BOBBY CHARLTON Soccer Schools, where a 12-year-old David Beckham famously won the national skills final before becoming a global superstar, is going bust. The Times has learnt that the company running the schools has appointed a liquidator to oversee a voluntary winding-up order.
The formal decision was made at a creditors’ meeting in Bury on Thursday and Companies House will receive the necessary documents next week. The news heralds the end of a 27-year-old institution set up by one of the country’s best known and most loved footballers, who wanted to ensure youngsters had access to high-quality coaches during the summer holidays.
Despite still lending his name to the venture and his face to the website, Sir Bobby Charlton has not been involved with the company for several years. In May, the company mysteriously changed its name from Bobby Charlton Sports Schools Ltd to Sports Schools Ltd. Soon after, the only director, John Shiels, resigned and the company applied for a creditors’ voluntary liquidation under the Insolvency Act 1986. Shiels, who holds a Uefa coaching licence, now runs the Manchester United Soccer Schools (MUSS) from Old Trafford.
MUSS is owned by a subsidiary of Nike, the US sports goods maker that has a £303 million merchandising agreement with United, and runs courses nationally and internationally for children and adults.
The latest accounts dated January 31, 2004 for Bobby Charlton Sports Schools Ltd offer a sketchy picture of the company’s finances. The value of its assets less current liabilities was £160,047.
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The key figure offering any clue to mounting financial trouble was £734,569 of creditors falling due within one year. On its website, the company, based in Knutsford, is still offering places for courses this year, including a junior residential school in August for £280 a head, and is publicising plans for an international coaching programme at Bolton Wanderers next year.
During the past 12 months, it had also expanded internationally to establish regular coaching courses in Australia, Egypt, India and Malta as well as taking a roadshow to Iceland, Spain, Germany, Italy, the Seychelles and the Azores. More than 20,000 players were involved in various courses.
By far the most famous former pupil of Bobby Charlton Soccer Schools was Beckham. During the late 1980s, he attended one of the schools and his skills saw him moved up to the group of boys two years his senior. His prize for winning the national skills final was a trip to the Nou Camp in Barcelona, where he met Terry Venables, the former England manager, and Mark Hughes, the Blackburn Rovers manager then playing for the Spanish club. Beckham signed for Manchester United as a trainee three years later.
The England captain has spoken fondly of his time at the school and even enrolled his son, Brooklyn. But in the past year, Beckham has developed a passion for his own soccer academies programme for eight to 15-year-olds. One school has already been set up in London and another in Los Angeles is scheduled to open in the autumn. Beckham, 30, intends to devote much of his time to the project after his retirement from the professional game.
The proliferation of soccer schools around the world has made for a more competitive environment. Most have copied the concept created by Bobby Charlton Soccer Schools, a fact the company itself acknowledged on its website, although it still claimed to be the market leader.
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Calls to the company were directed to Shiels, who said he was unable to comment. The liquidator at DTE Leonard Curtis was not available for comment.