Tony Xia interview in The Guardian

[Salsa Party Animal]

China will try but getting key European players  to move there will be hard.

[tomd2103]

You have to wonder if China could create a football super league in a way similar to the IPL in cricket?

I've often wondered if that is the way the US should go.  Instead of expanding the number of teams in the MLS, condense it into a smaller number based in the desirable locations (New York, LA etc) and then grow the game below that level.

[pbavfckuwait]

Salsa, key European players will go there if the money is right, even if it is for shorter 12 or 24 month contracts, in the life of a professional footballer two things have sway, his agent and the size of the pay packet.

[Axl Rose]

Good article in the times:

‘I’ll make world a better place with my ability’

Aston Villa’s Chinese owner Tony Xia tells Henry Winter that he has big plans for his club and says he has been surprised by the openness of Steve Bruce.

When Aston Villa’s owner, Dr Tony Xia, addressed the World Robot Conference in Beijing in October, he was inundated with tweets from Villa fans asking everything from “any chance they can build us a decent right back” to “are we re-signing Peter Crouch?”

Villa supporters are fascinated by Xia. Many in football are curious about the little-known Chinese businessman who now controls one of the founding fathers of the Football League. Xia engages readily with fans via social media but since buying Randy Lerner out for £76 million, he has largely avoided interviews. So his image has gained layer after layer: Xia has been depicted as everything from a saviour of the Holte End to a stooge for the Chinese government, from a Bond villain to the Harvard-educated hero who sailed through the Football League owners’ and directors’ test.

In six years we can be top of the Premier League so we can be in Champions League
But who is Tony Xia? He’s certainly different from Lerner, let alone Doug Ellis. The situation is confusion meets Confucius. Xia is a ferociously intelligent best-selling author who reads Jane Austen and has inserted two safe-standing areas in new plans for the Holte End. He says that Villa were “a mess” when he bought them, that Steve Bruce “is better than I expected” and wants to turn the 11th-best team in the Championship into Champions League winners “in ten years”.

Villa fans don’t think he’s crazy. “On a scale of one to Cellino, you’re about a four, Tony,” one supporter reassured him. Xia’s club travel to Massimo Cellino’s Leeds United today. English football is a broad church, especially at board level. Chinese expansion has been particularly felt in the West Midlands with Trillion Trophy Asia taking over Birmingham City, Guochuan Lai buying West Bromwich Albion, Jeff Shi fronting the conglomerate owning Wolverhampton Wanderers while Xia has Villa.

Meeting Xia is a two-fold process, first a ten-minute private chat in the Bodymoor Heath canteen followed a week later by an interview in the boardroom at the training ground where all the photographs have been taken down. He does not have to look far for local heroes, having just spent two hours watching training in the company of Peter Withe and Brian Little.


He seems surprised at any suspicions. “Chinese people are very friendly,” Xia says. “It’s from our very long history of philosophy, they want to make harmony with the world. From Confucius they start to implement that conception of harmony.” Xia insists the Western perception of Beijing being closed and suspicious of the outside world is outdated. “For now, the Chinese government has changed a lot, they are now not considered enemies. They do not have very strong suspicions to other parts of the world. They start to change their minds and learn how to understand others, not only with the US, but UK and other countries. There’s really no big barrier between East and West now.”

So, really, who is this Beijing-based, Villa-backing citizen of the world? Xia patiently explains. His family history seems partly to reflect China in the 20th century, including the grip of Communism when Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in 1949. “Before ’49 we were a very wealthy family. My grandfather’s father used to be a minister for the Kuomintang party, which went to Taiwan [in 1949 after defeat in the Chinese Civil War to Mao]. It was not good for our family to stay in mainland China because of the political situation, but we couldn’t move.”

They stayed and suffered. “Our life was affected a lot, not only economically. My father was not allowed to go to college because of the political background, even though he was admitted to university. He couldn’t take some jobs. He lost opportunity. It was very difficult. For the Cultural Revolution era, you can compare with North Korea now.”

Deng Xiaoping brought in economic reforms and things began to improve for families like Xia’s, increasing when Deng stepped down in 1989. “After Deng Xiaoping came off the stage, some families like ours who had difficult times in the Cultural Revolution era were allowed to get equal opportunity again to go to school and have jobs. My father was free to do something. He started to do some business but it was very minor business for him, just so he can afford for us to go to school. My family taught me that the only way to go through hard times was to study hard.

