Amanda Staveley says she is open to investing in another football club following her exit from Newcastle United.
Staveley and partner Mehrdad Ghodoussi left Newcastle earlier this month a little under three years after playing a key role in orchestrating the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) purchase of the club.
The move in October 2021 wasn’t Staveley’s first in football — she also previously helped broker the £210m sale of Manchester City in 2008 to Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour — and she is expected to stay involved in the game.
It is understood a minority investment in Tottenham Hotspur is one of the options Staveley is considering with a recent report from Bloomberg indicating that “initial discussions” with Rothschild & Co, an adviser to Spurs, had taken place. Tottenham refused to comment when approached by The Athletic.
Asked as part of an exclusive interview by The Athletic what she could say about that report, Staveley said: “Not much, I’m afraid.
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“My preference would have been to stay with Newcastle, but unfortunately life doesn’t always work out exactly the way you want it to work out. Nothing is going to replicate that.
“I fell in love with Newcastle, the club and the people and that can’t change, but I didn’t want to get in Newcastle’s way. It’s got to be about what’s best for Newcastle.”
Staveley says moving on to “other projects” is now “possible” but her connection to Newcastle will remain.
“Mehrdad and I are keen to be hands-on,” she said. “We’re hard-working people, I love to be very busy and to engage and I love football. Very sadly, we have to move on to other projects and that might involve us taking a stake in another club or buying another club and that’s difficult. But it’s possible.
“I don’t know what my future holds, but you can never move on from the love I have for Newcastle and I would love to come back for matches. I’m a Geordie now. I’m a Yorkshire Geordie, but I will always have that chemistry and that love.”
(Photo: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
