Illusion of democracy
IN A recent address at the Supporters’ Direct Annual Conference, author David Goldblatt quickly got down to brass tacks.
What is a football club? It sure as hell isn’t the stadium, because you can move. It’s not the players, because increasingly none of them are bound to clubs for very long. Managers come and go, directors come and go, coaches come and go.
What actually remains at the core of these institutions that gives them life over a period of time are their fans, but above all it is the common culture that these fans have generated.”
Too true, but rather than being the source of great strength for football supporters, this cultural currency is more often used by clubs against them. Bottled, diluted and flogged back to fans, it’s unwrapped with the same fervour they used to create it in the first place.
Take Leeds United for example. The Members Club, Yorkshire Radio and LUTV are the equivalent of a blanket thrown over a birdcage; all they do is confirm that with ‘You are free… to do as we tell you’, Bill Hicks was right, as usual.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Following Goldblatt to the stage was Hamburg SV supporter Oliver Scheel with a smack in the chops for anyone who believes that a good membership scheme amounts to little more than discount merchandise and a magazine subscription. He supports a club which offers all the usual platitudes plus something infinitely more desirable.
Each of Hamburg’s 57,000 members has the right to attend the club’s AGM, not only to grill its board of directors, but also to participate in a democratic process which enables a fan to join them at the top table, a seat Scheel presently occupies.
‘Bah, Hamburg!’ you might say. ‘It’ll never work over here.’ And you’d be wrong. Thanks to Supporters’ Direct, we have 45 supporter-directors, as well as 14 fan-owned clubs. Since 2000, the organisation has swelled its ranks to 120,000 members and overseen almost 150 supporters’ trusts, 100 with shareholdings of some sort.
Austria Salzburg are run along similar lines, although one individual who stands – often literally – head and shoulders above the rest achieves his status in a more unorthodox fashion. The man known only as ‘Schützei’ once bounced agelessly before me singing ‘Super Leeds!’ at the top of his voice as if that’s what he always does – because, well, it is.
Schützei’s as big a part of the Austria Salzburg experience as the Ultras’ megaphone, except he requires no amplification whatsoever. From a lofty position (a fence will do, or once – it being Austria – the slopes of a nearby mountain) he commands second half silence from violetten young and old before delivering a bizarre scat-like proposition to a which a hearty ‘AUSTRIA!’ is the unanimous response.
Before they all skidaddled off for der winterpause, the apples of Schützei’s eye swatted rock-bottom St. Georgen to lead the table at the half-way stage, two points above that pesky Kuchl and four clear of Grünau. Suspended until late March is a fascinating three-way struggle for promotion in Austria Salzburg’s most gruelling season yet on their noble ascent from the country’s 7th division.
Until then, the Alpine weather means they’ll somehow have to get by on a measly diet of futsal, safe in the knowledge that they may well be indoors, but they’re certainly not in the dark.
