Relegated or Selling Out?

[Eco]

From a fans perspective; would you rather your club get relegated, or have success but sell out their identity?

This came to be after the Milan Derby, where Chinese was written all over it, and the game was said to move up so that the viewing in China would be more favorable. These are two of more well known Italian clubs, and now both are owned by Chinese Billionaires and both are becoming less Italian it seems.

So, it's your club, which would you choose?

[Danny]

Can't imagine a situation where I'd ever want us to be relegated. With that said I can't imagine wanting to use oil money either.

So with all of that said I'd probably stand still in time, looking at my beautifully fan owned club (literally owned by a fan) forever and ever amen.

[Eco]

Here is what I saw, and it made me a little nauseous.

 

[Harry]

Fuck. Tough question but I'll have to go with relegation.

I'd love to see Inter and AC going deep in the champions league again but that's because i like the soul of those clubs and what they were about. Take that away and they are nothing but a different colored jersey which is meaningless. 

[Harry]

36 minutes ago, ATL said:

Here is what I saw, and it made me a little nauseous.

 

Good lord. Abominable business practice to brand a localclub with a proud history in foreign lettering like that. 

[HK85]

If the selling out part would guarantee success then absolutely that way. 

We've tried going the "right way" for ages. Spending within our means in our traditional ground but have nothing to show for it this generation. 

I want to see my club winning things.

[Honey Honey]

We sold out and got relegated. 

[Eco]

2 minutes ago, HK85 said:

If the selling out part would guarantee success then absolutely that way. 

We've tried going the "right way" for ages. Spending within our means in our traditional ground but have nothing to show for it this generation. 

I want to see my club winning things.

Even if it meant going to the stadium and seeing Arabic everywhere because someone from Qatar wanted a 'toy'?

1 minute ago, HoneyNUFC said:

We sold out and got relegated. 

You were bought by a fan. He's an idiot mind you, but that's not exactly selling out is it?

[HK85]

2 minutes ago, ATL said:

Even if it meant going to the stadium and seeing Arabic everywhere because someone from Qatar wanted a 'toy'?

I'd have no problem with this as long as it was affordable for the local fans to go. 

[Eco]

2 minutes ago, HK85 said:

I'd have no problem with this as long as it was affordable for the local fans to go. 

Fair enough.

In Atlanta, if it's not in English or Spanish, it doesn't make sense to me. The local community here speak one of those languages (with some Koreans), so if everything went to Chinese because Atlanta was bought by a wealthy Chinese guy, then it would no longer be true to the city and culture, and to me, that is the worst.

[Harry]

Sadly its really a question of: do you  let your club get with the times and sell out or do they stay true to their principles and identity and fade into obscurity. 

Both options are terrible and it shouldn't be a case of these being the only possible outcomes. 

[Eco]

Just now, Harry said:

Sadly its really a question of: do you  let your club get with the times and sell out or do they stay true to their principles and identity and fade into obscurity. 

Both options are terrible. 

Not for all clubs. Juventus are owned by Fiat, so they are sticking to their roots. Most German clubs are fan owned or owned by a local company/brand, which is still their identity.

Selling out is just sickening to me. Changing the time of a match to satisfy people on the other side of the world, to me screams that they are more important than locals.

[nudge+]

Relegated, easy. I'm not too opposed to sponsors and even investors as long as they come from the region or at least the same country and only hold minimal amount of club shares thus not being able to meddle in club affairs. Being taken over by some (foreign) entity means losing identity completely. On paper, it could work with a benevolent owner who is genuinely interested in continuing the club tradition and work towards making the club self-sufficient in the future, but that's absolutely unrealistic.

[Eco]

10 minutes ago, nudge said:

Relegated, easy. I'm not too opposed to sponsors and even investors as long as they come from the region or at least the same country and only hold minimal amount of club shares thus not being able to meddle in club affairs. Being taken over by some (foreign) entity means losing identity completely. On paper, it could work with a benevolent owner who is genuinely interested in continuing the club tradition and work towards making the club self-sufficient in the future, but that's absolutely unrealistic.

