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How far can they go - what would break you?


Guest Howaythetoon

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IT would still be hard, it wouldn't be NUFC, its just a brand.  Id find it hard to go and follow or support a brand.

 

Would I go if they were succesful?  Aye, id go to the odd game but the emotion and love aint there. 

 

The emotion and love doesn't matter to the marketeers...

 

It doesn't even matter to the game. Look at how diluted the atmosphere around the country has become. Music for goals scored etc.

 

Pay your money, turn up, SIT in your seat, eat your hot dog/hamburger, politely applause/disagree, go home come back next week.

 

Customers.

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http://www.austria-salzburg.at/en/history/a-bitter-end-and-a-new-beginning/

 

On the 6th April 2005 Red Bull took control of the Salzburg Sport AG company and therefore also took control of the football club Austria Salzburg. Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz publicly introduced his football advisor, Franz Beckenbauer, and the resigning chairman, Rudi Quehenberger, announced he was thrilled to see that "years of hard work for the benefit of football in Salzburg" had finally paid off.

 

The initial reaction to the takeover was euphoric, even amongst the long-standing and most loyal fan groups. No more than a handful of fans harboured any feeling of foreboding as regarded the possible course of events in the following few months. However, during the initial few weeks following the takeover the first rumours of a break with the traditional deep purple and white club colours began to circulate amongst the fans. The talk was of a new FC Red Bull kit in red, blue and silver. This triggered demonstrations, petitions and a flood of open letters to newspapers from every corner of the Violett/Weiss fan community.

 

Despite several activities organised by the fans in defence of club traditions the new managers remained completely unimpressed. Although the general assembly on the 4th June 2005 resolved to placate more traditional-minded club members by supporting a decision to keep the Violett/Weiss club colours, nine days later the truth came out. On the 13th June 2005 the team for the new season was introduced to the press and the general public at a venue known as Hangar 7. The players appeared with red and white home kits and blue away kits. Deep purple had been erased from the club’s identity!

 

To add insult to injury, instead of bearing ‘1933’, the club’s true year of foundation, the management had decided the club had been established in ‘2005’, something the Austrian F.A. insisted be changed immediately. Being the legal successor of the previous owner and club title the official identity of the club had to be maintained in order to entitle the club to the license to play in the Bundesliga, otherwise the newly-founded club would have to begin life in the bottom division in the country. Further evidence of this clean break with all the traditions of the past, and proof it was a completely new start, was to be found in the player profiles; the profiles of players who had played for Austria Salzburg in the previous year: ‘Previous club: SV Salzburg’.

 

Red Bull Salzburg made it very obvious that it saw itself as a completely new entity, with quote: “with no history and no records", and no longer wished to be associated with SV Austria Salzburg in any way – other than the fact that the club had served as a means of obtaining the licence to play Bundesliga football. These and countless other absurdities led a large group of supporters, fan clubs and sympathisers to launch the Violett-Weiss Initiative (IVW) on the 30th June 2005. The aim was to uphold the traditions of SV Austria Salzburg, also within the new Red Bull Salzburg environment. At first IVW cause fell upon deaf ears. However, the more the new ‘wonder team’ failed to perform to their inflationary expectations, the more column space was devoted by the press to the so-called ‘club colours conflict’. Red Bull strategists sensed the image of the club was being damaged and invited the IVW to hold talks.

 

Four rounds of discussions took place in total, the results of which would have been best exhibited in the window of a curiosity shop. Red Bull’s final offer to the IVW team was a deep purple adidas logos on white kits, a purple captain’s armband and purple socks for the goalkeeper! By the end of the third round of negotiations there was a definite suspicion that the whole procedure had only been initiated to misrepresent the cause of the IVW in public as that of a group of backward die-hard hooligans. The IVW saw no other alternative than to break off talks after fruitless fourth session.

