What fans can do

(Published in the Slovak daily Sport)

Only one football transfer in January made it into the top 50 biggest deals in history. The move of Juan Mata from Chelsea to Manchester United for nearly €45 million was fully expected after United’s disastrous summer transfer window. One of the main drivers? Fan pressure. Similarly, Özil’s €50 million move to Arsenal at the end of summer 2013 came as a direct response to fan dissatisfaction. That type of transfer simply had to happen.

The formal accountability of a club’s management to its owners, especially in global clubs, is now accompanied by a parallel accountability to fans. When revenues from merchandise and ticket sales drop due to fan discontent, the cost is real. Fans have the power to trigger changes in coaches, executives, and even shake shareholder confidence. Major transfers aimed at pleasing fans aren’t limited to football giants. Even clubs that have long respected sound financial policy sometimes make a splash. Fans in top leagues demand new names. Those who don’t understand that won’t succeed.

Slovak and Central European conditions are and will remain financially miles behind. The domestic transfer market has been virtually non-existent for years. Quality imports to a country reliant on exports are nearly zero. Fan pressure, whether positive or negative, is probably only really felt in Spartak Trnava.

Slovakia will never have a European superclub. The ideal is one or two clubs that can reach the Champions League group stage every few years (if Plzeň could do it, why not Slovan?). The rest should aim to deliver local football experiences every weekend that can compete with the dozens of televised matches and avoid years of hopeless mediocrity like that seen in Dunajská Streda.

The most discussed transfer involving a Slovak player this January both online and among experts was Weiss’s move to Qatar. The initial shock quickly gave way to financial rationalization and the conclusion: “You don’t go there at that age.” The fan backlash was clearly spontaneous. It’s how everyone genuinely felt. But let’s look at it another way. Would the public react as harshly to the competition choices or exhibition appearances of individual athletes like a tennis player or a cyclist?

And here’s another angle: Weiss left Slovakia as a teenager. Compared to the hundreds of other players or coaches supported through youth sports funding, the portion of public money spent on him was minimal. When criticizing moves like this, maybe we should also consider how public resources are used in football or in sports as a whole.

What else are fans pushing for here at home? For the very thing presented just under a month ago by the president of the Slovak Football Association, after lunch with a presidential candidate: “I’m the president of the largest sports movement in Slovakia, and I feel enormous support for this candidate from our regions.” Perhaps that can be verified during the discussion at the upcoming SFZ electoral conference.