John Henry has appeared to give a strong clue as to FSG’s intentions over a prospective sale of Liverpool Football Club.
In November 2022, the businessman indicated that the Boston-based company would welcome outside investment in the club, which some outlets mistakenly interpreted as a declaration of planning to sell LFC, and last September the Dynasty private equity firm paid for a minority stake.
In a wide-ranging article for the Financial Times, journalist Sara Germano asked the 74-year-old if he intends to sell any of the sports teams currently owned by FSG (their portfolio also includes the Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Henry replied: “My wife and I live and work in Boston. We are committed to the city, the region. So the Sox are not going to come up for sale. We generally don’t sell assets.”
While the FSG co-founder didn’t explicitly name Liverpool in his answer, his response that ‘we generally don’t sell assets’ appears to hint that there are no plans afoot to relinquish ownership of the club.
Henry and co have been culpable of some glaring misjudgments during their stewardship of the Reds – a proposed ticket price increase to £77, furloughing non-playing staff during the pandemic, the prospect of trademarking ‘Liverpool’ and the toxic European Super League proposal all come to mind.
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However, we can be eternally grateful to them for saving us from the odious regime of Tom Hicks and George Gillett in 2010. Having purchased the club for £300m (BBC Sport), as of May 2024 it’s valued at £4.3bn by Forbes, more than a tenfold increase.
They’ve overseen the expansion of Anfield from holding 45,000 fans to a revamped 61,000-capacity venue and, best of all, hired a man named Jurgen Klopp to lead the team to an era of success which had been alien to LFC for an entire generation of supporters.
FSG are far from perfect – we can understand the outcry from some quarters to loosen the pursestrings in the transfer market – but Liverpool FC are in an exponentially better place now than at the time of their arrival. We can expect Henry to continue calling the shots on Merseyside for some time to come.
READ MORE: A history of Liverpool players at the European Championship
