sugar part 2

Paul-Gascoigne-Lazio-cropped

In MirrorFootball's serialisation of his new book What You See is What You Get, businessman Alan Sugar looks at his other great love: football.

I’m still shocked when I recall the sale of Paul Gascoigne to Lazio.

Gazza’s injury in the 1991 Cup Final had seen me decide to step in but the transfer was still going to be worth £5.5million.

But during his rehabilitation he damaged his knee again, putting the whole healing process back several weeks.

Terry Venables explained to me that a very well-connected Italian called Gino Santini was going to broker the deal to see whether we could get Lazio to pay us even though Gazza hadn’t recovered.

But Gino turned out to be a restaurateur in Kensington who spoke Italian and helped in Mark Hateley’s move to AC Milan. But he was absolutely useless in the negotiation of this matter.

It was handled in the most unprofessional manner, with stupid suggestions such as: “Insurance policies will cover Gascoigne’s recovery and provide a warranty to Lazio.”

Why would anyone in their right mind pay us £5.5m when the player was still injured, without any medical evidence he was fit to play?

Despite this, Eddie Ashby convinced Venables he would find an insurance company who would cover the risk, came up with a Mickey Mouse insurance policy and ran up a bill with a broker. The offer put forward was so ridiculous Lazio would laugh at it.

In the end, the sensible thing happened. Lazio sent over a medical team to examine Gascoigne at the end of his rehabilitation and approved him fit to play. They then paid up.

In the meantime, Gino Santini had slung in a bill for £200,000 which we paid into a Swiss bank account.

There was nothing I could do about it other than demand that he send us a proper invoice.

Copyright © Alan Sugar 2010 An extract from What You See is What You Get by Alan Sugar, published by Macmillan on September 30, 2010 at £20

In MirrorFootball's serialisation of his new book What You See is What You Get, businessman Alan Sugar looks at his other great love: football.

Initially I never attended the regular Premier League chairmen’s meetings, as I was told they were just discussing fixtures, until I was told that a very important vote on television rights was going to take place.

Up until then, rights for English top-flight football were split between Match of the Day on BBC and ITV, who were paying around £4m per season to the league for the rights to show a few games live.

A small nucleus of clubs comprising ars*nal, Manchester United and Liverpool seemed to attract most of the television coverage. They were closely involved with ITV and wanted to keep the next round of negotiations with them.

Rick Parry, the Premier League’s chief executive, quite rightly insisted that a proper tender process should be followed. This was no longer going to be a closed shop or a foregone conclusion.

I turned up at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. As we entered the room, Trevor East, an ITV executive, was handing out pieces of paper to the chairmen. This was a last-minute dirty trick.

I, of course, wanted BSkyB to succeed, so I went to the public phone cubicles opposite the meeting room and called their chief executive Sam Chisholm, telling him ITV were trying to pull a fast one.

Little did I know this call would go down in the annals of football history as “the phone call that irrevocably altered the history of sport and media in Britain”.

Sam told me ITV had somehow found out the details of BSkyB’s bid and wanted to top it. I told Sam: “There’s only one way to clinch the deal - you’ll have to blow them out of the water! Make your final bid £60m per season and blow them out of the water.”

When the deal came up I declared a conflict of interests and that Tottenham should abstain but most of the clubs objected and despite objections from ars*nal and Manchester United the meeting agreed that Tottenham should indeed be allowed to vote.

I was disappointed by all the sniping going on when discussing whether Spurs should be allowed to vote or not and I could see agendas forming. The big clubs were trying to bully the rest and it seemed clear that they wanted to line their own pockets by favouring ITV.

After a couple of hours’ discussion, the motion was put to the room as to whether we should accept BSkyB’s or ITV’s offer. BSkyB got the deal. Ironically, they won it by one vote - clearly Spurs being allowed to vote was important. The ITV people were furious.

Copyright © Alan Sugar 2010 An extract from What You See is What You Get by Alan Sugar, published by Macmillan on September 30, 2010 at £20