I may be way off base, but what did Roman change about Chelsea's culture before flooding them with millions of dollars?

[Honey Honey]

44 minutes ago, ATL said:

You were bought by a fan. He's an idiot mind you, but that's not exactly selling out is it?

He's a Chelsea fan not Newcastle. Bought the club off genuine local fans with promises of investment to return the club to the top.

Changed his mind 8 months in and used the club as a free platform to advertise his business instead. 

The club shop sells shirts of other teams ffs.

Slowly but surely he's giving way and we are getting to take his tacky company logo off our icons. 

[Eco]

Just now, HoneyNUFC said:

The club shop now sells shirts of other teams ffs.

You have to be kidding? Who's kits do you sell?

[Honey Honey]

Just now, ATL said:

You have to be kidding? Who's kits do you sell?

I havent been in there for a while but it was a range of national teams and foreign clubs that puma make the kit for. At least they didn't have the audacity to sell Spurs kits. I think he actually sold the club shop at the ground to Puma.

The wanker also closed the two club shops in our two shopping centres because they were competitors to his business. Now if you want club merchandise whilst out shopping but don't want to go all the way to the ground you have to go to Sports Direct so Mike Ashley and his business can take a cut of the earnings rather than it all being invested in the club.

He knows all the tricks. You don't become a billionaire selling cheap sportswear if there isn't something dodgy about you.

[nudge+]

11 minutes ago, ATL said:

I may be way off base, but what did Roman change about Chelsea's culture before flooding them with millions of dollars?

Before the rise of foreign ownership football clubs held closer proximity to the fans and the local community where they are rooted, now they are just global brands with withering emotional identification and sense of belonging.

As for Chelsea, the fact that an old English club is owned by a poster child of corrupt Russian oligarchs and is used to launder his dirty money is enough to completely tarnish the club's image. 

[Honey Honey]

2 minutes ago, nudge said:

As for Chelsea, the fact that an old English club is owned by a poster child of corrupt Russian oligarchs and is used to launder his dirty money is enough to completely tarnish the club's image. 

Or keep the club's image in line with modern London.

 

[Cure]

1 hour ago, HoneyNUFC said:

We sold out and got relegated. 

Thought you were talking about TFF and Chazz.

[Smiley Culture]

We sold out. As soon as he arrived, people lapped up Francesco Becchetti as some form of God, despite the writing being on the wall from very early on. Mistakes were excused with "his learning the culture", "he's always going to make mistakes in his first year" and "Barry Hearn made mistakes" and even in his second season when he come out on the opening day of the season, after relegation, shirted up waving a scarf around the people around me told me to stop having a go at him and get behind him because "it was a fresh start". Becchetti then hung out of chauffer driven car windows high-fiving people at games and climbing into the crowd and lapping up the praise like some kind of Demi-God. Obviously what has happened to us in the past season has all been down to Becchetti and people would happily take relegation out of the Football League for the first time in our history if it means that Becchetti disappears/sells up/dies in a horrific house fire. 

[Cure]

4 minutes ago, Smiley Culture said:

We sold out. As soon as he arrived, people lapped up Francesco Becchetti as some form of God, despite the writing being on the wall from very early on. Mistakes were excused with "his learning the culture", "he's always going to make mistakes in his first year" and "Barry Hearn made mistakes" and even in his second season when he come out on the opening day of the season, after relegation, shirted up waving a scarf around the people around me told me to stop having a go at him and get behind him because "it was a fresh start". Becchetti then hung out of chauffer driven car windows high-fiving people at games and climbing into the crowd and lapping up the praise like some kind of Demi-God. Obviously what has happened to us in the past season has all been down to Becchetti and people would happily take relegation out of the Football League for the first time in our history if it means that Becchetti disappears/sells up/dies in a horrific house fire.

