The Archive

Simon Menary discusses the future of Supporters Direct in the wake of unfortunate publicity and threats to their funding

Supporters Direct (SD) has been briefly reprieved after an unfortunate series of tweets from its former chief executive nearly killed it off (as referred to in the editorial in WSC 294). But its long-term future remains unclear. In May, chief executive Dave Boyle celebrated the elevation of fan-owned AFC Wimbledon to the Football League with a Twitter rant at those responsible for the relocation of the original club to Milton Keynes.

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The big teams in South America are facing a serious challenge and there could be more to come. Sam Kelly explains

When the trophy was presented after the final of the 2011 Copa América on Sunday July 24, it was to a burst of sky-blue-and-white confetti. That much was not unexpected. Argentina were, after all, the pre-tournament favourites as well as the hosts. But, at the end of a momentous competition full of upsets, they weren’t the victors. The colours were instead being blasted skyward to celebrate the victory of the hosts’ neighbours and rivals from across the Río de la Plata, Uruguay.

Looking back over the history of the tournament, Uruguay’s win isn’t a triumph for the little men. It is difficult to paint it as such when it took them one clear of Argentina on to a record 15 Copas. But the fact remains that 18 months ago, when they had just barely scraped qualification for the 2010 World Cup, few would have had Óscar Washington Tabárez’s men down as potential winners of that tournament (or, of course, semi-finalists in South Africa).

The story of this year’s Copa has not been one of thrilling matches, even if a good number of them were more interesting than the scorelines suggest. It has, though, been one of unexpected results. The third favourites won it, which is not that far out (although the gap in the odds on betting markets between Uruguay and second favourites and holders Brazil was huge), but they beat Paraguay in the final. And a glance at the teams who played in the third-place play-off the previous day confirms the picture of a tournament in which the continent’s old order has been emphatically overturned.

That match was a 4-1 win for Peru over a Venezuela side who, in reaching the semi-finals, had won two matches – that’s two more than Paraguay, the team who edged them (and Brazil) out via penalty shootouts. Both Peru and Venezuela have come an awfully long way in a very short time. Just before the previous Copa América, which they hosted in 2007, Venezuela were still widely referred to as the continent’s whipping boys, and it was difficult to see where improvement was coming from.

They reached the quarter-finals of their own Copa, and months later appointed César Farías as manager. Farías has also taken charge of the youth sides for some games, and his knowledge of the whole national set-up has been a big plus for them.

Peru have, unlike Venezuela, had some great moments in their past, but were coming to this Copa from an even lower point. They finished rock bottom of the South American qualifying group for the 2010 World Cup, with only three wins. Even those who had a feeling this Copa was going to be one for the underdogs never dreamed Peru would go far.

Their experienced Uruguayan manager Sergio Markarián – who managed Tabárez when the latter was a player at Bella Vista – provided perhaps the off-pitch moment of the tournament when he let rip in a press conference after a question about why his side were so defensive. “It’s easy to say ‘Oh, we’re very attack-minded’ when you’ve got the kind of players they [Chile]have,” he said, before exclaiming: “The day has to be close when we [the ‘smaller’ nations] expect more even standards of refereeing.” Peru did open up when they had the chance, and striker Paolo Guerrero actually ended up as the tournament’s top scorer courtesy of his hat-trick in the third-place play-off. Tabárez was undoubtedly the best manager of the Copa, but Markarián has surely been the most influential in the long term.

If this really is the end of the old order, what lies ahead for Brazil and Argentina? At the time of writing the latter have just parted company with manager Sergio Batista and Alejandro Sabella, the former Sheffield United and Leeds midfielder, looks the most likely replacement. As someone who has actually worked as a coach and manager before, he would be an improvement on Argentina’s last two bosses, Batista and Diego Maradona.

Brazil’s situation is trickier to read. They were always treating the Copa more as a chance to build for the future, and Mano Menezes is highly unlikely to lose his job as a result of the quarter-final exit to Paraguay. All the same, having no competitive matches (discounting the Confederations Cup) between now and the World Cup they will host in 2014 will be a problem for the development of a young team.
It could mean there are yet more chances for the previously smaller nations to improve further and close the gap to the more traditional powerhouses. And with the next World Cup final to be held in the Maracanã, scene of their greatest triumph in 1950, new South American champions Uruguay might be forgiven for hoping they will be riding the wave of that momentum.

From WSC 295 September 2011

A new website tracking the accuracy of transfer rumours has started up. Adam Powley assesses the implications for football journalism

It’s the silly season, and while some fundamental questions are raised about the media, police and political establishment, it is business as usual for football. The contrivances of the transfer windows mean that almost as soon as a season ends in May, the speculation and gossip about which millionaire wants to play with which other group of millionaires begins to flow. It is easy to just blame the journalists, but there is undoubtedly a public appetite for human dramas of ambition, loyalty and greed that the business entails.

