After 2005′s restart in the Austrian 7th division, Austria Salzburg are presently two promotions away from going back to the Bundesliga.

Running time: 09m40s

Back then, he wasn’t to know that over half a billion pounds of Sheikh Mansour’s money would go on what Chief Executive Garry Cook calls a “project”. But while hundreds of millions in transfer fees have enhanced their standing on the field and millions more have made City look slicker off it, more modest sums have allowed them to completely alter the face of football elsewhere.

In the Europa League last night, City prolonged Red Bull Salzburg’s ongoing failure to buy success beyond Austria’s borders. It’s five years since Red Bull acquired and adulterated the ailing Bundesliga side Austria Salzburg; rebadging and renaming the club in line with its brand-leading energy drink.

But just last summer, Manchester City were involved in the transformation of hard-up Hyde United from a club with not only “United” in its name but red shirts, to one without the offending suffix and colours. All in “celebration of our 125 year anniversary” according to Hyde FC, but the club soon unveiled white and blue strips bearing the sponsor City In The Community, which certainly underlined the initiative’s claim to make “a huge difference to the lives of those around us”

The kindest thing there is to say about this is that the manipulation of Hyde United has slightly more to do with football than Red Bull’s of Salzburg. Hyde FC’s Ewen Fields received more than just a lick of sky blue paint before City’s reserves made themselves at home, but in a move indecipherable from audacity or stupidity, they too have been retitled as Manchester City Elite Development Squad.

City fans had no more to do with this nonsense than those of the former Hyde United, but the non-league club’s dire straits, just as in Salzburg, put them in the path of an irresistible cash whirlwind.

Garry Cook isn’t a football man but the former Nike executive understands brands, and City’s foray into Hyde illustrates the complexity of a supporter’s relationship with their club’s brand. It’s a word that evokes consumer choice, but as a fan there is no other club for us so surely we must be more than merely consumers of a brand. Therefore there is no choice, so clubs must be more than brands and fans more than consumers.

However, brought up on tales of past success and derring-do, good times are what our hearts desire and the brand-minded know it. That’s why decades of tradition can be warped or slaughtered in subservience to other, bigger, brands and we still turn up in Hyde, Milton Keynes, Salzburg, New York and Leipzig to watch the resultant footballing Frankenstein’s monsters.

“When the real is no longer what it was,” observed Jean Baudrillard, “nostalgia assumes its full meaning.” In Wimbledon and the violet half of Salzburg (I hear there’s even a team in Manchester) there are indeed reminders that so often branding sells football fans short. There we’ll find the inspiration that it’s history and tradition that invigorates communities; that fans are not consumers; and that football clubs underestimate the power we wield at their peril.

The insensitivity shown to Austria Salzburg’s identity alienated swathes of supporters, some of whom were further outraged at being denied entry to a pre-season friendly merely for wearing their traditional colours. “The red bull can’t be violet, or else we couldn’t call it Red Bull,” went Mateschitz’s response. “This is a new club with no history.”

Despite a successful start on the field, the club’s most dedicated fans moved quickly to safeguard its discarded past. Today, those who had egged-on the young Martin Hiden in the 90s are more likely to be found on the sidelines of Austria’s village greens than at Red Bull’s temple of mammon.

To the refrain of “scheisse Red Bull!” and backed by unprecedented terrace solidarity from fans of many European clubs, the Initiative Violett-Weiss – an alliance of Austria Salzburg’s 20 or so supporters’ groups – attempted to reason with Red Bull on the issue of colour. The firm filibustered, dismissing public objections to their takeover as hooliganism. During a home game against Austria Vienna, 1,000 pro-violet supporters noisily exited the stadium through a choking violet fug at precisely 19.33, the year of Austria Salzburg’s foundation. Vowing only to return with their resurrected club, the bearers of 76 years of Austria Salzburg’s history are now sitting on top of the fourth division: the halfway stage of their epic journey back to the Bundesliga.

It’s not been easy. Their small community has suffered the loss of its grandstand to fire, and the life of young ultra Gerhard Weiss on a coach trip to visit a group of sympathetic fans of Borussia Dortmund. Those who Red Bull termed a “violent group of so-called fans” have welcomed supporters from all over Europe to Salzburg’s violet quarter. The demands of having a four-figure crowd in tow everywhere they go may present challenges to rural venues, but there’s more danger of being duped by tall tales about Martin Hiden’s supposed appetite for ham than anything else. In fact, the most violent act I’ve witnessed there was a bloke getting heartily slapped by his girlfriend.

