A controversial headline, but bear with me.
Florida Hammer provided a succinct overview of “foreign ownership with unlimited financial backing” a few days ago.
The issue is one of money versus tradition. Manchester City are a great example of that modern footballing dilemma: their fans revel in the success Sheikh Mansour’s takeover has ensured, yet there is an uneasiness to their jubilation. The best account of City, not just of the present but their former glory years in the 1970s as well as their descent into darkness, is David Conn’s “Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football and Growing Up Paperback”.
That book is essential reading, not just for highlighting Conn’s own fear at City’s colossal change but the history of the Premier League and how money became king; how clubs became businesses.
My headline alludes to the worry I feel about West Ham. If West Ham were to get richer owners, we would all be concerned about how the club would change. Moreover, how the club would look when our season tickets are passed on to our grandchildren. Yet clubs like ours, just like City, have a history, a sense of pride as well as an understanding of defeat. While City fans question their rise at times, Chelsea fans never moan about Abramovich: things were never great before; there was no famous era. Their era is now – and fleeting.
Yet surely we are already heading into that realm of business rather than club.
Take the new logo. Yes, overwhelming approved by the fans, according to the club, but think about what it says and what it means. The destruction of the Boleyn castle a symbol of us moving to the Olympic Stadium. Exciting? Of course. Necessary? Well, I guess. The uneasiness is in accepting that in order to be successful we need a bigger stadium we lose sight of what that actually entails. It’s not really about the fans is it? It’s about the new, rich, foreign fans. We can argue we we will never become like the others, and have someone from abroad come in and tell us to change our shirts to red because it’s lucky in the Far East, but we are gearing ourselves up for just that. The Olympic Stadium is about corporate seats and boxes, it’s about transport links that make it easier for the foreign businessman to fly in. The Olympic Stadium isn’t necessarily for you or I. It’s for the people with the money.
Hence the logo change. If you’re West Ham through and through, you don’t need to be told you support a London club. Yet we’ve given in to the “global game” and now London is on our badge. It’s not on the crests of Arsenal, Chelsea or Tottenham.
I’m aware I’m not offering alternatives. I’m also aware that we do need some money to attract new talent and trophies. I’m a big fan, though, of Rafa Honigstein, the Guardian journalist, who on a recent podcast lambasted English football pundits who believe that the solution to any footballing problem is money and a new player. The idea should be to make a team greater than the sum of its individual players. A clever philosophy used by teams across Europe bar in England. Here, money reigns supreme.
I’m in favour of Labour’s commitment to have elected supporter representatives on the board of all clubs – something Conn wrote as “two fans on the board of a club, treated with respect, consulted, marching on together with the other directors, can bring a smile to your face.”
Perhaps this would allow men with wads of cash to not treat clubs as play things and rather as long-term investments, although the very fact that football has to be so business-orientated makes me sick. Yet I don’t think Gold and Sullivan have done anything particularly wonderful. Securing the Olympic Stadium? Well, surely anyone could have masterminded that, given the ground is in our backyard, a long-term athletics track was never going to work, the idea of having Spurs move absurd and trying to find 54,000 Leyton Orient fans ridiculous. How do you know businessmen don’t make good football chairmen when left to their own devices? Who would sack Gianfranco Zola after two seasons and hire Avram Grant?
When we move to the Olympic Stadium, the excitement will be palpable. Yet it may also mark the beginning of a treacherous journey. One no longer fought on historic Green Street, but in the background of a modern shopping centre. I welcome change, but I am wary of the future.