Dipstick Allirajah
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Less fans and more fatcats please...
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA407.htm
Spiked Online
Offside, 19 February
By Duleep Allirajah
Do football and politics mix? As a rule of thumb, I'd have to say no. And last week's launch of a parliamentary report on football's finances only confirms that view.
According to the press release, the All Party Football Group's report is the result of a nine-month investigation that 'took written evidence from dozens of interested parties and heard oral evidence from over 40 witnesses' (1). After such an exhaustive inquiry you might expect something more substantial than the tired old litany of gripes against the ruinous influence of money. The report recommends that clubs' wage bills should be capped, TV income should be redistributed more evenly, club finances should be more transparent, and club directors should be vetted (presumably to keep out crooks, asset-strippers, or dodgy foreign oil-tycoon types). Boring! Tell us something we haven't heard before.
'This whole business has the thought, the intellectual weight, the consistency, the practicality and the sobriety of a radio football phone-in', observed Simon Barnes in The Times (1). I'd have to agree. Nine months of work just to regurgitate the same whinging claptrap that you can read every week in any newspaper? 'What a waste of money!' as they say on the terraces.
I'm not going to bore you with the details of every recommendation. Life's too short for that. However, I do want to dwell on one particularly moronic proposal - that supporters should be represented on the boards of football clubs. Like most of the report's recommendations, this idea isn't new - in fact it's already happening. In September 2000 the government launched Supporters Direct, an initiative to promote fan involvement in their clubs through the creation of supporters' trusts. To date, 106 trusts have been set up in Britain and 34 club boards have fan representatives.
Now, I can fully sympathise with desperate fans who feel compelled to organise a whip round when their club is teetering on the brink of financial extinction. But supporters' trusts will never raise the sort of serious moolah necessary to finance a Premiership or larger First Division club. Nor will they buy fans any more than a token presence on the boards of these clubs.
Supporter representation sounds radical but whose opinions do these fans actually represent? Football fans, as anyone knows, rarely agree on anything. Peruse the message boards of any fans' website if you don't believe me. If you read the post-match discussion threads you'd scarcely believe that the contributors have been watching the same game, so contradictory are their assessments. A player who is man of the match in the eyes of one fan, is a lumbering donkey who'd struggle to make the grade in Sunday League football in the eyes of another.
Supporters are also incurably fickle. One week the manager is a hero but the next, after a handful of poor results, the fans are baying for his head. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if these same fans were actually put in charge of a football club. Reason rarely holds sway when we've got our replica shirts on because, unlike politics or academic enquiry, supporting a football team is an irrational, emotional activity. If fans were rational creatures we'd stop wasting our time and money following teams who repay us with nothing but misery, mediocrity and dashed hopes, and we'd all support Manchester United or Real Madrid instead.
And if you're still not convinced, just consider The Bloke Who Sits Behind You. You know the one I mean. He's the overbearing loudmouth whose opinions, delivered at deafening volume with a spray of saliva, are all completely and utterly worthless. He thinks he'd be a better manager even though you wouldn't employ him as a car park attendant. He thinks he can tell professional footballers how to do their job even though he's a pie-munching lard-arse who'd have a heart attack if he so much as kicked a ball. Now, imagine this buffoon sitting on the board of your football club. Still think supporter representation is a good idea? No, I thought not.
So never mind fans on the board, I've got a better idea. Instead of Supporters Direct how about Billionaires Direct, a dating agency dedicated to matching cash-strapped clubs with mega-rich sugar daddies? Ambitious Croydon-based Nationwide League football club seeks footloose oil-tycoon with wads of wonga to invest (GSOH required).
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Fri 27th Feb 2004 