 

Proof positive that the Violett-Weiss faithful were anything other than a group of stupid hooligans was delivered in the autumn as, immediately after the end of the final round of pointless negotiations, moves were made to establish an independent club, to move forward while treasuring the traditions of Austria Salzburg. On the 7th of October the phoenix rose from the ashes! SV Austria Salzburg was back again – as if it had simply been away on its summer holidays. Under the leadership of a collective of idealists, with the support of selfless players, some having left teams in higher divisions to pull on their SV Austria Salzburg shirts with pride, and with the vocal support and visual presence of up to 2000 fans, the first step was completed as the team were promoted as champions of the Austria 7th division at the first time of asking. Salzburg has its team in purple and white again, the ‘Violetten’, and the world is bit more colourful for it!

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One of the reasons football is so superior to NFL, NBA or other american sports is that football teams aren't "franchises" that can be moved around and toyed with (up until recently to some extent). Football clubs represent their localities, social values, accents and outlooks, prevailing (even political) opinions and in some cases even religion. In most cases it's something more than just business. After all the most succesful club in the world goes by the motto of "more than a club". I for one dread the outlook of world football in many aspects and would absolutely hate to see NUFC being rebranded towards Red Bull Newcastle or whatever. I know cliches of the sort "money isn't everything" get thrown around a lot but for me it truly applies to football. It does bother me a bit to see players play for clubs only on mercenary terms and some players even choose to play for national teams as mercenaries where their only incentive is some sort of personal gain. This I can understand and tolerate for the most part but if the future of football is mercenaries playing for "franchises" that represent nothing but the purpose of profit I won't be interested for much longer.

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Tradition and identity has been gradually lost over the past twenty years and it really saddens me. If the colours or name changed, it wouldn't be the same club any more. So I'm pretty sure my support would die with it.

 

Kinnear's return disgusted and appalled me more than anything ever has during my support of the club, and I've vowed not to go to games. But that's simply a personal protest (helped by the fact that I'm skint), not a conscious effort to no longer support Newcastle United. In fact it's actually symptomatic of my love for the club. By paying for a ticket I would feel complicit in contributing to something that I feel is hurting the thing I hold dearest, my family aside. I'm not trying to be a great moral example and nor do I see my 'boycott' making a difference, that's not the point. It's more for my own peace of mind.

 

That being said, I'll no doubt buckle eventually.

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Tradition and identity has been gradually lost over the past twenty years and it really saddens me. If the colours or name changed, it wouldn't be the same club any more. So I'm pretty sure my support would die with it.

 

Kinnear's return disgusted and appalled me more than anything ever has during my support of the club, and I've vowed not to go to games. But that's simply a personal protest (helped by the fact that I'm skint), not a conscious effort to no longer support Newcastle United. In fact it's actually symptomatic of my love for the club. By paying for a ticket I would feel complicit in contributing to something that I feel is hurting the thing I hold dearest, my family aside. I'm not trying to be a great moral example and nor do I see my 'boycott' making a difference, that's not the point.

 

That being said, I'll no doubt buckle eventually.

 

Nah, its not over the past 20 years.  Its a very recent thing.

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Tradition and identity has been gradually lost over the past twenty years and it really saddens me. If the colours or name changed, it wouldn't be the same club any more. So I'm pretty sure my support would die with it.

 

Kinnear's return disgusted and appalled me more than anything ever has during my support of the club, and I've vowed not to go to games. But that's simply a personal protest (helped by the fact that I'm skint), not a conscious effort to no longer support Newcastle United. In fact it's actually symptomatic of my love for the club. By paying for a ticket I would feel complicit in contributing to something that I feel is hurting the thing I hold dearest, my family aside. I'm not trying to be a great moral example and nor do I see my 'boycott' making a difference, that's not the point.

 

That being said, I'll no doubt buckle eventually.

 

Nah, its not over the past 20 years.  Its a very recent thing.

 

Yep for me too.

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It's certainly accelerated over the last few years but surely you can point to the numerous TV deals being the start of it, and that all started with Sky?

