All Football Clubs Should Be Cooperatives
Well well well. Not a day went by after writing about Manchester United’s new sponsorship deal with Chevrolet that new reports surfaced that Malcolm Glazer, the owner of the club, plans to keep half the money made from publicly trading on the New York Stock Exchange instead of reinvesting the entire amount into the team—say, to pay down its £437 million debt. Manchester United Supporters’ Trust chief executive Duncan Drasdo summed up the reaction succinctly: “Supporters are going to be very angry about this.” Yep.
So what is a poor United boy to do? Well one can defect to FC United of Manchester, a collectively run club started in 2005 in reaction to United’s slide into debt, and specifically in reaction to the Glazer family wresting ownership and running the place like it were Enron. Their manifesto on their website reads: “FC United of Manchester is a new football club founded by disaffected and disenfranchised Manchester United supporters. Our aim is to create a sustainable club for the long term which is owned and democratically run by its members, which is accessible to all the communities of Manchester and one in which they can participate fully.” Engels himself would be proud.
In my humble opinion (or imho, as the kids say), all football clubs should be run as cooperatives in the mold of FC United. The jerseys would look way better without the ostentatious full-front logos (as my friend asked me while we were swimming last night and talking about our favorite kits, “With logos on every available inch of fabric, how are the Mexican leagues not NASCAR at this point?”), the supporters and players would have much more of a say as to how clubs are managed, and, most importantly, football would finally matter again, as local talent and collective strategy would have a place alongside the corporately sponsored assembly of mercenary superteams (there are now two of them in Manchester alone).
“We have ambitious and long term plans,” the aforementioned manifesto states, “Above all we want to be seen as a good example of how a club can be run in the interests of its members and be of benefit to its local communities.” A good example, indeed; I’m going to look into buying a kit once I finish this post.