I'll see what I can do. 

[Mel81x+]

1 hour ago, ATL said:

Here is what I saw, and it made me a little nauseous.

 

Don't worry no one is complaining now. Just wait till it gets into FIFA '19 then you'll really hear the internet get up in arms about it.

As for club ownership, its transitioned over the years from being community-based into a "how much can we get" system which has worked well for some clubs and then just ruined others. If you want to win things in this climate you've got to do questionable acts to get them done. Sure, you can hold onto the puritan view that football is sacred and needs to be treated as such but its all really a system breakdown starting with networks pouring money, agents holding clubs to ransom, social media influencing players (some of who are quite dumb) and lastly but not least the best of them all ... greed. 

In the case of the Milan clubs, someone saw an opportunity, had the money and went in for the club. Will good things come of it? Who knows, that remains to be seen but what that picture signifies is that things are going to be changing drastically over there but if you're winning things you'll get a fractured fan-base that won't be anything like it is today. Welcome to Modern Football. 

[Stan]

Relegated, sometimes even twice because it worked out for us alright so far  

 

Seriously though, relegation for some clubs, in some instances, can be the best thing for the club. It can be a blessing in disguise because a club can become stale, ineffective and almost useless just floating around above relegation spots for a few seasons. Things just stop working and energy and spirit of the club gets sapped. Sometimes you need to take 1 step back to take 2 steps forward. Obviously it doesn't all work out rosy but there's a few examples where it has worked. I'll use us as an example because it's the best one I can think of and the best one I know about for obvious reasons.

We were pretty much in the doldrums in the mid 00s. To call us mediocre at these times would be generous. We were lacking so much fight and desire and just all round talent across so many areas of the club. The new stadium was dull and grey and hadn't been given the attention a brand new shiny stadium would crave. Players were average at best. Investment in to the club by Mandaric didn't work. The desire and ambition was to get us out of the Championship. It worked. Just that we went in the wrong direction . I think we were 1 of only 10 clubs who had never been out of the top 2 tiers of English football. We'd managed 124 seasons of that and at the time, when we ended the season in 22nd to be forced down to League One, it was embarrassing. What had our club become? Barely 10 years earlier we were at the highest point the club had probably ever been, making regular Wembley appearances, playing in Europe, achieving top-half Premier League finishes. Now, in 2008, we were a laughing stock. A shame brought on to the legacy of football in the East Midlands considering achievements of our tree-like rivals. 

But, as said, relegation turned out to be the best thing about the club. We shipped a lot of deadwood out and managed to gain that winning feeling, that momentum and positive energy back in to Leicester City Football Club. Yes, it was at a lower division and at the lowest point we had been, but we had players and staff alike (Nigel Pearson started his Leicester career at that level) and he helped build the foundations of what would lead us on to some miraculous times. It gave us a chance to regroup, take stock of where we had found ourselves and almost start afresh. It was important to come straight back up to The Championship, though. Staying in League One as clubs like Sheffield Utd, Leeds & Forest have done recently, can set you back too far. Luckily, we strolled the division and could now compete back in The Championship. 

Thankfully, Milan Mandaric opted to sell the club and a small bit of credit must go to him for choosing what has turned out to be the best investors for the club. And what Leicester fans including myself are even more grateful for, are the fact that the Thai owners we have now didn't come in and change the identity of the club or rip out its soul and make Leicester unrecognisable. They kept the core values of the club at heart and kept the fans satisfied by not changing club colours from blue to red (like Vincent Tan at Cardiff for example). For most football fans, they may make some left-field decisions. Most Leicester fans, though, know that they always have the club's best interests at heart.

Shan't dwell on that too much as it'll go off topic, but the point being that relegation, in the short-term sense, is a terrible thing to experience as a fan, anyway. Long-term, it can turn out to be the thing the club needed the most at that moment in time. 

[Vegan Kel]

Speaking as someone who has experienced the latter, the former