For most of us, it is our life our place of worship a place to go to every week to meet like-minded friends and fellow supporters a place where you have stood or sat in the same seat for decades and created memories good and bad, somewhere that your forefathers and generations of family have gone before, it's a sense of being and pride in your community, it's part of you, somewhere you have invested thousands of pounds and countless hours of commitment, ultimately it's part of who you are.
But sadly supporters of many teams feel like this is being stripped away from them with the influx of unscrupulous owners looking to cash in on our national game mainly due to the carrot being dangled by the money machine that is the Premier League.
We see owners, greedy football agents and players, TV companies, big businesses and even far away countries ripping the heart out of our clubs who are completely disconnected as to what the clubs mean to the fans and taking billions out of the game, the old saying of football without fans is nothing doesn't really hold weight anymore as games are beamed around the world to viewers willing to pay for it who really couldn't care less about the local communities and businesses who are dependant on the clubs.
So what's the answer?
Yes, it should be said not all clubs are rotten eggs with Leicester City a case in point but they are few and far between, we are all guilty of being vociferous towards our owners after a bad run of results, a bad managerial appointment or the sale of our best players from time to time but that is just part of football but when you see clubs on the brink of liquidation, folding and being stripped bare and used to line peoples pockets or just completely mismanaged by egotistical clueless multi-millionaires it really breaks your heart that a historical club could be lost forever, the only answer is for legislation to be made to protect it from happening and giving historical clubs a listed graded status that gives them protection, and giving (the weak) football organisations more power to be stronger and have a fit and proper purpose test that is actually fit for purpose! But most of all we need to give fans and supporter groups a voice and be included in decision-making and the clear transparency of the running of OUR clubs.
The German model of clubs having to be owned by 51% (the 50+1 rule) by fans states that, in order to obtain a license to compete in the Bundesliga, a club must hold a majority of its own voting rights. The rule is designed to ensure that the club's members retain overall control, by way of owning 50% of shares, +1 share, and protecting clubs from the influence of external investors.
Yes, that is easier said than done but there are signs of some green shoots in that direction with some clubs including Preston North End who are the latest to create a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) in the EFL following on from Bristol City, Swindon Town and Bolton Wanderers who have also made similar agreements with their fans in recent seasons.
An MOU is about the club committing to ongoing dialogue with their supporters by signing up to a Memorandum of Understanding and commits both parties to regular dialogue on substantial club matters.
The details can be found here; https://thefsa.org.uk/news/preston-north-end-commit-to-dialogue-with-fans/
Another initiative recently set up by The ESSG which is a group of Everton stakeholder groups, associations and societies that came together in June 2021, to consider the views of Evertonians and to develop a proposal for effective and meaningful fan representation at Board level at Everton Football Club.
The ESSG terms of Reference are;
We are a group of Everton fans, representing a variety of supporters groups and organisations.
Our goals are to create a Fan Advisory Board and have Fan Directors who have been elected through an open and transparent election.
The fallout of Project Big Picture in October 2020, the European Super League proposals in April 2021 and the UK G
overnment’s subsequent Fan Led Review into Football Governance, highlighted the need to strengthen the role football fans have in the decision-making processes within football clubs, to ensure that:
the views of fans are embedded in the club’s strategic and commercial strategies;
the interests of the local community are protected; and communication and engagement between the Board of the Football Club and its supporters is meaningful.
It must be said as fans some of us get caught up in the hype of news of foreign investment from some super-rich billionaire with an open chequebook that will take us to the next level and get sold a dream but ultimately we lose our soul and forget what we were all once about and lose our soul and get blinkered by an impossible dream in most cases.
In summary, on the surface football looks like it's thriving with the global brand of th
e shiny Premier League, Champions League and all singing and dancing hypocritical World Cups in Qatar, but in reality, it's all about money and lining the pockets of the corrupt organisations of FIFA, UEFA and the Rich.
Football is so much more than that to us, just ask a fan of Bury, Derby, Birmingham and the many others who have been lost, on their last legs or saved from the brink.
At the end of the day no matter who we support and rivalries aside we are all cut from the same cloth and without each other, the game we love wouldn't be the same.
This is a fight we have to fight together.
Give us our beautiful game back!
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