Football has a huge problem…

Though your mind may have instantly jumped to ever-inflating ticket prices, manipulated kick off times, or century-old clubs quietly ceasing to exist, I’d like to name the true source of these problems:

Greedy, unscrupulous businessmen who care only for balance sheets and profit margins. The executives and owners who would willingly watch the very pyramids they climbed crumble beneath them from the safety of inflated transfer fees and broadcasting deals.

The following quote from one of the greatest popular football club sums things up pretty well.

Their cash-loving reign has led to these kinds of questions becoming the norm:

• Why share your power with local, lifelong supporters when those abroad are much more lucrative customers? After all, 100% commercialization with 0% control is by far the most cost-effective situation.

• Why reinvest profits into the club when you don’t expect to own it in a few years’ time?

• Why not relocate your club if they’ve got a bigger, modern ground that runs on a fraction of your current ground’s yearly upkeep in the next city over?

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of these decisions made by the self-appointed czars of the modern game have created the reality we are currently living in. A reality where the World Cup can be bought, and the fans’ control of their beloved football clubs slips further and further with each passing season.

Yet, there is hope. Popular football is still alive.

Wait, what is Popular Football?

If you’re asking yourself this question, you’re in luck! I wrote this article explaining the popular football movement earlier this year.

But, if you don’t want to click over there, here is a brief summary of what popular football is all about:

The popular football movement stands against modern football’s constant pursuit of further riches at the expense of the very people who built the clubs that have become so profitable for oligarchs, sheikhs, and distant billionaires. We to return the game that billions of people cherish back to its roots; back to providing affordable, supporter-owned, community-focused football for supporters.

Now, before I get too carried away, I’ve got some bad news. Popular football is just as flawed.

But so is Popular Football?!

Yup, you read that correctly.

For all its honesty and principles off the pitch, popular football is missing the validation that on-field success brings to any sports philosophy. For example, Athletic Club’s Basque-only policy would be the laughingstock of Spanish football without the club’s topflight status and historic triumphs to back it up. How long would Real Madrid’s “Galácticos” policy have lasted without any silverware to show for it? The same goes for our movement.

Popular Football needs to beat its greedy, corporate brother at its own game.

To legitimize our community-first, populist beliefs, our clubs need to significantly outperform their traditionally run opponents. Phoenix clubs and those taken over by supporters need to emulate and even surpass the success of their past. Sadly, this just doesn’t seem to be happening.

• AFC Wimbledon, whose predecessor once pestered the best teams England had to offer, has never achieved higher than a mid-table League One finish and things are only looking worse. Just last season the Dons were nearly relegated from the Football League.

• SD Logroñés and Unionistas both have late 90s La Liga heritage, but after a decade of football for each club neither has managed to return to Spain’s second division.

• Even FC United of Manchester, one of the most iconic fan-owned clubs, has seemly stagnated in the English seventh tier. That’s the same level they were competing at in 2008! This is borderline disastrous considering how much larger the club’s fan base and reputation is compared to the typical seventh tier club.

As the movement matures, it is becoming more and more clear that the standard design of fan-owned clubs is unlikely to ever bring elite football or trophies to popular football. Without either of those, the message of community-focused, financially transparent, stable football may become nothing more than history. Nothing more than the last protest of a dying breed of football fans.

Instead, we need an ownership structure that allows for significant financial backing to flow through the club that still gives the fans and local community genuine control of their club. Though it sounds like a fairytale, someone may have found the solution six years ago.

Much Needed Corsican Innovation.

Sporting Club Bastia was founded over 118 years ago and is situated in a small port town of roughly 40,000 people on the French island of Corsica. It might seem like an unlikely group for revolutionary ideas to come from, but not to anyone who knows them. The Blues seem to relish rocking the boat

.

In the 1977-78 UEFA Cup, Bastia defeated a Torino side in Turin that hadn’t lost at home for two seasons straight. The small club made it as far as the final before losing to a mighty PSV Eindhoven. Three years later, they lifted the Coupe de France. It’s the only major silverware a Corsican club has ever won.

Yet, the good times didn’t last. In 2017, following relegation from Ligue 1, Bastia found themselves facing over 21 million Euros of debt and were expelled to the fifth tier of French football. (2) A similar dilemma the year before had led to the liquidation of Evian-Thonon-Gaillard FC. Was this the end of the underdogs?

Pierre-Noël Luiggi and Claude Ferrandi didn’t think so.