Well, he probably asked for it – which is more than most football supporters do as the institutions we sustain with noise and with colour are bought and sold with increasingly frequency. Without our traditions, our culture, the lives we live and lend to our clubs, what would they be? What’s left when clubs exist for the benefit of those other than their supporters? In the third division, with ownership a mystery and Thorp Arch left unbought while plans for a commercial development estimated to cost over £80m sit on the drawing board, the endeavours of Austria Salzburg’s supporters is a timely reaffirmation of what we Leeds United fans already know: always question the motives of those running our club even when it’s on a roll. In fact, especially when it’s on a roll.

As for the only man to wear the all-white of Leeds United and the violet of Austria Salzburg, 36-year old Martin Hiden last year became the world’s first carbon neutral footballer (whatever that means), adding a righteous splash of green to an already extensive palette for one of the game’s least likely colourful characters.

This article appears in issue 4 of The Square Ball Magazine. Out now, only £1.

Homesickness, however, was soon to become a worry for Hiden. English football’s only other Austrian, Alex Manninger, kept goal 200 miles away and much worse: no matter where he looked, it seemed that nowhere in West Yorkshire sold speck, a peculiarly Austrian sort of salt-cured ham. Bruno Ribeiro told him about a shop in Harrogate that stocked chorizo, but it simply wouldn’t do. Nothing could replace the distinctive juniper flavours of his favourite brand of speck, and in the depths of despair he reached for the bottle.

Summer brought the first indication to George Graham that all was not how it seemed with his £1.3m man: when the once brown-haired Hiden turned up for pre-season training with a brightly bleached barnet. If there’s one thing Graham hated, it was peroxide. So much so, that Hiden’s roots were barely showing when the man who once frogmarched freshly-blonded Lee Sharpe and Jonathan Woodgate back to the barbers by their ear holes walked himself all the way down the M1 to Spurs.

Hiden’s experiments soon left him with a bonce so red it resembled David Hopkin’s as seen through a pair of infrared goggles. Then, in a cruel twist of fate, a pothole in the turf of that club who wear the same disgusting colour ended his Leeds career. With a sore arse from the treatment table, Hiden eventually skulked back to his homeland; his hair a footnote in Leeds United’s history yet, it turns out, a token of the chameleonic nature of Austrian football.

Believe it or not, Hiden still plays in the Austrian Bundesliga. With revenues a fraction of those enjoyed by the other one in neighbouring Germany, it’s a grotesquely commercialised league. Playing kits are pockmarked with logos and the turnover of sponsors buries clubs beneath a colourful array of names and motifs. The games of hide and seek played with identity suits sponsors more than clubs, and some deals are more intrusive than others.

Take one of Hiden’s former clubs, for instance. Austria Salzburg were known officially as Casino Salzburg for a decade until an insurance firm, Wüstenrot, lent their name to the club in 1997. Throughout this period, the club wore its traditional hues of violet and white – until, that is, the hangover from a mid-90s purple patch that brought three Bundesliga titles and a UEFA Cup kicked in with a bang.

Amid cash concerns in the second half of the 2004/05 season, top flight survival was secured and Red Bull owner Dieter Mateschitz stated his intention to rescue the club. Outgoing chairman Rudi Quehenberger expressed his delight that “years of hard work for the benefit of football in Salzburg” had come to fruition, and the local company’s investment was roundly applauded. The strugglers suddenly became favourites for the title, but it quickly emerged that in brokering a deal with the energy drink firm, the club had sold its soul to the devil.

This article concludes here and appears in issue 4 of The Square Ball Magazine. Out now, only £1.

Of interest instead this evening is the first pairing of Celtic and Rapid Vienna since the two clubs slugged out an ugly Cup Winners Cup tie in 1984.

At Parkhead, Celtic overturned a 3-1 first leg deficit but were ordered to do it all over again by UEFA after Rapid midfielder Rudi Weinhofer claimed to have been struck by a bottle chucked vaguely in his direction from the crowd.

Weinhofer left the ground with his head wrapped in a comedy bandage, and the Austrians eventually progressed to the quarter finals after a venomous replay at Old Trafford, where goalscorer Peter Pacult had the smile wiped from his face by a Celtic fan.

Pacult is Rapid’s boss these days, and may aim to land a few blows of his own with the aid of specially re-introduced all-red strip to commemorate 1984′s skandalspiel victory. It’s just “a joke”, Rapid say – though Celtic are unlikely to see the funny side if history were to repeat itself tonight.

Tell me about it. Four years after conceiving the most detestable side in the Austrian league, three from repeating the trick in America (plus the one in Brazil it’s easy to forget about) and two years after objections from fans and authorities thwarted attempts to buy Leipzig’s FC Sachsen, Red Bull has returned to the city eyeing more vulnerable prey on its impoverished football scene.