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It’s the 40th anniversary of a season that began with a dramatic garden party, a tape recorder and a set of match-fixing allegations that shocked West German football, writes Gunther Simmermacher

A pall of gloom hung over the Bundesliga as a new season started 40 years ago. The clouds had started to gather just over two months earlier, at a garden party to celebrate the 50th birthday of a fruit importer. June 6, 1971 was a sunny day. Horst-Gregorio Canellas, the gravelly-voiced Kickers Offenbach president, welcomed the luminaries of the German FA (DFB) and influential journalists to his home in the Rosenstrasse in the village of Hausen. At exactly ten minutes past noon, a sound engineer clicked the play button of a centrally-placed tape recorder, Canellas sat back as he theatrically flourished a cigarette, and West Germany’s biggest football scandal broke.

Film footage shows a perplexed national coach Helmut Schön hearing Bernd Patzke of Hertha Berlin – who had played in the World Cup semi-final against Italy a year earlier  –  and another Hertha player, Tasso Wild, proposing to fix games to manipulate the relegation battle that had concluded only a day earlier, followed by Schön’s number three keeper, Manfred Manglitz of FC Cologne, offering to throw his club’s game against Kickers.

That final round of the 1970-71 season had ended with Offenbach’s relegation after a  4-2 defeat in Cologne  –  Manglitz didn’t play after Canellas alerted FC captain Wolfgang Overath to the goalkeeper’s corruption. Rot-Weiss Oberhausen had saved themselves on goal difference with a suspect draw at Braunschweig, and Arminia Bielefeld survived with a 1-0 win in Berlin  –  as the crowd’s perceptive chants of “fix, fix” echoed through the Olympiastadion.  

Much as the revelations on Canellas’ tapes shocked the public, the clues had been there before. Schalke’s home defeat against Bielefeld in April had been regarded as highly suspicious (as if to make up for it, Schalke went on to lose also against Offenbach and Oberhausen).  Canellas first became aware of match-fixing in early May when he received a telephone call from Manglitz, who asked for an incentive fee to not accidentally “let in a few” against Offenbach’s relegation rivals Rot-Weiss Essen, who would finish bottom of the table. Canellas paid, and Cologne won. He could do nothing about Cologne’s 4-2 home defeat to Oberhausen three weeks later  –  that game was fixed.

Astonishingly, some players claimed to be unaware that they were breaching ethics. Braunschweig’s international Max Lorenz even wanted to issue receipts for the bribes he received, as if these were legitimate business transaction. His teammate Franz Merckhoffer later recalled in a TV interview: “I didn’t think much of it. If the senior players were taking the money, I thought I was entitled to do so myself”.   

Canellas hoped that the incontrovertible evidence would move the DFB, whose secretary-general was present at his birthday party, to relegate Bielefeld, thereby saving his club. Instead, the federation swiftly banned Manglitz, Patzke, Wild  –  and Canellas, on the grounds that he had admitted to having made bribery payments. Offenbach went down; Bielefeld and Oberhausen were allowed to kick off the new season in the top flight. Feeling betrayed, the whistleblower turned sleuth, uncovering an impressive quantity of dirt. He had even warned the DFB of corruption, in early May, when he reported Manglitz’s approach in regard to the Essen game, the one he paid for and for which he would be punished. The DFB had dismissed his allegations as “vague suspicions”.

When Canellas uncovered evidence of Schalke’s fixed defeat against Bielefeld, eight Schalke players sued for libel. These players, who included the great Reinhard Libuda and future West Germany internationals Klaus Fischer and Rolf Rüssmann, eventually were found guilty of perjury and fined, earning their club the moniker FC Perjury. That game would become emblemic of the scandal.
Their hand forced, the DFB initiated a thorough investigation, headed by its relentless chief prosecutor, the judge Hans Kindermann. More than 50 players from seven clubs, two coaches and six club officials were punished. Altogether 18 games were officially declared fixed (remarkably, none of the results was annulled).

As a result of the scandal, attendance records dropped sharply over the next couple of seasons, from a match average of 20,661 in 1970-71 to 17,932 the following season and a record low of 16,387 in 1972-73  –  at a time when all members of the West German sides that went on to win the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup two years played in the Bundesliga.

Indeed the 1971-72 season was something of a high-water mark for the quality of football. Bayern Munich and Schalke (strengthened by the arrival of the Kremers twins from relegated Offenbach) played brilliantly in their neck-to-neck race for the championship which culminated in a title-decider on the last day of the season, held as late as June 28. In the inaugural game at the new Olympic Stadium, Bayern won and became the only side ever to score more than 100 goals in a Bundesliga season.