Together, the two entrepreneurs from Bastia and long-time supporters of the club took over and introduced a new way of doing things. Their idea originally came from a small company in Lyon that distributed locally grown vegetable baskets to its customers. (I promise this is cooler than it sounds). The farmers called it a “cooperative society of collective interest”. SCIC for short. In simple terms, a SCIC connects a socially-beneficial company with its community by dividing the company’s shares between multiple “colleges” who are invested in the business. (1)

Here's what all of that looks like for SC Bastia, which Johan Luiggi, Board Member and Presidente di l'Associu for the club, shared with me in an interview:

• Founders: 38% (4 seats on the Board of Directors).

  • This consists of the Luiggi and Ferrandi Groups.

• Local Businesses: 22% (2 seats on the Board of Directors).

  • Anyone who invests in the club through their company or business.

• Supporters: 20% (2 seats on the Board of Directors).

  • Any individual who wants to buy a share of the club.

• Employees: 10% (1 seat on the Board of Directors).

  • Bastia employees, past and present. Including players and other staff.

• Government: 10% (1 seat on the Board of Directors).

  • Any government entity (municipalities, counties, regional government, etc.) who wants to hold shares. Roughly 50 municipalities hold shares, spread all over Corsica. The city of Bastia is also an active shareholder of the club.

In classic popular football form, a one share one vote principle is present, but within each college. This means each voting bloc’s overall control doesn’t change. Those percentages were locked by agreement when the SCIC was established. In Johan’s own words, “You could be a rich prince and put 50 million on the table, but you still don’t get more votes than anyone else.”

But, what if that needs to change? Another strength of the SCIC model is its flexibility. Though the current distribution of shares between each college is locked, it is always open for reinterpretation. For example, “The socios specifically asked that the business group be slightly larger in voting rights in order to show that we would be welcoming to business investment”.  

Speaking of investment, even yearly dividends are ultimately in the hands of the locals. When asked about it, Johan said, “we can redistribute dividends if the annual meeting so wished, but 50% of annual profit minimum must be reinvested into the club per SCIC law”. This is the definition of setting the example.

Yet, my favorite part of it all may just be the education and awareness it brings to each group. “Supporters better understand what business owners want to get out of a matchday at the club instead of blindly labeling them as champagne sippers, and every group is better aware of supporters wants and needs”, Johan said.

If all of this sounds a little bit too good to be true, I’ve still saved the best for last. Since their conversion to a SCIC model, SC Bastia have won A LOT of football matches. Sixty-eight to be exact, which has been enough to secure three consecutive promotions. The club’s new philosophy seems to be anything but a barrier to success.

In their latest campaign, the Corsicans finished 4^th in Ligue 2. Had it been a normal season, the islanders would have gotten the chance to fight for a fourth promotion in five seasons via the playoffs. Unfortunately, Ligue 1 restructuring meant there would be no such luck this season. Performances like this won’t go unnoticed for long.

Sure enough, SC Bastia’s model is already changing minds and winning hearts.

The Sociochaux.

A few weeks ago, the DNCG—the financial police of French football—demoted one of France’s first professional clubs, FC Sochaux-Montbéliard, from Ligue 2 to the third division. Furthermore, if the club’s financial state doesn’t improve rapidly, they’ll find themselves competing in the fifth tier next season. (The same fate Bastia faced six years ago.)

In response, over 300 supporters have joined the “Sociochaux” association whose goal is to apply Bastia’s structure to their own club.

With some luck, stability will come to FCSM and Bastia will have a brother in arms.

In conclusion…

Everything popular football has done is more than commendable and is football in its purest form. It’s genuinely what I love most about the sport. Yet, I fear it may all be in vain if there is never any significant success on the pitch.

With SC Bastia’s innovative SCIC ownership model, I believe popular football clubs all over the world can take a step toward returning the top without sacrificing the control that defines who they are.

I hope you’ve found this as interesting as I have. I hope the necessity of success isn’t too hot of a take, but I think I’m right.

Long live popular football. Forza Bastia. Thanks for reading.

Many many thanks to Johan Luiggi for answering all of my questions and introducing me to such a wonderful club.

Sources

1. Marion Maignan. The collective interest cooperative company (SCIC), a social innovation : performativity of alternative models in the third sector organizations.

2. Ex SC Bastia Executives in Police Custody.

3. "SOCIOCHAUX": FC SOCHAUX SUPPORTERS WANT TO BECOME SOCIO-SHAREHOLDERS TO SAVE THE CLUB.

On February 11th, 2023, Centro Storico Lebowki will officially unveil their plans to oust the current hosts and claim the 2026 FIFA World Cup for themselves under the banner of “#Mondeggi2026”. Yes, that World Cup.

In the Facebook post introducing their bid to the public, C.S. Lebowski says this:

“Since football has more than a few problems, we have applied to host the next edition of the World Cup, in a very different approach from the plastic and concrete stadiums seen in Qatar.” (Roughly translated from Italian).

