Dear WSC
I read with interest Paul Joyce’s article concerning the rebranding of SSV Markranstadt as RB Leipzig in WSC 273. Only this summer it was rumoured that my club Southampton would be saved from extinction by becoming co-opted into the Red Bull sporting portfolio. While the team colours, fitting snugly with the brand, would not need to change the adding of the Red Bull moniker seemed a step too far. Surely something would be lost in fusing a global brand, with all its focus-grouped values and marketing spin, to a football club; an act of historic vandalism similar to replacing stained glass windows in a church with double glazing while nailing a satellite dish to the spire. The internet debate suggested, however, that many Saints supporters were happy to trade naming rights in exchange for the club’s survival. The same supporters had several years previously reacted angrily against a corporate branding of St Mary’s Stadium as simply the “Friends Provident Stadium” with the ensuing negative publicity resulting in a U-turn with the addition of St Mary’s to the title. Corporate patronage is not as new as we would like to imagine. The P in PSV Eindhoven stands for Philips, as in the Dutch electrical giants, with the club’s home games at the Philips Stadion. Indeed, many clubs have benefited from long-term relationships with business which may be far preferable to other ownership and financing options; a quick glance around the leagues reveals several fates far worse than “Red Bull Saints”. Football may be just a game to some but following our team is about being part of a community, feeling a connection with the friends and strangers stood next to us at the ground. It is a thread linking us to people looking out for the score on a TV screen or in a newspaper on the other side of the world. Brands by their nature seek to harness and transform these feelings to translate them into profit, in the process sullying the very spirit of our club. Barcelona’s motto is “more than a club”. Every clubs motto should be “more than a brand”.
Neil Cotton, Southampton
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Stories
Non-League teams are increasingly from suburbia. So the visit of a steelworks team to a colliery town is an unusual event in one of the country's oldest competitions, the Northern League. Harry Pearson reports
Saturday afternoon in the north-east and its raining. It’s not a heavy rain. It’s the sort of fine rain that hangs in the air, all-enveloping like an unfinished argument. The bus from Peterlee to Horden drops me off at a stop next to a Spiritualist church. Down the road towards the porridge-coloured North Sea there’s a medical centre named after Manny Shinwell, the Labour minister responsible for nationalising the coal industry. Outside the Comrades Club a mother and a ten-year-old girl in a party frock unload a chocolate fountain from the back of a Renault Clio and scurry indoors. A poster in the window advertises a night of entertainment featuring “Donna, Promising Young Vocal Artiste”.
Rangers and Celtic have once again hinted that they could leave the SPL. Keith Davidson thinks it might be for the best
This autumn, Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell and Rangers equivalent Martin Bain once again raised the issue of their clubs quitting Scottish football for more financially lush pastures – England or a North Atlantic League involving sides from the Netherlands and elsewhere.
From Port Vale to Port of Spain, and now Los Angeles. Andy Fraser charts the progress of a Caribbean cult hero born in Stafford
When Chris Birchall signed for LA Galaxy this summer, it marked a new twist in a once-promising career that seemed stalled in the lower leagues. While Birchall had all but disappeared in the UK following his unlikely World Cup heroics for Trinidad & Tobago three years ago, across the Atlantic his performances for his adopted nation lingered longer in the memory. On signing the Stafford-born midfielder, Galaxy’s coach Bruce Arena spoke of his longstanding admiration for the player Trinidadians hail as a national hero and affectionately refer to as “Me Mum”.
Saul Pope looks at the relationship between short-term solution, long-term planning and nationality in Russian football
Considering he was sacked by his club following a series of disappointing results, the warm send-off Dick Advocaat received from Zenit St Petersburg fans was unusual and pleasantly surprising. In a league where managers from outside the former USSR have struggled to make a serious impact and many have been fired within a few months, his achievements with Zenit should also not be underestimated.