The End Of A Marriage For Many Fans

It has been said that there is no greater love that that of a mother for her children. Football fans will tell you that if that is the case the love of their clubs comes a close second.

That love arouses passions that many fail to comprehend. Professors have tried to analyse why fans have such blind loyalty to their team, even the great zoologist and author of books on human sociobiology, Desmond Morris – who incidentally was born in the village in which I was raised – dedicated a 300 page book to the subject. As a student in human behaviour he looked at the rituals, superstitions and beliefs held by football fans and found them as remarkable as those of some unknown culture on a remote island. One wonders what he would make of the game today, as it has become its own very real version of William Golding’s Lord of The Flies.

Ask any of the millions of football fans around the world if they remember their first live game, and nearly all will become slightly misty-eyed at the memory. For that was undoubtedly the day they fell in love. The love that would last a lifetime had taken hold.

There used to be no need for vows to be taken. If there had been, by the time the minister had uttered “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse,” the fans would have interrupted and said “I do.”

Yet now the rest of the traditional wedding vow seems more appropriate than ever, “for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.” For football has changed in the past 30 years. It has changed beyond recognition.

In the past there was never any chance of fans leaving their club, in the world of fandom, there were no divorces. You fell in love with your team and you stuck with them. You may be lucky to have a spell of euphoric highs but like every relationship there would be moments of hardship where your love was truly tested.

Never have those relationships been more tested than in the past few days with the announcement of a proposed new Super League in Europe. Six English Premier League clubs, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur are said to have signed up with the leading teams from Italy and Spain – AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid.

One feels for those fans, as the majority will not want such a league to eventuate. For football fans the world over appreciate history. Not only of their competitions but also of their teams and their rivals.

Look at the outpouring of emotion from fans of other clubs as Bury in Division One in England lost their professional status and the club was thrown out of the Football League after 134 years. Fans across the world, not just England felt for the Shakers fans for they knew that the clubs demise had nothing to do with the fans, and everything to do with those who had been allowed ownership.

The club I support, Swindon Town, would never be invited to play in a Super League, but they too are in a precarious position thanks to an irresponsible owner who has run the club into the ground and is now trying to offload it for the princely sum of one pound. The Football Association are already saying that if the club is forced to go into administration the team, if they manage to put one on the park in season 2021/22 may well be deducted points. Which shows just how deluded those who are running the game today are. Who will that punish? Not the people who are to blame, but the one constant, the fans. It is time that the Football Association accepted responsibility for their actions, after all they were the ones who claimed that the current owner was a “fit and proper person to run a football club.”

How many other clubs out of the 92 League clubs in England, as well as those in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy and even Australia have woners that are truly fit and proper people to run a football club?

The truth is the game, in England anyway, started to unravel in the 1980’s.

In 1981 the Football Association relaxed its law that said that directors of Football Clubs could not be paid. The caveat at the time was that they could only be paid a salary as long as they were full time employees of their clubs. How many of the directors in that era started to claim monies from the club, even though they were not in fact full time employees? This change saw a whole new breed of director become involved in the game.

To make it even more attractive the FA also agreed that the dividends to shareholders which had been locked at 5% could suddenly be raised to 15 percent.

Hot on the heels of this came the decision to no longer share the gate revenue on a match day. For decades this had been the norm. No longer would the home team share the match day gate receipts with the visiting team, meaning that the visiting team received no revenue from the match. It should come as no surprise that the lobbying for this rule change came from the big clubs. This one change was to have a lasting impact on the game in England. Suddenly the clubs with the biggest stadia were the ones who were earning the most money. It is no coincidence that these same clubs have gone on to be the dominant clubs in English football this century; they are also the ones looking to move on.

Suddenly the directors and shareholders of the big clubs were in a position to earn very good money from their clubs. Manchester United were a case in point. The Edwards family realised that they could boost their dividends if they increased their shares in the club. They came up with a plan where each shareholder in the club had the right to buy 208 shares for every one that they already owned. Sir Matt Busby and others tried to oppose the move, for they saw the danger that lay ahead. The Edwards family ran around buying up shares of smaller holders before the rights issue was approved, but courtesy of that they had managed to gain control of the club with a 74% shareholding. What was the Football Association doing at the time? Did they forsee the problems that this would cause?

The problem was that those running that game at this point in its history were out of their depth.

Along came Irving Scholar, a man who had made his money in property. He was living in the tax haven of Monaco when the chance came to purchase his boyhood club Tottenham; that love never dies! He decided that he would float Tottenham on the share market. His argument at the time was that this would give the club the opportunity to attract new investors. What he didn’t say was that it would also result in him making a great deal of money.

However, there were still the restrictions of Directors taking money out of the club beyond the agreed dividend and if they were not employed full time. Scholar’s lawyers found a way to bypass these laws. They would form a holding company that was outside of the laws and restrictions of the Football Association and then make the club, the stadium and the players part of a subsidiary company. Tottenham Hotspur PLC was formed and the dye was cast.

Those running the game in England at that time did nothing. They had rules in place to prevent financial speculators coming in and making money off the back of the clubs, rules that were supposed to protect the clubs, yet they did nothing. As a result every club started to follow suit and owners set up holding companies of which the football club was merely a subsidiary. This now happened across the globe.

Many have speculated that those in charge at the time felt that this influx of money was just what the game needed, and that it would benefit the game in the long term. Hindsight will say that those with their hand on the tiller were clearly mesmerised by the view on the horizon and failed to evaluate the situation properly. Hence why it is vital yo have the right people running a sport.