“The difficulties that our family faced taught me a lot, like you have to work hard.” He still managed to fit in football training and playing as a striker while studying in Beijing. “We had a college league for all the universities in Beijing, close to semi-professional level.”

Harvard beckoned where he studied design and landscape architecture. “A dramatic change for China was that starting from the early Nineties, a lot of people like me went abroad to study. A lot of those students went back to China either to do business or to teach at university or college. Those people are changing the country a lot.

“Harvard opened up a broader view of the world for me. I got the chance to access all kinds of knowledge. Harvard has more than 100 libraries! I got a chance to meet people from all over the world, from different fields and that made me understand the world better.”

He spent five months at the University of Oxford in 1999. “There are a lot of similarities between Oxford and Harvard, actually, but Oxford is much more historic. It’s more like the difference between America and the UK. America is much more open and ‘pop’. But here it’s more Classical and more disciplined in parts.”

It was not all work amid the dreaming spires. He headed up the motorway to catch John Gregory’s team in action. “I watched one game at Villa when I was at Oxford — against Liverpool.”

Xia returned to China and continued building his business, The Recon Group, which is involved in everything from monosodium glutamate to small loans. When his wealth was recently estimated at £550 million, he laughed it off, tweeting “those rich-list ranking stuffs never get even close to ‘correct’.” Yet he sees fit to mention when he has landed a large deal for Recon, as if to show he’s not a “pauper”.

So does he consider himself a capitalist? “Honestly, I never understand the term ‘capitalist’ and in mainland China there’s ‘communist’. The driving force for me to do some business came from my childhood experiences and from my education, not only at Harvard but also in China. When I was in China, from elementary school to college, I was trying to learn so that one day I can make some changes in society for the country. When I completed my studies at Harvard, I started to learn that maybe I can not only do something for my country but do something to make the world a much better place with my ability. At Harvard, I was trained to be a person who can be valuable to the world.”

And valuable to Villa? What was the attraction? “It’s much more difficult to buy Arsenal or Liverpool,” he explains. He could also see the potential of a fallen giant, a 142-year-old club who have won the title seven times, the FA Cup seven times and the European Cup with that goal from Withe in 1982.

“I’m absolutely aware of the heritage,” Xia adds. “That’s another big reason for us to consider Aston Villa, the long history, the large fanbase that maybe was broken somehow for some years. We have time to recover and take it back to being a great club again.

“Honestly, the first part [of his interest in Villa] comes from my passion for the sport. The second is the business part. When we bought Villa, it was a total mess. We are talking about the management system through the club. It was even much worse than I expected when I took over.

“We have bought a lot of similar businesses, some companies in crisis, and we had to fix them. That’s the value we can give.” Fixing problems. Roberto Di Matteo was appointed in June, partly, it seems because Xia respected his academic qualifications including attending an MBA course. He lasted until early October and the more experienced Bruce came in.

“He’s much better than I expected,” Xia says of Bruce. “I didn’t expect him to be so open to learn a lot of new things. Honestly, a lot of people said he was quite good as a manager to get out of the Championship, and go back to the Premier League — and that was the first priority and we didn’t expect much more. But now I think he is much more open, and learning. Now I’m very confident and quite comfortable not only just Steve, but Keith [Wyness, chief executive] and Steve Round [technical director]. I like the whole team.

“Everyone knows we have to build everything step by step. We plan to go back to the Premier League in one year, at most two years, stay [consolidate] for one or two years and we hope in five or six years we can be the top club in the Premier League so we can play in Champions League and then two or three more years we can challenge to go top of Europe. I’m very confident for that.

“I foresee modern football changing very quickly. The club that is top now won’t stay there for many years if they don’t push to fit into the changes that are happening. Football will be dramatically changed by the implementation of more data technology, internet, communication technology, and one day, maybe also, bio-science, bio-technology. Even a club like Man United now, if you don’t start to make a lot of changes will very soon be left behind.”

Football is changing already, especially with the areas around grounds being turned into fan-friendly areas as at Anfield and the Etihad. Xia has similar plans for Villa Park, mixing business enterprise and theme park. “My conception for the redevelopment of the Villa Park area is not just the stadium itself,” Xia continues. “We are going to redevelop the whole area, so we can combine with all kinds of stores, specialising in sport, and some entertainment location experience.

