Opinion Sur Joven

“Supporters are bound to acknowledge, comply with and respect this By-law…”, reads section 19 of the internal regulation of the Argentine football club Boca Juniors. What a curious operative contradiction: the “rights and liabilities” of supporters and authorities don’t appear in its official website; the same happens with other Argentine clubs such as River Plate, San Lorenzo and Racing Club. Out of the five largest clubs, only Independiente publishes said information.

Democracy and football are the hearts of the matter. Many times supporters are prisoners of policies that don’t represent them and end up having little influence on key decisions regarding the equity: we might as well mention that they’re clients of clientelism. If the team wins a championship, it doesn’t matter how they did it, but the running tutor that embraced them.

Two models

Corporations and non-profit organizations... Who own the clubs?

At the beginnings of 1999 clubs were prevented from becoming corporations. But the problem continued. Due to a project submitted by Mauricio Macri (future Mayor of the city of Buenos Aires and chairman of Boca Juniors until next December), who aimed at turning clubs into companies, the debate continued for many years and the project was finally rejected. However, Racing Club found the way to salvation. Although it still exists as a non-profit organization, the football activity is managed by a company called Blanquiceleste.

Anyhow, the way some chairmen internally manage their institutions is disappointing: by using social entities as an excuse, they do whatever they want with the clubs. “Their” clubs.

“(The Argentine clubs) Lanús and Vélez care about their supporters. For instance, Newell’s has no board of directors, it’s a monarchy; the people who want to participate are systematically rejected -even by Justice, because their chairman (Writer’s note: Eduardo López) has shady deals with the courts of the province of Santa Fe. Rosario Central is managed by their "barrabrava" (hooligan gangs) and other clubs must make agreements with theirs to coexist. Each club is different: their differences depend on which political mentors, rich authorities or sponsors they have… It’s all relative. And many times they sacrifice their political independence due to economical issues”, says Alejandro Fabbri, member of the Foro Social (Social Forum) of football, which was created in 2001 in an effort to bring clubs back to “their supporters’ hands”.

We must say it: if football doesn’t depend on administration (that is, on a guy who invests on it), there’s room for debate. Otherwise, there isn’t. Boards of trustees meet every fifteen days, supporters vote every four years, there are auditing commissions and meetings of representatives are held (very rarely, we must also say) to approve or disapprove balance sheets and minutes of the meetings are signed. That’s how non-profit clubs internally work.

In a company such as Blanquiceleste, this is complicated. To administer Racing Club, the corporation holds the exploitation of football and all the resources it generates. Decisions are up to one person, Fernando Di Tomasso. In exchange, he’s in charge of repaying the club’s debt: as soon as it is settled (by 2009, they say; nine years without the right to voice and vote), those who pay their fees every month will be able to choose their authorities again. That is: Racing Club would work again as a non-profit organization with democratical mechanisms. Nowadays the organization exists, but it’s managed by a fiduciary organization which has legal influence in decisions as well (e.g. agreements, sales). However, businessmen will be businessmen... And they rarely discuss their decisions.

Another issue: no one knows whom players belong to. What will happen when the administration company leave? Although Quilmes wasn’t in the same economic situation as Racing Club, they had to transfer ten players to Exxel Group in order to end their agreement in 2001. What will happen with the bankrupt non-profit organization and Blanquiceleste? Racing won a championship after thirty years while administered by a company.

Football, we have a problem

The information problem is equally difficult for all clubs. In River Plate, Boca Juniors, San Lorenzo, Independiente and Racing Club the answer was the same when the balance sheet was requested: “Call later”. Over and over. The strongest answer came from Racing Club: “This is a company, and our company doesn’t give such information”. Who own these clubs? Newell’s, as previously mentioned by Fabbri, has had the same chairman since 1994. Without elections. The same happens in Banfield since 1998 and in Boca Junior since 1999. Other clubs pretend to be democratic, but they have serious problems when it comes to giving information to their supporters.

The same question arises over and over: Who own the clubs? Section 6 in chapter 1 of Boca Junior’s By-law reads the number of supporters is “unlimited”. Their website says the opposite: “Supporter registration is momentarily suspended until further notice”. This statement has been there for some years.

Most of the internal mechanisms of the clubs provide regulations that are practically never published and depend almost exclusively on the media. Some of those regulations read “Every time it is deemed convenient, the Board of Trustees shall be able to gather and debate in a secret manner”.

Therefore, although some clubs take their supporters into consideration, others act as undercover companies defending the shares of the investors/authorities in charge of the club. Supporters either celebrate or disapprove. But they rarely decide within non-profit social organizations supported by the State in case of economic crisis Law No. 25.284, which prevents football clubs from dissolution (in Spanish only). The only thing they can do is vote every four years.

“The clubs are governed supporters who have been elected. However, in my opinion, this doesn’t mean they’re actually governed by supporters. It would be the same as saying that, because our representatives and senators have been elected, our country is governed by the people. Some of them represent us, some of them don’t. The same happens with club authorities”, Fabbri comments.

What’s the solution? A new way of running a club

Apparently, Europe will never learn the lesson. In spite of the ever-present cases of private partnerships that went wrong, every year (especially in the English Premier League) there are more and more cases of businessmen willing to pay whatever it takes to own a club.

It’s the case of the Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, who purchased the English Chelsea in 2003 for 220 million euros and then invested 130 to buy players. Said league is plenty of examples: there are also foreign businessmen who generate uncertainty whenever they abandon a club. In Spain, for instance, management dissolved two clubs which had to be refounded later: Murcia and Málaga. We also have examples of our own in Argentina: Temperley, Mandiyú and Chaco For Ever.

But the truth is that an opposite idea is starting to grow in England. It’s not about businessmen investing their money and being the owners, but about 50 thousand Internet users investing 50 euros each to buy a club and making joint decisions. They’re close to making it: there are already more than 47 thousand registered users in My Football Club. The aim is that the users themselves give their opinions on the future of the team, the necessary measures and even on its tactics. Democracy? Delirium? Maybe.

Opinión Sur Joven contacted its creator, William Brooks, a thirty-something English man who managed to be supported by ESA Sports (a renowned videogame company), and even got the BBC to publish his project…
-When did you come up with this idea?
-About two years ago. I’ve been doing some research and talking with owners of English clubs. The website we’ve created results from this. We already have 25 thousand users and we’re almost ready to get 50 thousand. (By the time this article was published, they were close to reach their goal).
-What do you think of clubs run by companies, where decisions are made by one person only?
-That’s how most of the clubs in my country are managed. If that person can make money out of it, then he is able to work. However, if that person loses his interest or starts losing his investment, then the club starts suffering. Clubs are still being managed in a “traditional” way and we’re proposing to do it in a different one. The idea is seeing whether the system of MyFootballClub is better than the previous ones.

There will be a board that will present the decisions to the rest of the members, who will consequently vote. And the latter will be the ones to decide which players they’ll buy and which they won’t. Anyway, will clubs be governed by their supporters? Maybe they will; maybe they won’t. “Perhaps one day we’ll win the Premier League”, says Brooks.

When Jacques Rousseau dreamt of direct democracy, he imagined it for a city with 70 thousand inhabitants. In football, clubs deal with similar figures, but it’s still hard to measure their scope: some people use their global nature to get to own them. And sometimes supporters don’t know their own obligations either. Democracy... Is it possible in football?

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