There's been trouble brewing between Clive Palmer, billionaire owner of the Hyundai A League franchise Gold Coast United, and the Football Federation of Australia. Recently Palmer called the A League a joke, and said his club is insignificant. The FFA and the rest of the A League took serious umbrage with that, obviously.
Well Wednesday afternoon, Australia time, the FFA took action against Palmer and his self confessed "insignificant club." Fellow billionaire and FFA chief Frank Lowy revoked the license of Gold Coast United, effectively banning the club from the league at the end of season and leaving the league with only 9 teams. With 4 matches left to play, Gold Coast is bottom of the A League table. The FFA has tried to be in contact with the club about fielding a team for these matches, but the situation seems to be fluid.
The reasons cited for terminating the license are: contraventions of FFA policies, deliberate defiance of an FFA direction and repeated public statements that brought the game into disrepute. Lowy is quoted as saying: "We can't let anybody thumb their noses at us saying 'we're going to do what we want to do but I want to stay'."
For his part, Palmer has vowed to fight the ban, saying he will take the battle to the court system.
As I said, the situation and reaction is still unfolding. You can follow the news on the official site of the Hyundai A-League Here.
(Information from FIFA.com was used for this report.)
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