The pitfalls of modern football

It was the summer of 2010 and Cardiff City’s long history of over ambitious chairmen and accompanying financial mismanagement eventually came home to roost. The club was facing its fourth winding up order in 6 months due to an unpaid tax bill. In stepped Malaysian billionaire Vincent Tan, and as if over night, nobody was talking about the club’s bleak financial outlook anymore, but instead, how big the club could become.

Three and a half years and a rebranded club later, there is severe discontent amongst the Cardiff City faithful. This discontent initially had only been seen in small pockets, however it became widespread on Saturday afternoon as Cardiff were put to the sword by an emphatic scoreline of 4-0 at the hands fellow newcomers Hull City.

It was as if Nikica Jelavic’s stooping header to put the Tigers up 3-0 was the antidote to the spell the Malaysian money man had put onto the Cardiff City faithful since he started his tenure and they instantly awoken.

The Croatian’s strike, just before the hour mark, was the catalyst for thousands upon thousands of fans to leave for the exits. The fans that remained either watched on in bemusement as Jelavic celebrated with his team mates, ironically clad in blue, wondering how it all went wrong – where as the rest broke into a continuous song of defiance singing “we will always be blue”.

So what did go wrong? How could a man implement the radical rebranding, on pitch interfering and off the field dramas that have come with the Vincent Tan regime seemingly under the noses of a fan base once famed for its passionate and vehement defence of all things Cardiff City?

I think the club has become the victim of a footballing parasitic attack sporned by a variety of factors all coming together at one precise moment which ended up in a very expensive game of “keeping up with the Jones’ “. I think the club was carefully chosen at the exact specific time where the fans were at their weakest, and in turn become more than a willing host for footballs latest phenomenon – the foreign investor.

This started in the summer of 2000 when Sam Hammam took over the reigns at the then League 2 club. Mr Hammam was the charismatic Lebanese businessman that changed the Cardiff City faithful’s attitude towards their own club and set the tone for over a decade of insatiable hunger for success.

Hammam promised the people of Cardiff the world and no longer were they satisfied with being a modest club from South Wales, but instead “bigger than Barcelona”, “best team in wales”, “the whole nation are Cardiff fans” were the bizarre soundbites coming from Ninian Park – seemingly trying to convince anyone and everyone that would listen that they belonged amongst footballs elite – amazing for a club that hadnt been there for half a century.

Sam, true to his word, guided the club to a double promotion to the Championship and a new stadium was seen in the Capital, this time delivered by new owner Peter Ridsdale who, like Sam before him, also continued the grand promises and lavish spending adding to the growing expectations of the Cardiff faithful.

A series of cup heartaches, near misses and play off defeats only looked to spread the hunger for success and the insatiable and unquenchable thirst for the kudos of being one of the big clubs took a major hold – and the Championship was no longer seen as good enough.

To rub salt into the grizzly wounds of the previous seasons play-off final defeat to Blackpool, bitter rivals Swansea City, who Sam Hammam once famously stated “don’t have a cat in hells chance of making the Premier League” swiftly swept through the leagues with a swashbuckling brand of football and an ethos of sensible spending – and achieved what every Cardiff fan had been dreaming of for over a decade – promotion to the Premier League.

That proved to be the final straw, the fans were now primed for a carefully orchestrated attack which would end in the club becoming almost unrecognisable to the one that was proudly established 115 years ago.

Vincent Tan took over from Peter Ridsdale and was an instant hero, with Malaysian flags waving aloft from the stands. Even when his radical plans for the clubs future were announced, the initial anger quickly gave way to giddy excitement, punch drunk at the thought of joining the elite of English football. The clubs colours were handed over for incineration, the clubs loved badge replaced with a red dragon and the once proud bluebird reduced to a mere afterthought on the clubs new crest – all with little opposition.

Message boards, TV interviews and radio phone-ins are alight this week with finger pointing toward the Malaysian owner some two years after the fact, however I cant help feel that there is more to the blame game that meets the eye. It seems the promise of success was put ahead of the clubs heritage by everyone at the club and the current plight of Cardiff City is a burden that everyone must share, including the fans.

The club is now certainly a shining example of the pit-falls of the modern footballs need for instant success.

By the undercover fan.