Football supporter issues wrap: Feeder clubs, rainbow laces and Yid debate

Joey Barton of QPR wears rainbow-coloured shoe laces as part of a campaign against homophobia in football during the Championship match vs, Brighton & Hove Albion at Loftus Road on September 18, 2013 in London, England. (Getty Images)

Rainbow laces

Fair play to the Stonewall charity for this initiative to raise awareness of homophobia in football. Simple and effective, it’s raising the issue and making people think, rather than ordering them to do something. There’s no big hoo-ha about getting players to wear them.

It was left to be a matter of choice, which is a more effective way of in this case by making the player to make an actual choice, rather than just following an instruction, which they are largely trained to do in their professional life.

The ‘Kick It Out’ Racism campaign in some respects is perhaps a little heavy-handed at times in its delivery. Sometimes their methods come across as a diktat. As we’ve seen, suddenly if a player doesn’t wear a ‘Kick It Out’ T-shirt for whatever reason, after being told to, suddenly their seen as not supporting the battle against racism in the game.

There should be less of a ‘holding a gun to people’s heads’ approach, and more of an emphasis on nurture and education (especially for younger generations). So hats off to Stonewall for the initiative in tackling one of the supposed greatest taboo topics in football, in a constructive and effective manner.

Everton fan power

The new Everton club badge didn’t go down too well with the fans. It was meant to be a modern take on the badge, which ditched the club’s latin motto ”nil satis nisi optimum ” (‘Nothing but the best’), which has been the motto of the club since 1878.

It was a simple example of how modern football (i.e. the people who work in the marketing, communications and consumer services positions at clubs) increasingly seems to be ignorant of the tradition and history that bonds the game together.

Luckily football supporters aren’t so ignorant though, with Everton fans being so incensed by the badge that thousands petitioned to have it changed. Since, almost 20,000 Evertonians have had their say on what they would like to see from the next crest and that information has now been collated and used by an independent design team to draft a number of potential crests.

The crests will now be put to the vote of Everton supporters that have a valid customer number (approximately 280,000), with the vote being independently managed and verified by Electoral Reform Services and run throughout this week until the October 1st.

Feeder clubs

As the Football Supporters Federation highlighted and the Daily Mail reported, Premiership clubs are supposedly mulling over the idea of using lower league clubs as feeder clubs. The fact that they’re even thinking about it apparently stems from the debate opened by FA chairman Greg Dyke about the development of English footballers, due to the shortcomings of the national team in recent years.

Surely it’s a non-starter?

Imagine Swansea when they were fighting for survival in Division Two and also extinction. If out of financial desperation they agreed to be a Premiership club’s feeder club, would they then be allowed to play in the same division after their resulting run of promotions? Probably not. Ala the ‘B’ teams in La Liga, there would be a limit to their ambition. But a ‘B’ team is different to an actual other football club, that has its own supporter base and catchment area.

We await with glee how they’ll try to introduce the idea of a formal feeder club system to football supporters. You’ve got to love the FA and Premiership’s apparent lack of respect and ignorance of football culture and supporters!