 

Aye changed the outlook of the league and brought in much needed money...but we are talking about businesses coming in and taking over a team/club and whacking their name on it or logo's everywhere.  This is a very recent thing.

 

You can just imagine some marketing w***** sat there with execs talking about growing brands and sponsorship "buy a prem club, change stadium name, lash our brand all over it, get endless TV expsoure all over the world.  Break into the champions league and get exposure in the strongest football comp outside the world cup"

 

 

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I could live with a stadium rebrand as it's already happened once and whilst it felt wrong it didn't stop me caring.

I could possibly live with them shoehorning Red Bulls into the club name as long as both Newcastle and United was kept. It would be horribly silly with something as "Newcastle United Red Bulls" though, so after thinking a few seconds more I could probably not live with that. But what if if it meant more ambition and better competiveness? It would always really just be Newcastle United. Same as the stadium will always really be St. James' Park. Hard to think about really. Hope it never happens.

If they changed the colours from black and white I'd be out though. Same with altering the badge from something locally inspired to two idiotic bulls. Any of those would be me giving up on football.

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I could live with a stadium rebrand as it's already happened once and whilst it felt wrong it didn't stop me caring.

I could possibly live with them shoehorning Red Bulls into the club name as long as both Newcastle and United was kept. It would be horribly silly with something as "Newcastle United Red Bulls" though, so after thinking a few seconds more I could probably not live with that. But what if if it meant more ambition and better competiveness? It would always really just be Newcastle United. Same as the stadium will always really be St. James' Park. Hard to think about really. Hope it never happens.

If they changed the colours from black and white I'd be out though. Same with altering the badge from something locally inspired to two idiotic bulls. Any of those would be me giving up on football.

 

 

sounds about my limit.

 

Newcastle united Red bulls.

 

playing at red bull st james park

 

In black and white with a bit of is Red and silver?

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They can fuck right off touching anything tbh. The who SDA caused enough uproar for them to U-turn. Anthing further than that would drive people away in droves. I'm not from Newcastle so would be probably end up supporting Leicester. Dad's from Shields but if that happened to the extent that Salzburg I think both my dad, brother (Doug and Nikos34 on here) and I would call it a day.

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One of the reasons football is so superior to NFL, NBA or other american sports is that football teams aren't "franchises" that can be moved around and toyed with (up until recently to some extent). Football clubs represent their localities, social values, accents and outlooks, prevailing (even political) opinions and in some cases even religion. In most cases it's something more than just business. After all the most succesful club in the world goes by the motto of "more than a club". I for one dread the outlook of world football in many aspects and would absolutely hate to see NUFC being rebranded towards Red Bull Newcastle or whatever. I know cliches of the sort "money isn't everything" get thrown around a lot but for me it truly applies to football. It does bother me a bit to see players play for clubs only on mercenary terms and some players even choose to play for national teams as mercenaries where their only incentive is some sort of personal gain. This I can understand and tolerate for the most part but if the future of football is mercenaries playing for "franchises" that represent nothing but the purpose of profit I won't be interested for much longer.

 

Sixx doesn't post much, but when he does, it's a top one :thup:

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Aye, terrific post from sixx, that.

 

---

 

I wonder how many foreign investors took hold of top football teams across the sport prior to Abramovich's example. Had anything like that happened, on such a scale, prior to his arrival in the Premier League? If not, you could point to that as a real turning point in the 'money and football' story.

 

It's not a subject I really know the history of, simply because I haven't been alive long enough to understand or be concious of football politics/economics. What was there before Abramovich? Jack Walker at Blackburn; I've heard people say they 'bought' the title in the nineties...?

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If they changed the name of the club or we lost our black and whites stripes I'd quite easily walk away from football altogether. No idea how Cardiff fans can look at themselves in a red strip, sellout wankers.

 

So really, if it did happen it would probably be the best thing long term for me however enraged I would be for the initial changeover period.

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