One thing Derby County or Sheffield Wednesday fans will have no idea about John Textor - it involves skateboarding | OneFootball

Multi-club ownership proponent and investor John Textor has a surprising history, about which Derby and Wednesday fans will be unaware.

Multi-club proponent and football club investor John Textor has been linked to both Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday, but there's something about his past about which fans may be unaware.

Takeover talk has been in the air in the Championship recently, with both Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday making headlines. And one name linked with both clubs has been the American investor and entrepreneur John Textor.

At Sheffield Wednesday, the matter has been rather forced upon the club. Mounting financial pressures forced the club into administration, and there has been considerable interest in buying a club which is in itself a piece of English football heritage.

At Derby, meanwhile, the situation isn't quite as urgent. David Clowes bought the Rams out of administration in 2022, but there has been talk of the club being up for sale for more than a year.

John Textor sold his minority shareholding in Crystal Palace over the summer, but has made no secret of his desire to buy back into English football. He's been linked with a move for Sheffield Wednesday since the extent of the club's issues became clear in the summer, while he's also been closely linked to Derby in recent weeks.

John Textor was a highly competitive freestyle skateboarder in his youth

It will come as a surprise to supporters of both Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday to find out that while John Textor is now a billionaire businessman, one of his first passions was competitive skateboarding.

French news outlet 20 Minutes reported in 2024 that, by the age of 12, Textor was already an accomplished skateboarder, competing with the Sims Skateboards team in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He even defeated future eight-time world champion Rodney Mullen in some freestyle competitions and won national awards.

They reported that Textor told the Brazilian newspaper Globo that his skateboarding career was ended by injury: "I took a really bad fall. I should wear elbow pads and not jump around like I did when I was younger. But it happens to me all the time."

John Textor's risk-taking followed him into adulthood

Textor's childhood experiences clearly influenced his early business decisions. One of his first ventures into business came in extreme sports, when he acquired the Sims Snowboards company before going on to make his fortune in digital media.

The question of whether this risk-taking has followed him into his involvement in football is something of an open one. Textor has connections to three clubs outside of England.

In Brazil, he is the owner of the giants Botafogo, and they won the Copa Libertadores - the South American equivalent to the Champions League - in his first season owning the club, the first time they'd ever won that competition.

But his involvement in European football has been more controversial. In Belgium he wanted to change the name of his club, RWD Molenbeek, to its original name of "Daring Brussels", a move which brought the club's fans out onto the streets in protest.

In France, his involvement at Olympique Lyonnais has coincided with serious financial issues which resulted in them being provisionally demoted from Ligue Un at the end of the 2024-25 season before being overturned on appeal.

His involvement in English football with Crystal Palace also ended in controversy, when Palace were demoted from the Europa League to the Europa Conference League as a result of his shareholding in Palace clashing with his ownership of Lyon. He sold his shareholding in Palace in the summer, and has been looking to become involved in English football again.

Fans of Derby and Sheffield Wednesday - both of whom have had experience of insolvency in the last five years - may wish to give serious consideration to the question of whether they want such a 'risk-taker' involved in their club.