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Rich men who own football clubs will always have their way, as Cardiff City fans are beginning to realise

Now the message has come back from Kuala Lumpur that they will not, after all, be turning Cardiff City red just yet, you have to wonder what they will think up in their next brainstorming sessions and where precisely it stops. An idea most people thought must be a hoax is evidently being held back for a more convenient time, judging by what is left once you scrape away the jargon and the claptrap and realise Cardiff's promise not to rebrand, after 104 years of wearing blue, has been strategically worded so the guarantee lasts only next season.

In other words, sit tight, let everyone get used to the idea and, after that, the blue shirts are gone and the new ones will have supporters seeing red – literally and metaphorically – with a Welsh dragon, rather than the bluebird, on the emblem.

Men of wealth have a habit of getting their own way, especially those on the Forbes billionaires' list, and if Cardiff's majority shareholder, Vincent Tan, and his Malaysian associates really want a colour scheme to demonstrate "the symbolic fusion of Welsh and Asian cultures", the chances are it will happen eventually.

That doesn't mean we have to like it, or accept it is right just because several large bags of gold are being waved around as the sweetener. A team's colours, badge and nickname should surely count as more than marketing tools, or a rich man's plaything, when supporters regard them as the most important parts of a club's identity. Cardiff have worn blue for all but the first nine years of their existence, from 1899 to 1908. There is an emotional attachment that makes it no surprise it has struck such a nerve and leaves you to ponder what, if anything, is sacred in football these days.

The answer, plainly, is not much, given that we had an FA Cup final last weekend in which the ribbons on the trophy were Budweiser-sponsored and then, up at Newcastle, the unveiling of Sir Bobby Robson's statue where the only way to enjoy the moment properly was to block out the fact the stadium now goes by the name of the Sports Direct Arena. Which wasn't easy when the signs on the Gallowgate End are so huge, strategically placed high enough to be out of reach and beyond sabotage. Knowing what we do about Sir Bobby, his statue should have his hands covering his eyes rather than in his pockets. We can complain all we like but ultimately it boils down to one thing. Mike Ashley can do what he likes to St James' Park because it is his name above the door. Just like Bill Veeck could make Chicago White Sox wear shorts during the 1976 baseball season. And just like Cardiff's owners can have the team turning out in polka dots next season if they so wish.

Hyde United did something similar, in collaboration with Manchester City, a couple of years ago. They were skint – bucket-collection skint – and City needed somewhere for their reserves to play. So City agreed a £75,000-a-year package to ground-share until 2013. Hyde dropped the "United" from their name and City paid £250,000 for a rebrand – that word, again – of the ground. Ewen Fields, once several shades of red, now has shiny blue seats. City sponsor the kit and own the advertising boards and Hyde have just been promoted to the Blue Square Premier. Tradition? Well, no one mentions that too much. Without City's money, the alternative for Hyde would be barely worth thinking about.

The argument is the same one, more or less, applied by the decision-makers in Malaysia: that it is us, the traditionalists, who need to step into the real world, not be so afraid of change and realise it is not a new concept, in football or any industry, to find wealthy people in high positions wanting to run things their way.

Manchester City are a good example, given what Sunday potentially brings. City might not even have existed had Sir Matt Busby and Manchester United been more receptive when a Maine Road director, Frank Johnson, suggested a merger in 1964. Johnson was willing to demolish City's ground to move into Old Trafford and had already suggested the Football League split into north and south sections. Gary James's Manchester, A Football History sums up the episode perfectly: "As with many periods of football history, it appears some directors were totally out of touch with what fans themselves wanted."

City are not alone on that count, otherwise Len Shackleton's autobiography would never have had that blank page for the chapter entitled "The Average Director's Knowledge of Football". Yet the champions-in-waiting probably have more material than most. Even when the good times started to return, Garry Cook, the club's then chief executive, was talking about wanting a Premier League with 10 to 14 clubs (with no promotion or relegation) and putting together a blueprint for Abu Dhabi that included City-themed energy drinks, scooters, telephone cards and fast-food restaurants. The 83-page A New Model for Partnership in Football makes extraordinary reading even now, with different sections on branching into financial services, the fashion industry, telecommunications and even bringing out a range of Citycars. The idea, in short, was to develop "the Virgin of Asia and the world".

The point is there will always be football people who make you wish everything was less complicated. Thank goodness really for the Football Association's Rule 96L, forbidding clubs from changing names, because if there was not such a condition how long before we had the equivalent of Technogroup Welshpool Town FC?

As for Cardiff, perhaps the most galling part is the emotional blackmail at play when, for adopting the new colour scheme, the sweetener is reputedly £100m of Malaysian investment. Cardiff have serious financial issues, not of the Hyde scale but enough for their chairman, Dato' Chan Tien Ghee, to warn they "simply cannot continue to function and exist in the current state, losing large amounts of money each month while acquiring more and more debt". In which case it is not a huge surprise more and more supporters seem to be coming round to the idea that it would be better to take the money if it meant a red-stripped Cardiff getting into the Premier League rather than a blue-stripped one faffing about in the Championship. It will happen, almost certainly, and those who hate the idea will probably just have to get used to it. Read More

هل تريد وضع المحتوى السابق فى موقعك او مدونتك مجانا؟؟
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.

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