THOSE WERE THE DAYS ?
This is a picture of the Southampton football team taken in the late 1940s - around the time my Dad first took me to The Dell to see the Saints beat Derby County 4-2 in the old Football League (South.) The players had names like Alf, Bill, Ted, George and Charlie and the club was owned by benevolent local businessmen. You can almost smell the Dubbin and Sloan`s liniment. Why, there was even a man in a white coat. The team proudly represented the city and there seemed to be a warm and understanding relationship between the club and its supporters and a mutual respect for each other`s contribution to the well being of the club.
Nowadays, Southampton football club boasts an Argentinian manager, back room staff and reserve goalkeeper; a Polish goalkeeper; Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Japanese defenders, midfielders from Uruguay, France and Brazil and forwards from Holland, Japan and Zambia (although currently engaged with the African Cup of Nations.) To be fair, as well as this international array, there is a smattering of up and coming English players emerging from our famed Academy, but the overall trend is clearly towards becoming a multinational enterprise.
Inevitable, I guess, as it`s not a game any more. It has become an international results driven business with the glittering prize of belonging to the inflated, bloated Premier League. And inevitable too since the club and all its debts was bought by a Swiss/German international businessman, sadly now deceased, and placed in the hands of an Italian banker as its Executive Chairman. It`s like a fiefdom. The family own the club, the Executive Chairman runs it as he sees fit in his headlong quest for success and the supporters are left, well, to support.
If only it was that simple. Trouble is, all this internationalisation, all this playing to far eastern financial galleries, all these self-imposed blinkers which blind the traditional soul of the club all lead to bizarre decisions, too numerous to recount here, but which display a lack of style, an absence of class, that had always been a hallmark of the way the club behaved towards its employees and its supporters. There was a time when I used to enjoy my visits to The Dell and more latterly to St. Mary`s; I felt welcome and valued as a loyal supporter for over half a century and that feeling of mutual respect between the community and the club was still there.
Sadly, those days have gone, the club has moved on at the end of the day and there`s nothing I nor any other former shareholder can do about it. Except to confess that, as well as living quite contentedly without an i-phone, without F***book, Twitter, without a tablet to call my own, I know too that I can live without the Premier League and all its faux idolatry. And I`m not sure either, whether it`s me or the Executive Chairman that could do with a man in a white coat. Maybe we both could.
Inevitable, I guess, as it`s not a game any more. It has become an international results driven business with the glittering prize of belonging to the inflated, bloated Premier League. And inevitable too since the club and all its debts was bought by a Swiss/German international businessman, sadly now deceased, and placed in the hands of an Italian banker as its Executive Chairman. It`s like a fiefdom. The family own the club, the Executive Chairman runs it as he sees fit in his headlong quest for success and the supporters are left, well, to support.
If only it was that simple. Trouble is, all this internationalisation, all this playing to far eastern financial galleries, all these self-imposed blinkers which blind the traditional soul of the club all lead to bizarre decisions, too numerous to recount here, but which display a lack of style, an absence of class, that had always been a hallmark of the way the club behaved towards its employees and its supporters. There was a time when I used to enjoy my visits to The Dell and more latterly to St. Mary`s; I felt welcome and valued as a loyal supporter for over half a century and that feeling of mutual respect between the community and the club was still there.
Sadly, those days have gone, the club has moved on at the end of the day and there`s nothing I nor any other former shareholder can do about it. Except to confess that, as well as living quite contentedly without an i-phone, without F***book, Twitter, without a tablet to call my own, I know too that I can live without the Premier League and all its faux idolatry. And I`m not sure either, whether it`s me or the Executive Chairman that could do with a man in a white coat. Maybe we both could.
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