“Maybe we will build some tourism destination to demonstrate the history of Villa as the first club to [help] found the [Football] League. We can bring not only Villa fans from all over the world but tourists from China, India and other countries to visit. That’s the large plans we take to Birmingham city council. It’s exciting. I pretty much agree we can insert some safe standing. We might add two standing areas in-between a seating area. That would be interesting.” Having transformed Villa Park, would he sell? “No, no, no,” Xia insists.

He enjoys watching Villa, meeting supporters, relaxing. “Honestly for the past five years I’ve been working too much. I’m not young any more. I realise I can’t work like I studied at Harvard, when I worked 18 hours every day, so for now, sometimes I take one day off to sleep on the beach, just make peace. My daughter was born two years ago and she’s made me more relaxed.”

He also relaxes by reading. “I was a best-selling writer 11 years ago. I had two books published as best-sellers in Chinese. I’m very much into literature and philosophy. From the traditional Chinese literature, my favourite would be Cao Xueqin.” Cao’s book Dream of the Red Chamber is considered one of the four great books of Chinese literature but he also loves one English author in particular, Jane Austen. “I went to Bath city for The Three Sisters! Jane Austen!” Xia has yet to read any of Steve Bruce’s three novels, but the engaging, slightly mysterious Dr Xia has certainly become embedded in English footballing life.

[Gregorys Boy]

Think the test of Xia will be if you don't go up this season.  Common sense says that you back Bruce for next season.  But given he doesn't know much about football that will be a test of his knee jerk reactions   He's putting his money where his mouth is right now which he needed to do.  Fair play on that, and also fair play for learning from his mistake with the appointment of RDM and this listening to the football people when going with Bruce.

[Ron Manager]

Jane Austen.Didnt she invent the motor car?

[Salsa Party Animal]

Thank for sharing the article from The Times. Couldn't read it on web site. Didn't know Henry Winter move from Telegraph to Times. When did he move ?

[Witton Warrior]

Well that all sounds very grown-up and proper doesn't it.
He has a way with the narrative for sure - impressive

[pauliewalnuts]

Best selling author? Not heard that mention before.

[adrenachrome]

If biotech becomes involved in the game I am out of here, dude. Imagine Gobby Savage's head, Zidane's torso and Messi's legs fused into a franchise fuckwit and let loose to ply his trade. Gobby would clean up on the hair product commercials.









   

[Chico Hamilton III]

Best selling author? Not heard that mention before.

We must be the only club in the world with an author as owner and manager

[Salsa Party Animal]

Biotech. We can use McGrath defending skills in back 4 and central midfield and Gordon Cowans passing skills in back 5, whole midfield and Shaun Teale's heart in every player, Olof Mellberg's passion for every player,  Tony Morley wing wizard in every winger and full back and James Milner energy and workrate on every player, and Martin Laursen set pieces heading for every strikers and defenders and Gerry Hitchens finishing on every attacking player

[KevinGage]

We have Gestede. Difficult to improve on perfection.

[SoccerHQ]

Think back to December 2006 and we were praising Lerner for free coaches to Chelsea, the restoration of the Holte Pub, the next month we signed Ashley Young and Carew.

I think it's easy to judge Dr Tony know....from bitter experience the time to judge is when things start to go wrong...how will he react if we lose in the play offs for example? What will he do if a key manager walks out at a difficult stage of the season?

At least he has a decent board of football people which Lerner never showed any interest in setting up but it's easy so far to say Xia has been a great owner so far. The hard work on and off the pitch is still to come.

[pauliewalnuts]

Think back to December 2006 and we were praising Lerner for free coaches to Chelsea, the restoration of the Holte Pub, the next month we signed Ashley Young and Carew.

I think it's easy to judge Dr Tony know....from bitter experience the time to judge is when things start to go wrong...how will he react if we lose in the play offs for example? What will he do if a key manager walks out at a difficult stage of the season?

At least he has a decent board of football people which Lerner never showed any interest in setting up but it's easy so far to say Xia has been a great owner so far. The hard work on and off the pitch is still to come.

I agree.

The time to really judge him is when we see the first set of accounts and see where the money spent so far is coming from.

That doesn't equate to assuming it'll be bad news, but we really will not know until then.