Sympathy for the financial plight of former Premier League footballers, you say? No, wait, hear us out. You might be surprised by this previously untold story. Richard Milway’s documentary, Football’s Financial Shame: The Story of the V11, is a gripping, moving and human enough tale to inspire more than a little fellow feeling.
The V11 may sound like a fictional spy ring from a shonky airport novel but they’re actually a group of retired footballers whose careers spanned the 90s and early 00s. This era-specificity is crucial. They are members of the Premier League’s in-between generation. They’re mid-rankers: household names but it depends on the household. Danny Murphy. Rod Wallace. Brian Deane. Tommy Johnson. Michael Thomas. Craig Short. If you know, you know. And they played at a time when wages were merely brilliant and not yet mind-boggling. At that point in football history, there was still a fragment of connective tissue linking the lives of players and supporters. As Deane puts it, having money meant being able to buy a house and pay off your parents’ mortgage, too.
During the early, upwardly mobile stages of their careers, each of these men came into contact with a company called Kingsbridge Asset Management. Fronted by David McKee and Kevin McMenamin, Kingsbridge promised to invest the money the players were making. Its reputation was good; even managers were using the company. And so began the construction of a bewildering house of financial cards involving a short-lived government tax exemption for film funding, property developments in Florida, and eventually the vengeful attentions of HMRC. Even after Kingsbridge’s schemes had collapsed, investors were still liable for tax on their outlays: the resultant bills have cost players their fortunes and, in some cases, their sobriety and nearly their sanity. The V11 are a team of 11 players representing many more.
Wisely, the documentary doesn’t dwell too long on the inner workings of Kingsbridge’s financial gambits, although it does make various hair-raising claims – for example, the strong suggestion that signatures were forged on documents – that seem, to the casual observer, to go way beyond simple bad advice. McKee and McMenamin offer carefully written rebuttals and bland statements of regret, denying all allegations of wrongdoing. McKee claims the players “suffered from HMRC’s change in approach to film schemes”, that they “understand their dissatisfaction and disappointment”, and that “there was never any fraudulent activity that I witnessed with signatures or anything else”. Beyond that, McKee and McMenamin are unsurprisingly nowhere to be seen – although they do pop up in Michael Thomas’s wedding photographs, which indicates the extent to which they infiltrated the lives of their clients.
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There’s an attempt to widen the film’s scope; to make it into a story partly about footballers but additionally about the rapacity and relentlessness of HMRC. The lack of any non-footballer-aligned voices prevents this subplot from taking convincing shape. Instead, the story is inconclusive in a fascinatingly Kafkaesque way. The City of London police investigated Kingsbridge but didn’t find enough evidence to proceed with a prosecution. So the players remain trapped in a state of limbo. They are classified as victims of crime by the police. But they’re still potentially on the hook to HMRC for millions of pounds’ worth of unpaid tax directly resulting from the alleged fraud.
Communicating their sense of impotence and unfairness is where the film excels. Rather than a detective story, it becomes a sensitive meditation on age, adversity and disappointment. It captures the melancholy of being an ex-pro. Of being astoundingly successful in your youth, drifting into anonymity, then finding that the money is gone as well as the fame. It’s a study in quiet desperation; middle-aged men looking crestfallen in their soon-to-be-repossessed mansions. Murphy talks about dalliances with drink, drugs and gambling. Deane breaks down as he remembers how the affair haunted the last few years he had with his mother before her death. “Now that time’s gone,” he says. “And she’s gone, too.”
By the end, most potential avenues of redress have been exhausted. Wallace and Johnson are forced to sell their homes. Wallace is declared bankrupt. Finally, all they have is each other. As Deane falteringly gives evidence to a parliamentary committee (the involvement of politicians is one of their last resorts), Thomas gently puts his hand on his back. It’s a sweet, sad moment of comradeship between two men unexpectedly out of their comfort zones.
As their legal representative Ben Rees points out, most footballers come from relatively modest backgrounds. Inexperience with money can make them easy prey for unscrupulous or careless advisers. Since the salad days of the V11, footballers’ pay has multiplied exponentially. This film asks what kind of financial advice are today’s megastars receiving, how devastating might any fallout be, and whether Premier League footballers deserve a fragment of our sympathy? Against the odds, by teasing out the emotional costs of a vertiginous rise followed by a terrifying plunge, this film suggests they probably do.
