Football Confidential: Mariners owner turns down big-money bid
Not even being booed by fans will, it seems, prompt Central Coast Mariners owner Mike Charlesworth to sell the club.
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Not even being booed by fans will, it seems, prompt Mariners owner Mike Charlesworth to sell the club. Confidential can reveal that an offer in writing of $8.5m from an overseas-backed consortium was rejected by Charlesworth this week.
The deal was brokered by Tony Rallis, the intermediary who brought Usain Bolt to the club on trial, but was rejected out of hand by Charlesworth who has told his staff he wants to attract investment rather than sell outright.
Mariners CEO Shaun Mielekamp confirmed an offer had been made and rejected, but declined to comment further. However Confidential understands that other suitors might be circling.
The structure of any sale could be complicated, as Charlesworth owns both the football club and the complex at Tuggerah which houses the club’s centre of excellence, its HQ, an office block hosting other businesses, an aquatic centre and multiple five-a-side courts.
Meanwhile Charlesworth insists he has no problems with dissent among supporters, including a “Charlesworth Out” banner, even though his children heard some of the chanting in the New Year’s Eve loss to Perth.
The businessman has had to fly back to the UK briefly but texted Confidential before takeoff to say the fans “have every right to protest as they see fit. A lot is being done to dig ourselves out of this hole”.
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Socceroos boss Graham Arnold took his wife for dinner on Christmas Eve on his last night in Australia before heading off to the Asian Cup.
Arnold and his wife had just sat down in the romantic surrounds of the Harbord Diggers club when two Scottish blokes came over to give Arnold grief about preventing Tom Rogic from playing for Celtic in the derby against Rangers on December 29.
A few minutes later, another Scottish bloke headed over to Arnold’s table, and gave him a beer … a thank you as a Rangers fan for stopping Tom Rogic etc etc.
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Ross McCormack’s time in the A-League is over. We hear the Mariners don’t expect the on-loan striker to return from Aston Villa, having travelled to the UK to seek advice on a knee injury.
The money saved on his salary will still be spent on a replacement, with the club fishing for a new forward in the transfer window.
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There was an elephant in the room on New Year’s Eve at an Abu Dhabi restaurant where, among a group of friends enjoying dinner, was former Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek and the defender he never selected.
Sasa Ognenovski was overlooked for the green and gold throughout Verbeek’s tenure and was publicly unimpressed at the time, even declaring his allegiance to Macedonia before being called up by Verbeek’s successor Holger Osieck.
A decade later the pair enjoyed each other’s company, and one attendee even cracked a joke about the surreal situation that broke the ice and had everyone laughing. Intriguingly, Confidential understands Verbeek did actually leave a voicemail for Ognenovski back in 2009 but never received a call back.
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Sydney FC striker Adam Le Fondre’s face broke into a smile when he opened the first half of his Secret Santa present from teammates to reveal (of course) a pair of sausage rolls.
The smile vanished though when the ardent Manchester United fan opened the second part — a pair of Liverpool shorts.
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For all the public talk of tension between Graham Arnold and Brendan Rodgers over Rogic-gate, the Socceroos boss and his Celtic counterpart get on just fine behind the scenes. We hear Rodgers is heading to the United Arab Emirates for part of the Asian Cup and Arnold will be securing him tickets to Australia’s opening group game against Jordan, with the duo planning to catch up during the visit.
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There was a distinctly different flavour to one of the Socceroos’ video analysis sessions in camp this week. Staff prepped a video of Rhyan Grant’s foul throw during the Oman friendly and Arnold delivered a lesson entitled “How not to get the ball caught in one’s mullet”.
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Just as injured Socceroo Martin Boyle has been sent back to Hibernian, his team is about to head the other way. The Scottish Premiership outfit is arriving in Dubai this weekend for a week-long training camp.
Given Boyle only left the city en route for Scotland on Wednesday, it seems highly unlikely the club would put him through another flight while carrying a lengthy knee injury.
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News of the broken Central Coast Mariners goalpost has gone global — well at least to the UAE, where a small mention made not one, but two local newspapers.
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