If it wasn’t already clear, this isn’t going to be your typical World Cup bid. But, what are they up against?

The Competition

Qatar - 2022 World Cup

In their totally legitimate campaign to host the 2022 World Cup tournament, the Qatari government says they spent at least $200 billion to build all of the infrastructure required to host the tournament. On top of the cost of the project, it took more than a decade of planning to secure the Middle East’s first World Cup.

Though it’s hard to argue with the architectural beauty of the stadiums they built, the widespread reports of the deaths of migrant workers soils the brilliance of Qatar’s moment.

Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile - 2030 World Cup

Finances aren’t the only thing—or so we’re told—that decides which countries will get the privilege to organize the next World Cup. Football heritage can also be a great tool to win the bid if leveraged properly.

Because of this, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile are making a strong case to bring the tournament back to South America because the 2030 edition will mark the centennial of the first World Cup which was held in Uruguay. That’s some serious history.

The Plan

In the face of billion-dollar construction projects, centuries of football heritage to compete with, and not having a FIFA-recognized national, what is C.S. Lebowki’s plan to bring the biggest sporting event on Earth to Florence?

Farming.

Yup, to make their case as to why they should host the 2026 World Cup, the club is choosing to invest their limited resources into a local farm called “Mondeggi Common Good”. The farm allows anyone to come and be a part of a community that promotes “self-management, cooperation, and mutualism” through agriculture. In other words, it’s just a cool place that anyone can come and grow with others through a mutual interest in farming.

If you want to learn more, you can check out their website here!

What is the Point of this Ridiculous Story?

Alright, the jig is up. This isn’t a real World Cup bid. But, I wrote this article because I think there’s something commendable going on here.

While most nations invest billions of dollars into stadiums that will soon lay abandoned after the World Cup or build extravagant infrastructure despite having large population of impoverished citizens, C.S. Lebowski is choosing to make their community a truly better place instead of lining their pockets.

I recognize that a true World Cup bid is something entirely different to a community project, however, if every football organization thought a little more like the C.S. Lebowski, I think the world would be all better for it. Though, maybe this is all just naive, wishful thinking…

Nevertheless, thank you very much for reading. I hope you enjoyed this.

Popular football is a movement spreading across world football that seeks to return the game that billions of people cherish back to its roots; back to providing affordable, supporter-owned, community-focused football for supporters.

We believe football clubs should be more than just another revenue source in someone’s investment portfolio.

We stand against modern football’s constant pursuit of further riches at the expense of the very people who built the clubs that have become so profitable for oligarchs, sheikhs, and distant billionaires.

But what’s so bad about ‘Modern Football’?

To answer that question, I’ve collected a few stories that I hope will make my point.

It’s the night of May 25, 1967. Celtic Football Club have just pulled off a European Cup win to become the first British champions of Europe. The best part of the triumph was that all but two of the 15 man squad were born within 10 miles of Celtic Park in Glasgow. The furthest was born just 30 miles away in Saltcoats. They were truly hometown heroes.

While that story seems like a fairy tale today, it was almost ordinary 56 years ago. The runner-up that day, Inter Milan, fielded a team who had all been born in northern Italy. Furthermore, half of the 20 teams that had participated in a European Cup final by 1968 were entirely domestic squads. In contrast, only ONE of Real Madrid’s starting players was Spanish when they defeated Liverpool in the 2022 Champions League final.

Not so long ago football clubs were able to be successful and represent their communities at the highest levels of the game.

Fast forward 36 years. In that short amount of time, the record transfer fee paid for a football player had gone from £300,000 (£5.3M today) to £46,600,000 (£78.9M today). The all-mighty dollar (pound?) had taken over and it was about to claim its first victim.

In September 2003, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten, Norwegian businessmen and owners of First Division side Wimbledon F.C., announced that they were relocating the 114 year-old club 56 miles north to Milton Keynes. To add insult to injury, the club’s long-time ground, Plough Lane, would be sold to real estate developers. The club was butchered and their beloved stadium was bulldozed to make room for a new supermarket despite desperate protest from its fans.

The idea of a football club being a part of the local identity and social fabric of a community rather than just another business had been thought to be immutable. Something that transcended even the most sacred parts of the game. Yet, in the new world of business football even it had a price tag.

The year is 2021. The record transfer fee is now £198,000,000 (£241.4M today); an increase of over £9M per year since we last checked in. For comparison, it had only risen at a rate of roughly £2M per year from 1967 to 2003. If money had been out of control 20 years earlier, football was now a greed-fueled free-for-all.

After 14 years of owning Newcastle United F.C., Mike Ashley had finally found a buyer to take the historic club off his hands. Fans rejoiced at the idea of finally being free of an owner they had wanted out for so long. After all, who could possibly be worse than him?

