Special Feature: Football fans fight their own clubs to preserve identity – Part 5
Back in Schalke, the club’s manager Felix Magath had to pay attention to the club’s fans after ignoring them earlier on in his tenure at the club. Before Felix took over at Schalke, fans and the club held discussions over what
should be the appropriate ticket price, both parties usually agreed on a central figure which was acceptable to everyone associated with the club. However, Magath adopted a strict managerial style as he sacked the club’s supporter liaison manager Rolf Rojek,
who had held his post for the past two decades. The former Wolfsburg manager also dismissed the renegade band of supporters as a “small group”.
However, Magath’s words came back to haunt him as in their season’s opening game against Hamburg around 3000 fans turned up with t-shirts that said “The small group”, a statement that was meant to tell the club’s new manager that
the fans had power and meant business. Fans all across Germany realize each other’s concerns and are in the process of holding a massive protest in Berlin, under the name of “Save our fan culture”. The demonstration is scheduled to be held on 9th
of October, 2010.
In England however, attempts to reach the boardrooms at Old Trafford and Anfield have been fruitless. Supporters have been quite prominent in their objections but David Gill and Christian Purslow have seldom taken notice. Spirit
of Shankly, Liverpool’s supporters group has met with Purslow once but the communication between the supporters and the club has only been one way i.e. from the supporters to the club. Alternatively, Manchester United released a statement sometime ago regarding
the MUST organization terming the situation as a reflection of the “varied sections of club’s large fan base”.
Simon Chadwick an expert in sports business strategy and marketing at the University of Coventry spoke to the media and said that in Germany protests have had a strong effect due to the acute sense of democracy that the Germans
have as a nation, he said that people hold the rights there to openly state something their view. He cited the example of Dortmund’s fans who did not feel shy in voicing their opinions even if their beliefs were different from the stereotypical ones. He said
that despite the fact that Germans value democracy, their society depends on consensual action.
Regardless of all the action that has taken place in Dortmund, Schalke, Manchester or Liverpool the fact still remains that the city’s respective teams are in foreign hands. The club’s don’t belong to the supporters and the Football
associations in England and Germany are not taking any concrete steps to combat this scourge. If the situation remains as it is, one can expect massive changes in football over the coming decade and always, change is not always for the good.
As Manchester United play Liverpool their weekend, MUST will be pondering on their next course of action while in Liverpool SoS will be thinking about their future prospects. At the moment both these organizations are at a crucial
stage of time. In Germany, Dortmund’s supporters have already boycotted their next league match against local rivals Schalke. Fans in England will do well to take heed from their European neighbours, international animosities aside fans on both sides of the
English Channel are going through troubling times. Times that ask courage and character of each and every person associated with these respective clubs.
Glazer family along with Gillette and Hicks have not taken the club’s supporters seriously so far. The club’s bread and better comes through the fans it is only a matter of time before a serious jolt is provided to the foreigners,
it is better that they learn their lessons the easy way than the hard way because we all know when English fans turn wild, even the Scotland yard has trouble containing them.
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