Edwards, Scholar and David Dein at Arsenal, became the three men who would drive football out of the 1980’s and into a very new era of the 1990’s. It has been documented that they all worked very closely together to improve the position of their three clubs.

Soon they were focussing on the television rights. Ever since 1965 the Football Association had shared all revenue from television with all 92 Football League clubs. Martin Edwards famously said “The smaller clubs are bleeding the game dry. For the sake of the game they should be put to sleep.”

At the time that he made this comment Football in England was not in a good place. High unemployment had impacted on attendances, so too had hooliganism. Again many have now claimed that the caging of fans at the grounds was another reason why attendance figures had dropped. Anyone who watched football in that era will confirm that there can be no doubt that the stadia were in a very bad state. In 1985-86 the crowds fell to the lowest cumulative attendance figures since the league had been split into four divisions and since 1922.

Some clubs went to the wall, others though were saved by fans and local business men, and it is pleasing to say those clubs are still surviving today.

In 1985 the big clubs threatened to breakaway. They wanted more money and more power. Those in power at the FA caved in. Sponsorship money was no longer evenly split between all the member clubs. The First division clubs – which was the highest level of competition – would now receive 50% of television and sponsorship revenue, the second divsision 25% and the third and fourth division 25% to be shared between those clubs.

The Football League which represented the clubs was becoming a thorn in the side of the Football Association, as they were constantly bemoaning their ever-shrinking slice of the pie. The powerbrokers at the big clubs saw that big money was beginning to come in from television, and that more games were being televised. To make it even more attractive was the fact that television stations were vying for the rights, which was driving the price up.

David Dein and Noel White of Liverpool went to meet with the FA after they had sat down with ITV’s Greg Dyke and asked if ITV would pay big money for the rights if the clubs broke away. Dyke was aware that Sky were circling for the TV rights and said that he was. So the FA were faced with backing the big clubs breaking away or standing firm and by their reasons for existence. In June 1991 the FA gave informal approval for the breakaway which would become the English Premier League.

The blueprint for the EPL makes for interesting reading today, the thinking behind it we were told was “pure football.” It would be an elite league with only 18 teams. The EPL never kept that promise to reduce to an 18 team league. This would minimise the amount of games played by England’s top players and thus strengthen the England national team.

The sad fact is very little new money came into the game. It was just that the money that did come into the game was kept at the top and not distributed or shared with the remaining clubs in the Football League. The Football Association thought that by backing the Premier League they would win a petty battle with the Football League, but instead they created a monster, one that they could not control, one that if they cut of its head another head would grow, as was shown by those who came in to replace the likes of Edwards, Dein and Scholar.

The sad thing is these same clubs are the ones looking to once again breakaway. Despite having received all that they asked for it is still not enough. It is not enough as vanity and money-making has taken precedence over football. The owners have become like a person with an addiction in the relationship. No matter how much they have they crave more, and that craving has in many cases cost the club a fortune and sees the clubs now in need of chasing a bigger prize. They have lost all reason. They have certainly forgotten their roots, their history, their fans.

At the start of the current Premier league season it was revealed that clubs had spent £1.2 billion (approx AUD$2.152bn) on transfers this summer. This was incredible when you consider that the world was and is still in the middle of a global pandemic which has forced employee furloughs and significant financial losses across the sport.

Clearly the moment has come when their wage bills have become unsustainable and that is why they feel the need to break away to a competition that has no relegation or promotion. The clubs from Europe find themselves in a similar position if reports are to be believed,  Barcelona it is claimed are £1bn(AUD$1.7bn) in debt and facing the biggest financial crisis in their history. Real Madrid could not afford a single big signing last summer. While Juventus have to find around £100m (AUD$1.7M) by the end of June, and Internazionale’s owners have sought emergency funding as recently as February.

The football world it appears has had enough. With words like’ greed’, and ‘selfish’ becoming the most used in relation to these 12 clubs, one has to wonder how their fans feel. Most would not want to see their clubs branded as such. the majority will agree that this is not what their club is about.

It is good to see the various national competitions taking a stance along with UEFA, but one has to ask why did they not make a stand earlier? Why did they let things reach this point? Clearly the checks and balances are not working, clearly they are not assessing correctly who is “a fit and proper person to run a football club.” For in the lower divisions there are club owners who want to pretend that they are one of the’ big boys,’ and they are destroying community clubs.

What is clear is the people running these clubs have lost all perspective. Every club and its fans have teams that they hate. All of those fans love to hear that that team has lost, the heavier the better. If you take that away you lose more than you realise. Sure Arsenal, Tottenham and Chlesea are all looking to go into the new league together, so too Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool, all historically great rivals, but they will miss out on so much more by not playing the other sides, so too will their fans. The Merseyside Derby we have been told for decades is one of the great derbies, yet play the fixture too often and it loses its meaning. It seems hard to believe that Liverpool would walk away from that. Leeds United v Manchester United is another great fixture, and West Ham taking on any of the London sides is always worth watching.

Those opting to leave are giving up a great deal. They are most likely going to give up a large number of their fans, as this move will be seen as the club selling it’s soul.

If they do choose to turn their backs on over 100 years of history it will be a sad day for football. It may result in some fans doing the unthinkable and divorcing themselves from the clubs that they have loved unconditionally, for this may simply be too much to bear. A betrayal from which there is no way back.

Yet if that is the case it may be a chance to regenerate football and return it to the people. It could be the catalyst for much needed change. The cartel at the top will no longer be there, and so the competition will open up. The FA Cup may once again be returned to its former prestigious place on the sporting calendar. (Where Has the Magic Of The FA Cup Gone?)

There is still plenty to be played out but one can’t help feeling that this move by the clubs is a step too far