A Tale of Two Football Clubs

Submitted by Bill Kerry on 28 May 2009

I couldn't help but smile last night as Barcelona, the world's largest fan-owned club, outclassed and defeated Manchester United. United, a once proud club with a great tradition, are now owned by the Glazer family whose operations are based in "low-to-no-tax" Nevada and were bought in a highly-leveraged buyout a few years back. United are also sponsored by AIG the failed and bailed out insurance company which says it all really. There are even murmurings that United's huge debts might yet sink it one day. At the time of the buy-out some die-hard fans revolted and formed their own break-away fan-owned club FC United of Manchester which is now progressing nicely up the football leagues drawing healthy crowds. 

Football in the UK can be seen as a microcosm of the wider economy and society. The gross inequality between the top Premiership clubs and the rest has created massive stresses and strains with many smaller and poorer clubs going into administration or out of business altogether and with some re-forming as supporter-owned clubs in lower professional or semi-professional leagues.

However, it's not just the small, poor clubs who suffer. Many others in the middle or just outside the magic circle of perhaps the 4-8 top clubs are now routinely taking incredible financial risks and over-extending themselves to play keepy-uppy with those tops clubs - behaviour that, to me, seems strikingly similar to MPs trying to fiddle their expenses in order to pad their income and keep up with their chums  who work in commerce and earn the really big money.

Football shows clearly that great inequality harms those in the middle and even upper ends of the spectrum as well as those at the bottom - even if it's those at the bottom who suffer most. Perhaps the best recent example of a formerly large Premiership club that got caught out playing keepy-uppy is Leeds United who now find themselves stuck in the third tier of English football leasing the ground they once owned. They have just been joined in the third division by Southampton, Charlton Athletic and Norwich City who were all once Premiership clubs and who now have their own financial problems to varying degrees. It also seems entirely possible that Newcastle United and Middlesborough may end up going the same way.

The one hope that the football microcosm gives to the wider economy and society is the increasing success of fan-owned clubs. For me this points to a way ahead towards real economic and social transformation. It is too early to really tell if fans-owned clubs generally perform better on the pitch (Barcelona may give a clue for the future!) but many are thriving and are more stable financially than before the fans took over. The season just finished saw (my club!) Brentford FC and Exeter City FC promoted from fourth tier to third tier. But a special mention must go to AFC Wimbledon whose fans simply walked out en masse to form the club when a previous owner decided to move the club to Milton Keynes!  This re-formed club has just made it to the fifth tier in the pyramid having gone down to the very minor leagues where many of the clubs didn't even have floodlights - pretty much park football with jumpers for goalposts. All through this process they have averaged home support of between 2-4,000 and are now a stable and shining success.

Fan-owned clubs also tend to play a much more active part in their local areas often aiming to be "community hubs" where they provide facilities to people all through the week and not only on matchdays. Checkout the links above to Brentford, Exeter and AFC Wimbledon to see what I mean. 

If you want to know more about the transformation taking place in football visit the Supporters Direct website. And if it can happen in football, why not in every other sphere of economic and social activity?