Special Feature: Football fans fight their own clubs to preserve identity – Part 1
Football has turned into a massively commercial project now. Along with being a sport, it has turned into an entertainment industry that is centred on marketing projects and sponsorship deals. The large scale at which football
has expanded as a sport has given opportunities to entrepreneurs to make the most of planet earth’s most watched sport.
Club football is one particular section of football that has been hurt due to this commercialization of the sport. Football clubs which exist all around the world are seen by fans as a mark of their personality and values that
they stand for. Most clubs emerged at the turn of the last century and have been steadily growing since then. These football clubs are now humungous entities which deal with huge amounts of capital and resources but their original beginnings which were quite
humble in nature should not be forgotten.
Football club’s emerged in different cities and from thereon in they have remained their respective city’s representative personality. For example, Arsenal F.C who are based in the famous city of London in England is mostly followed
by people who live in North London because historically the club derives its roots from the northern side of the city. Barcelona in Spain is another club which has its roots in history of the Catalonian region.
Under Spanish dictator, General Franco, the Catalonian people were subjected to gross human rights violations and they were persecuted due to their separate culture and language. Barcelona, which is the capital of Catalonia, is
home to the FCB, Football Club Barcelona. Barca, as FCB are more affectionately known are not just a football club but a source of inspiration to every Catalonian around the world. They are a mark of every Catalonian’s struggle against Franco’s oppressive
regime and to this date raise their voices so that they can break away from the Spanish federation to form a separate nation-state.
Such examples prove that football clubs are not mere exporters of “football” as a sport but also hold close relations with their fans, who have supported the club through thick and thin. As football evolves and turns into a business-related
process, football clubs are losing their identity. Traditionally, football clubs have been under the ownership of their own fans. Fans own the team, in some cases the ownership is distributed across a wide array of followers, who own several shares each. In
other cases, fans vote in a president who oversees the everyday running of the club and in return gains the affection of his fellow supporters.
However as money has infiltrated the world of club football, ownership has slowly turned away from fans themselves. Many famous clubs across the world nowadays have foreign owners, owners who have no relation to the fans, owners
who in some cases aren’t even aware of the club’s history and owners who are using the clubs in question as money making bodies. Modern football club owners are milking clubs to earn profits at a massive level, money has blinded football and fans are suffering
because of it.
This weekend two matches take place in England and German football leagues that have a very special past. One of the matches in question is between Liverpool and Manchester United while the other one takes place between Schalke
04 and Borussia Dortmund. It is depressing to see that these clubs who take on each other in derby matches this Sunday are now in deep financial trouble. Despite maintaining their place in the higher echelons of football over the past twenty years, the likes
of Manchester United and Dortmund are in deep debt, debt that can have severe consequences for these giants of club football.
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