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
Search: ' Club World Cup'
Stories
Despite three play-off semi-final defeats on the trot, the early 1990s were heady times for Merseyside's third team. Karl Sturgeon recalls
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The most famous export of Ecuador's Chota Valley is footballers, as Henry Mance discovered on a visit to the region
One day, when football wastes as much of academics’ time as it already does of everyone else’s, some PhD student will spend three years working out which area in the world has produced the most professional players per capita. And he or she will eventually conclude what Ecuadorians already know: that the winner is the Chota Valley, hands down.
The Andorra national team faces a number of challenges, from a lack of players to grumpy British pundits. James Calder explains
Andorra’s latest stab at World Cup qualifying was a familiar exercise in damage limitation, the principality’s low expectations largely being met when they failed to pick up a single point in finishing bottom of Group Six.
In the light of a recently published celebrity battle of the sexes, Roger Titford defends football against the influence of its TV manifestation and consider the emotions the game stirs up
Way back in 1992, when the Premier League and Sky’s Super Sunday were but weeks old, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch came to symbolise a defence of supporting football in the face of a hostile media and uncomprehending middle-class women. For many commentators this was a tipping point in favour of the game. We now may be entering an era when the scales are tipping the other way. Alongside 50 People Who Fouled Up Football another fresh title you can find in the bookshops is A Matter Of Life And Death: Or How To Wean A Man Off Football by Ronni Ancona and Alistair McGowan, the impressionist comedy duo.