Football – The takeover of the hometown club by the One Direction singer is a flop

LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) – One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson has scuppered his dream of buying his hometown club Doncaster Rovers after a fundraising campaign failed to reach its two million pound ($3.4 million) target. Singer Tomlinson, who played for Doncaster’s reserve team earlier this year, had planned to take over the League One (third-tier) club alongside former owner John Ryan. The pair had launched a crowdfunding scheme to back the plan but that initiative had raised less than 40 percent of its target as of Friday, despite the Tomlinson Ryan Trust providing a “six-figure sum” to get the ball rolling. Tomlinson said on his Twitter feed he was “absolutely gutted” that the deal to buy a club he has supported since childhood was not going ahead. Ryan blamed the Football League for blocking the deal. “They have now made it so difficult that if you don’t have a pocket full of money you will be turned away,” he told BBC Radio. The league said it had a duty to ensure the financial stability of clubs. “In any club takeover it is necessary for the prospective buyer to present a business plan and demonstrate that the finance is in place to implement that plan,” it said in a statement. “In this case that basic requirement has not yet been met.” Tomlinson, 22, is one of five members of the boy band One Direction, a group that came together on the British talent show “The X Factor” in 2010. One Direction was the first group in the history of the US Billboard Top 200 chart to debut at No. 1 with their first three albums. (US$1 = 0.5864 British pounds) (Written by Keith Weir, edited by Tony Goodson)