{"id":15541,"date":"2021-05-05T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T08:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/?post_type=blog_post&p=15541"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:39:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T09:39:21","slug":"fans-must-control-football-clubs-for-communities-to-thrive-vidhya-alakeson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/news\/fans-must-control-football-clubs-for-communities-to-thrive-vidhya-alakeson\/","title":{"rendered":"Fans must control football clubs for communities to thrive | Vidhya Alakeson"},"content":{"rendered":"
Originally published in The Times<\/a>, Red Box | 29 April 2021…<\/strong><\/p>\n As a child growing up in Wimbledon, I remember the excitement felt by the entire town when the crazy gang of Vinnie Jones, Dennis Wise and Dave Beasant won the FA Cup in 1988. The parade through the town centre was like nothing our small suburban bit of London had ever seen.<\/p>\n Years later, Plough Lane, the home ground of that famous club, lay empty; the team ripped out of the town and shipped off to Milton Keynes. Now, the original stadium is flats but AFC Wimbledon, the club reborn to take on the name of the town, has finally returned home.<\/p>\n This story from my childhood is just one example of how football as a business has come to dominate the business of football.\u00a0The proposed European Super League was a dramatic illustration of the same thing. You only need to look at the financial vulnerability of clubs in the lower leagues to see the deep structural problem created by a business-first approach to managing football clubs.<\/span><\/p>\n But football \u2013 the clubs and their grounds \u2013 are about far more than business. They sit at the very heart of many communities. They are vital assets that bring communities together, build identity and pride and make a significant contribution to the local economy. They are the ultimate community business. The owners of football clubs should act as stewards of these important assets, custodians for the real moral owners of football \u2013 the fans and local communities.<\/p>\n This has not been our direction of travel for the last 30 years. The anger prompted by the Super League creates the space for serious consideration to be given to greater community ownership in football, as we find in other countries such as Germany. It has the potential to create both a more financially sustainable approach to football that protects these vital local institutions into the future, and importantly also reconnects them to local fans and communities \u2013 without whom there can be no beautiful game.<\/p>\n