The Community football club

For many football fans their club is not just the team they turn out to watch every weekend too many their club is part of the community this is more and more the case the further you go down the leagues. Lower league clubs have a real affinity to the local community or at least they should have. Being part of the community is key for any football club to involve itself in all things local is essential to having a healthy and happy fan base. Just last year Millwall FC supported a local NHS demonstration for saving the local A and E at Lewisham. Things like this can bring the football club closer to the local area and its people. But I do believe football clubs should be hugely united in terms of working with their community. I think councils should be worked with not against and the council and the local people should have a big say in how the club is run. The idea of a community run football club which interests me a lot it is something which in Germany is quite popular and is starting to catch on a little here in E the UK with a few clubs going to fan ownership with the club being owned by the community. For me as a socialist I feel this should be the way many clubs go with a huge emphasis on democracy and fan participation on the direction of the club. I accept that football is all about money but how about running it democratically under fans control with the finances being spread evenly over all the teams in a division at least in term of television money. Why should a Manchester United get more revenue from a TV deal than a Stoke City or anyone else for that matte it is simply not a level playing field and it does need to be addressed in some shape or form. The idea of a maximum salary cap is interesting too with clubs being only allowed to spend so much of a percentage of total revenue on players and their wages. I think on the face of it it sounds a great idea yet implementing it would be very difficult. Unless it was organised on a continent wide or FIFA wide which would be so hard dealing with so many different nations who all have different levels of tax too I would be interested to know how this could work. The clubs should not be play things for the rich billionaires around the world to come in and plunder they should be kept as part of the community and run for and by the community not for profit organisations with mass democracy at their heart. There is a fantastic publication from John Reid a Socialist party member and a RMT regional secretary in London who has published “reclaim the game” a brilliant pamphlet on the beautiful game from a socialist perspective and how things could be better for all. You can read it here http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/ReclaimTheGame/ReclaimtheGame.htm

Why German football is getting it right

Cheap ticket prices, beer on the terraces safe standing these is just afew of the good things German football is currently getting right but it goes much deeper than this. In this country where football is so expensive to watch to be a supporter even at a lower level. At my local club Stevenage FC it is 20 quid for an adult to stand 3 pounds for a programme and between 30 and 40 pounds for a replica shirt. No wonder so many are being priced out of football this is just league 1 level the 3rd tier of English football not even the top level. I believe something needs to be done to make football our countries national game affordable again to the masses. Football is so much a part of our culture that it often makes politics and has television channels and radio stations dedicated to this. Following a football team is similar to a religion in this country with passions running high. Much like England Germany has a huge passion for the beautiful game and has got it right in so many ways I do hope we in England can learn some lessons from our German friends. The Germans arrived some time ago, and have the players, management, organisation, infrastructure and fan base, if not necessarily to dominate European football for years to come, then certainly to keep their flags flying near the summit. How did they do it? The key point is that German football has got it right on and off the pitch. After finishing bottom of their group in Euro 2000 Huge radical changes were under taken by the powers that be in German football. Inure. Instead of hoping that success would somehow turn up next time, they went in for radical changes. They recognised genuine improvement would take time, and invested in youth - specifically, hundreds of millions of pounds in academies, with the German FA and the Bundesliga (the equivalent of the Premier League) working together. At national level, successive managers gave young players their heads - and vital experience - at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups. Clubs have trusted the products of those academies; too, sometimes on Dortmund’s march to Wembley two-thirds of their team have been German, in stark contrast to their English counterparts, not least the Manchester City line-up they outplayed in the autumn. The off-field contrasts are equally stark. As a fan, you pay £9 to watch Dortmund in the Bundesliga, and there are large safe standing terraces. Fan-friendly policies from clubs run by fans. With three historic exceptions, clubs are controlled by supporters. No owner can control more than 50% of the shares. There are no foreign owners. Result: average crowds above 45,000, the best in Europe. Currently watching the best teams in Europe. The Spanish powerhouses are already planning their response. Italy is stronger than for some years, and David Beckham and his new friends at mega-rich Paris St Germain will be a threat. Even here, the FA has made sensible moves in youth football which deserve, in time, to pay dividends. But the German footballing castle, like those picturesque fortresses that dot either side of the Rhine Valley, is built solidly on high ground. I’d love to go watch a German football match one day the experience sounds fantastic thre is no reason why we cannot do it here in the UK. Fan owned clubs is something which hasn’t taken off him in the UK AFC Wimbledon, Wycombe and Exeter and more recently Portsmouth have been taken over by the fans but yet these have been down to fans bailing their club they love out due to financial troubles. If we could get a fan owned club system going where they still remained competitive on the pitch at a good level this would be ideal. It is still seen in Britain that to get anywhere you need to spend big and have big sugar daddy’s on board I think this doesn’t have to be the case. There is much we can learn from Germany not least the fan involvement and the clubs being part of the community and not just in words in deeds too. with thanks and credit for extracts from http://news.sky.com/story/1085808/german-football-success-comes-as-no-surprise