AuthorJeffEyesRimmer We here a football outcasts read a lot of football websites, we love the transfer rumour mill, enjoy the snippets of gossip and information on social media, read plenty of articles on more reputable sites and watch quite a bit of football as well. This means that we quite often read about ‘big teams’ and ‘big team biases or a player has put in a transfer request to move to a ‘massive club’. So the question becomes – What defines a Big Club, what does it even mean? We are certainly not the first people to ask that question and won’t be the last. The topic has been debated across the football world and will continue to do so until the end of time. When talking about ‘big club’ definitions numerous ideas and references are given by us fans and players alike as a barometer of why we think this club or that club is or is not a ‘big club’. Below are some of the arguments that are put forward.
While there is no doubting the credentials of teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, with them having won many recent and historical titles, the likes of Liverpool haven’t won a league title in a long time, neither have AC Milan, Lyon once dominated the French Ligue 1 but hasn’t won the league since 2008. All those clubs have been successful historically while Leicester City for instance won the EPL last season. Would the foxes now be considered a bigger club than those latter three teams? What of the likes of Leeds Utd or Parma (now reformed)? Those clubs have won Championships and European cups yet have fallen on hard times? What of Borussia M’gladbach? They are one of the most successful German teams ever but fell away badly in the 1990s before coming back recently (they finished 4th last season), is this team back and can be considered a big club again? What of Glasgow Rangers once considered a giant of Scottish football and now back playing in the Scottish Premiership after 4 years in the lower leagues? Can Rangers still be considered a big club; they have won the most tittles than any other club in the world? Heritage is rightly cherished by fans, remembering past glories and certainly the previous success of a club provides it with a platform on which it has built up a fan base, which can be marketed for and can attract players based on that previous glory but does that mean that past glories can be relied upon to keeping saying you are a ‘big club’? As mentioned above Leicester won their first premier league title last season, but does the number of trophies won mean you are a big club and if so how many does a club need?
This reason for being a big club does get quite a bit of exposure; the one team that quite often gets mentioned is Newcastle Utd. Newcastles stadium is always packed out and the city does eat and breathe their football team but does that alone make them a massive club? They haven’t won many trophies and have just been relegated to the Championship, England’s second division. So can the club really consider it to be a big club based on this only? Does West Hams move to the Olympic stadium mean they are considered a bigger club than most of the top flight teams in England? They do now have the third biggest after all. It certainly does no harm to the marketability of a club, being able to appeal to new sponsors and fans to raise their profile. Stadium size I think certainly helps to increase the profile of a club but can’t be used as a mainstay. A lot of clubs in the EPL and around the world have smaller stadiums than Newcastle and would likely argue to being a bigger club, Chelsea would probably be first in the queue.
Money has always been in football, the amounts are all relative though, the numbers now seem silly but back in 1990s Alan Shearer moved from Blackburn to Newcastle for $15million, a world record at the time and everyone was shocked by it. Does the amount of money in the bank for a club suddenly make them massive clubs? It certainly means the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea could crash the former European elite but the Chinese Super League is suddenly awash with money, does money in the bank for teams like Hebei China Fortune, Jiangsu Suning and Guangzhou Evergrande mean they are bigger clubs? What of the likes of Hoffenheim being backed by Dietmar Hopp and bringing them from amateur level to the Bundesliga? Are they now considered ‘big’ in German football? There are numerous examples of this throughout the football world but having a bigger bank balance does provide opportunity to spend to accumulate as they say.
There is no denying that football has become a global brand in itself, it’s a huge business with clubs looking to claim market share in new developing areas and expanding the potential audience. Growth is always the aim. Hence the friendly overseas trips that most team now do to promote the clubs for pre-season. Additionally the explosion of social media and the ability of a club to interact with fans across the world and not just in their local market makes an important contribution to whether a club can be classed as big. Does a change potentially make the club bigger, for instance the owner of Hull City attempting to change the name to Hull Tigers to increase their marketability in the Asian market, or my own side Cardiff City changing to play in red rather than blue a few seasons ago due to the colour being lucky in some areas? While both these decisions have been quashed would they have changed the perception of those clubs to being ‘big clubs’, in those instances probably not but a large presence in the media would certainly increase the perception of being a big club. How about the Red Bull teams? Whether they actually improve the status of the club or whether they really are an advertising tool for Red Bull can be debated but certainly having that backing has improved the clubs status in their home nations. Finally what about location and where you are based? This can tie back to the numbers of fans and the potential exposure of the club. For instance being in a large capital city provides potential to reach a lot of fans, especially when you are a one club city. Also being a large cosmopolitan city such as London or Milan will provide more exposure worldwide and be more marketable to sponsors than say Preston (sorry guys). Location can play a major part here, a small town is likely not going to be able to generate the population and market to elevate it to the ‘big club’ status that so many larger cities enjoy. These factors really all knit together to form the basis of what a ‘big club’ is, I don’t think it’s just one thing can be used to determine it. They all fit together to increase the perception that you are dealing with a ‘big club’. One thing I think that hasn’t been really mentioned much before is what makes a real big team/club are ones that go beyond the borders of the sport. If looking at sport as a whole rather than just football for a second, teams like New York Yankees, Chicago Bulls and Real Madrid have a following that to go beyond the relative greatness of that single sport. These teams transcend their respective sports and have cult following and even if you are not a fan of that particular sport then you will have heard of them and know about them in some way. There are other potential factors to consider as well such as historical key players, political aspects and just good PR but I won’t go into these in this post. Regardless of all of this though there is a distinct overuse of the term and I think the over-saturation of it has muddied the waters further and it seems that this grey area can be used to engineer transfers when it’s convenient to do so. I don’t think we will ever prefect the definition of what is a ‘big club’ but that’s what keeps the topic going. |
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June 2018
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