ham, a working man’s club just like Sheffield United and their problems were true. We did one of the most sporting deals you could ever do to ensure they survived.’
Mucky Boots: Triumphs, Trials, Tragedies of a Football Club Owner, written by Kevin McCabe with Peter Beeby and published by Pitch on September 2, 2024.