Dieter Mateschitz’s latest attraction is a fatal one for the few hundred regulars at suburban fifth division outfit SSV Markranstäd,who he recently acquired with a fraction of the 100m euros he’s pledged to buy Bundesliga football “within 8 years” for the club’s new home, Leipzig’s 45,000 capacity Zentralstadion. The stadium, underused since its construction for five 2006 World Cup fixtures, will get the full Red Bull treatment but for its new tenant there lies in store the biggest contrivance the German game’s seen since Sylvester Stallone saved a last-minute penalty.

Prevented by German football law from owning and rebranding the club outright, a sleight of name will see SSV Markranstäd’s league place taken by Mateshitz’s “RB Leipzig”. That’s “RB” not for “Red Bull” you understand, but “Rasenball Leipzig”. In English? Grassball Leipzig.

Grassball? Riiight. Tell you what, Dieter. I don’t care if you shit Bundesliga titles out of your arse on cue. Just do me a favour: listen to Bill and leave the rest of us to get on with following our football, not fighting it.

After our old friend Schützei had welcomed them to Salzburg, their cameras returned to hear a familiar tale about a rich man who bought an expensive new outfit that would separate the clever from the stupid.

Dieter Mateschitz’s intention upon purchase of Austria Salzburg in 2005 was to see his rebranded club compete regularly in the Champions League. Come next season, the chances are that he’ll find himself, once again, with nothing on.

As long as Austria Salzburg’s progress befits their fans’ inspirational drone, it’s that little bit easier for supporters of the club whose history, colours and tradition Red Bull binned to remain sanguine in the face of the local firm’s arrogance.

Once the formality of defeating Adnet on Saturday was realised, their most gruelling season yet got its fairy tale ending with two games to spare. Fans lit the celebratory fuse, and talismanic centre-forward Oliver Trappl rocked the mic before seeing in a third successive league title the only way he knows how.

Prost!

Also, had his “footballing frenzy waiting to happen” not staged the final act in a month of defeats for Gary McAllister’s Beckfordless line-ups, Leeds United’s path may have differed from the one that has the potential for us to sink our hat-pin of history into his ballooning bastard brainchild.

Play off pain for MK would leave the protection of just a single division from AFC Wimbledon. Their footsteps may not yet be audible to Bundesliga leaders Red Bull, but Austria Salzburg are also marching on their oppressors with quickening pace.

Despite the necessity to squeeze in the odd midweek match (die Englische Woche, they call it), form since the winter break has been nothing short of what we’ve come to expect. Berndorf and Oberhofen were mercilessly thrashed by seven and nine goals, and two was all it took to snuff out Kuchl’s challenge before a last-minute third nicked a slapstick affair fit for Plainfeld’s shambolic surroundings.

Last weekend’s retributional 5-1 flailing of Bürmoos – the only side to inflict them with defeat this season – means that when second-placed Grünau visit on the final day in four games’ time, the odds are that a third successive title trophy will be brimming with cold Stiegl and draped once more in violet and white.

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.

The book makes the compelling case that much baseball wisdom is wrong, and for a brief period its football stock was rising too. But with Moneyball‘s leading UK practitioner, Aidy Boothroyd, now out of work alongside fellow number crunchers Sam Allardyce, Iain Dowie and Alan Pardew, football’s proving to be a rather different ball game.

Beane’s own attempts to shake up the San Jose Earthquakes, with the help of one-time Leeds United meltdown egghead Bill Gerrard and ‘English Legend’ Darren Huckerby, have left the side dead last in Major League Soccer’s western conference with only 8 wins from 30.

In the east, Red Bull New York finished just two wins better off, but in a development more goofball than moneyball, they face Columbus Crew in tonight’s final – and nobody, not even the geeks, know how they did it.

How come, they’re all asking, a sub .500 side – that is, one which won less than half its regular season games – can earn a shot at winning the whole damn caboodle? With a win percentage almost identical to last season’s West Ham, it would be as zany as Alan Curbishley winning the Premier League. Any other team, said MLS commissioner Don Garber to the New York Times, and this ‘would be heralded as an incredible sports story. But when the Red Bulls do it people think it’s a joke.’

It’s a joke that’s already wearing thin. Only Red Bull’s North American scum standing on the brink of success could have Americans doubting the single thing that underpins their team sports. Red Bull New York suck. If they succeed, then the playoffs suck too.

They may well be badged up like the Village People, but a victory for fellow first-time finalists Columbus Crew at LA’s Home Depot Center tonight is the only hope for reason. According to New York’s official site, should the unthinkable happen a celebration will occur at Red Bull Arena on Tuesday. They’d better get a move on with it, then. Here’s hoping they don’t have to bother.