When a football club’s ownership alienates its fans, the results can be truly devastating. From Blackpool to Newcastle, Leeds to Blackburn, there are testaments to the fact scattered throughout the Football League. While high-profile protests against an owner are bound to make headlines, these are only one aspect of the breakdown in relationship between a club and its supporters. The legacy of bad ownership runs far deeper than disorder and demonstrations. It can tear apart the fabric of a local community, and comes at an appalling social cost.
Amongst those clubs which are currently divided between fans and ownership, Charlton Athletic sports one of the deepest rifts. The owner, Roland Duchâtelet, has overseen seven managerial changes in just over two years, and presided over an ignominious relegation last season which has left the club languishing in the third tier. Since he took over in January 2014, he has sanctioned the sale of some of Charlton’s best players, and seen the team deteriorate rapidly as a result. His representatives have been accused of patronising and dismissing supporters and, all in all, what was previously an unassuming community club has been transformed into a seething mass of anger and frustration, with fans forming an organised protest movement – the Coalition Against Roland Duchâtelet – in response.
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READ MORE: We Spoke to The Charlton Fans Leading A Revolt Against Their Club’s Owner
While Duchâtelet and co. have finally appointed a suitable manager this summer in Russell Slade, their relationship with the fans is no less dire. The Coalition Against Roland Duchâtelet (or C.A.R.D.) has previously called upon supporters not to renew their season tickets, and it appears that many have heeded that call. In a thread on the Charlton Life forum, fans have been discussing their decisions not to renew. With dozens of responses from season ticket holders of up to 50 consecutive years, the thread bears witness to just how easily poor ownership can force a football club to its knees.
Via the thread: ‘To those who haven’t renewed your season tickets, how many seasons did you commit?’
To put the problems at Charlton in context, there are fans who have been watching the team since the height of Beatlemania who now appear ready to boycott the club. Since 1968, Britain has had nine Prime Ministers, and at least one fan has been attending Charlton matches all the while. The world has changed irreversibly since then but, for one fan, Charlton Athletic has been a constant. That supporter now looks set to allow his season ticket to lapse, because he has been estranged by the actions of a careless multimillionaire.
It goes without saying that long-term season-ticket holders are the lifeblood of a lower-league football club. Without the vast television revenues of the Premier League, clubs like Charlton rely on the unwavering loyalty of their fans. It takes something monumental to shake that loyalty, something unprecedented in the case of those who have been attending matches for half a century. That is a damning indictment of the current regime, and one that hammers home the disastrous consequences of owners showing contempt for the average, matchgoing fan.
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this fan exodus is not the accumulative years of support which are being sacrificed, but the individual stories which go with them. Football clubs are community institutions, but they are also part of the fabric of family history and people’s ordinary, day-to-day lives. There are Charlton fans here who have held season tickets alongside wives and husbands, who have memories of going to games with parents and of taking their own children along in turn. These people share a community, and also a history, which is being compromised by an outsider with no personal connection to the club.
That’s the human cost of mishandling a football club. When it comes to those who have invested decades of time and money in supporting a team like Charlton, the price of poor ownership is unbearably high.