As it turned out, Ashley ended up selling the club to a consortium that included Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund as its primary investor. In other words, one of England’s greatest footballing institutions is now owned by a branch of the same government that has been accused of committing war crimes in Yemen.

It is not an exaggeration to claim that every dime earned by Newcastle through ticket sales, international TV deals, and transfer fees directly supports everything the Saudi government does—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Even I have some level of responsibility in all of this as someone who pays to watch Premier League games***.

Genuine moral dilemmas have been laid upon anyone who so much as watches a match from their couch thanks to the people who have been allowed to fund modern football.

No one should ever have to feel bad because of who owns their football club.

But commercialism isn’t just an English problem. When the Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim bought the Spanish giant Valencia CF in 2014, he brought a truckload of promises, ambition, and cash to the table.

Five years later, it all seemed to be going well. Los Che finally had their hands back on a major trophy, the squad was full of future superstars, and their infamously unfinished stadium was supposedly being completed. The future looked nothing but bright.

Then, just a few months later, the team’s manager and sporting director, the architects of the club’s success, were fired after the former publicly criticized Lim’s decisions one time too many. Within the next year, the club chose to quickly offload its most valuable players at a discount to save money during the pandemic. Then, the club announced the new stadium would only half the size as originally advertised. Since then things have only gotten worse. A Twitter post from earlier this week sums it all up pretty well:

"I quit. After 35 years. Mentiron (Lim-liar), here's my shirt. Do what you want. Sorry dad, sorry grandpa. My heart will always be black and white"

Everything has turned sour and generations of supporters are powerless to save the club they’ve loved so deeply. It’s a tragic story that is only getting more and more common across the world.

Now I want to tell one last story. But, this one doesn’t involve any sleezy billionaires or former titans of European football. It’s just about a small club who existed for eight brilliant years.

In 1999, Quique Pina, a seemingly unnoteworthy former Real Murcia player, founded CF Ciudad de Murcia with the help of local businesses and ‘influential friendships’. In just 5 years, the little club from southern Spain had pulled off an unlikely rise to the dizzying heights of the second division. In the 2005/06 season, Ciudad even managed to solidify themselves as the highest placed Murcian club in Spanish football. It was yet another fairytale from the greatest game on Earth. Then—as you’ve probably guessed by now—it all went wrong.

In June 2007, Pina ‘betrayed’ the club by suddenly selling it to an investor from Grenada. Ciudad was almost immediately moved 172 miles away and renamed ‘Granada 74 CF’.

As bad as that name is, it’s not the worst part of this tale. Due to registration issues and gross mismanagement, the club never played a professional match again. In 2010, it officially died along with all of the pride and joy of Ciudad’s local, loyal supporters who had managed to produce the best football in town for a few moments.

Not even the humblest of projects is safe in modern football.

What was all of that supposed to mean?

In short, those stories are meant to show the sickness that has infected modern football. Slow at first, but now all-consuming, the endless amounts of money that have been pumped into football have corrupted even the game’s most well defended principles.

Clubs no longer represent their communities or fans. TV companies have more influence than any supporter group and fans are little more than customers. Not even a club’s location is guaranteed in the world that ‘business football’ has built.

Though modern football may deliver unparalleled greatness to a handful of the richest clubs in the world, it has cost the game too much.

Okay, but what’s so great about popular football?

Well, I’ll put it like this. When I asked some fans of Poli Almeria, one of Spain’s oldest club de fútbol popular—who also run the incredible Informe PIRRI podcast—why they loved popular football so much they said this:

“For us it is a very different experience. We are not customers who just go to the stadium. Being able to participate makes you feel like it's YOUR club.”

“There is also a lot of closeness with the players. Every game is almost like a family reunion.”

“For us it is to recover the essence of football: fans who pool effort and resources to compete through a team by which they feel represented, identity, belonging and community. In this type of football they are more present.”

Popular football provides an opportunity for people who truly love the game to be a part of it again. It allows for supporters to put as much as themselves as they’d like into their favorite club without fear of betrayal.

Though a popular football club will never win the Champions League outside of Football Manager, it will also never be separated from the people who love it the most.

In Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, I cannot thank you enough for reading my ramblings and I really hope you enjoyed what I had to say! Hopefully it wasn’t too cynical or self-righteous…

If you’ve never heard of popular football before, I hope I was able to convey why I believe world football needs it so much.

If you’re a die-hard fan of a popular football club, I hope I was able to capture the reason why you have fallen in love with the movement and the people behind it.

*** To be clear, I do not put any blame on the fans, players, or (most) staff who work for football clubs owned by morally bankrupt owners. I put all the blame on the executives and other decision makers who have dragged innocent people into being associated with ‘dirty’ money.