The following year, Schalke’s young squad fell apart as several of their scandal-tainted players were banned or left West-Germany. A purple patch in 1976-77 apart, the club never recovered. Bielefeld might have started the 1971-72 season like everybody else with 0 points  –  but that’s the points total with which the club finished. In mid-April, the DFB finally pronounced its punishment: Arminia would be relegated with 0 points, with all their results counting only for or against their opponents. Bielefeld was allowed to play out their final six games, winning only one of those, a 3-2 before 9,000 spectators that helped send Dortmund down with them. With 19 points, Bielefeld would have been relegated anyway. Taking their place in the following season was Kickers Offenbach. Rot-Weiss Oberhausen was not punished and survived for another year.

The DFB was proactive in fixing the root causes of the scandal: the federation abolished the maximum wage system, and it set up a second professional tier, starting in 1974, to cushion the harsh consequences of relegation on players.

And soon the spectators returned in even greater numbers than before. West Germany’s success in hosting and eventually winning the 1974 World Cup reignited a passion for football in the country. The clouds of the scandal were lifted.

From WSC 295 September 2011

Liverpool supporters want to remain at Anfield but, as Rob Hughes explains, moving to Stanley Park may be the more viable option

Nearly ten years after announcing plans to build a new stadium in nearby Stanley Park, the future home of Liverpool remains in limbo. Managing director Ian Ayre’s recent admission that the preferred redevelopment of Anfield is becoming “increasingly unlikely” was compounded by owner John Henry’s comments on Twitter. “Anfield would certainly be our first choice,” he posted. “But realities may dictate otherwise.” There were, he concluded with a distinct tang of frustration, “so many obstacles”.

Ayre’s more detailed assessment cited problems over land and property acquisition, along with certain environmental and statutory issues, as the main “barriers to our ambition”. He couldn’t forego another pop at former owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett while he was at it either, saying that their failure to keep their promise of a new stadium had “set the club back several years”.

But Liverpool’s main beef seems to be with the city council. There are major logistical issues with redeveloping Anfield, chief among them being the knock-on effect of extending and heightening the stands to allow for a proposed 60,000 bums on seats. “Local people have the right to light,” was council leader Joe Anderson’s Zen-like justification for the impasse. “You can’t build something right next to someone’s house that blocks daylight, whether Liverpool FC like it or not.” More ominously, Anderson estimated that, with red tape being what it is, it may take up to three years before rebuilding could even begin. Thus the council has firmly chucked the ball over the club’s wall. They have given Liverpool an extra three months to decide on whether or not to renew their option on a 999-year lease on the Stanley Park site, which takes them to September.

So just where does all this leave the club? Liverpool have long been looking at ways to increase capacity, not just to satisfy the demand (and I’m conveniently leaving aside the brief Roy Hodgson era here) but to better compete with the matchday revenue steams of rivals Man Utd and Arsenal. They are currently searching for a naming rights partner for the potential new stadium. At least that would take care of a fair slice of the £300 million construction bill. But there is a deeper issue at stake here than just the volume of somebody’s pockets.

Never mind that a move to Stanley Park might make more practical business sense – it is Anfield itself that seems to be the crux. Fan forums and local opinion suggest the supporters are overwhelmingly in favour of the current stadium being given a makeover rather than setting up camp down the road. There’s much talk of “the special magic of Anfield” and the unique spot it occupies in people’s hearts. While no one denies the inevitable reach of progress, the emotional bonds between Liverpool and their fans run uncommonly deep. And with no title for 21 years and counting – and no major trophy for the last six – Anfield’s stature as the only living symbol of past supremacy only grows stronger with time.

It is possible to view the supporters’ opinion as being driven by sentimentality rather than pragmatism. Cynics might even say it is indicative of the nostalgic inertia that has befallen the club since we stopped winning stuff. But football is nothing if not an emotional game, and the preservation of identity and heritage is paramount.

In this respect Liverpool appear to have sympathetic owners. Some years ago Henry was presented with the problem of overhauling Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox and one of the oldest meccas in North American baseball. Conscious of the high degree of community feeling towards the stadium and all it represented, he refused to compromise the needs of residents and opted to modernise the place where it stood rather than hike up the capacity by demolishing any surrounding buildings.

That’s all very noble, of course, but it does not offer a model for expanding Anfield. Whatever the eventual outcome, Ayre has been at pains to explain that no decision will be made that is not in the club’s best long-term interests. “We will not,” he stated emphatically, “make any promises to our fans that we cannot keep.” For those of us still raw from the false assurances of the Hicks and Gillett reign, that is at least something to build on.

From WSC 295 September 2011