Lower League Football in Crisis

Issues of Organisation and Legitimacy in England and Germany

Daniel Ziesche

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030537470
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

While the field of football studies has produced an abundance of literature on professional, top-league football, there is little research output to do with the non-top level football.Thisbook explores the relationship between the top and lower leagues, laying open the drastic schisms that exist between the different levels.

The study links the developments at the top level of English and German football in the past 30 years to transformational processes in lower league football. Illustrating how the hegemonic status of top football weighs hard on the spheres below, it depicts how it also serves as a blueprint for lower league football clubs' strategies in coping with a threefold dilemma of institutional legitimacy that shows itself in economic, cultural and social dimensions. Taking the different club structures in both national contexts as a starting point, it portrays both the efficacy of institutional frameworks and how these can be challenged from below. This research will be of interest to students and scholars across football studies, sports studies, the sociology of sport, and organisation studies.

Ways Out of the Crises

The following four chapters form the second part of the empirical, analytical core of this volume and include the complete qualitative case study research, starting with a description of the case selection and case study design (Chapter “Qualitative Case Studies from England and Germany”)—to then move on to present the findings on adaptive strategies taken up by the studied clubs in three core fields that align with the three kinds of crises with which clubs are being confronted (Chapters “Economic Coping Mechanisms:​ Professionalisat​ion, or—Creating Sustainable Structures”–“Social Coping Mechanisms:​ Societisation, Or—Improving Credibility as Social Institutions”).

The pressures outlined in the previous Chapters “Economic Crisis:​ Number Games”–“Social Crisis:​ Building Bridges” affect clubs on all levels. As has been shown, the lower leagues present a field where those pressures are more explicit in many regards and can thus be considered to affect the daily routines and long-term development strategies of clubs at these levels. In the following, strategies for how clubs react to the transformations which set them under pressure or which contribute to the crisis in which the clubs find themselves, both individually and collectively, will be presented.

The strategic agendas can be ordered into three ideal-typical fields—each of which addresses one of the three general crises elaborated on in Chapters “Economic Crisis:​ Number Games”–“Social Crisis:​ Building Bridges”:

1. Creating sustainable structures—i.e. reaction to the economic crisis

2. Re-engaging with local communities—i.e. reaction to the cultural crisis

3. Improving credibility, significance and value as social institutions—i.e. reaction to the social crisis

In combination, the strategies in these three fields ideally provide solutions to the threefold dilemma of legitimacy. Some fields might be addressed to a greater extent by some clubs than by others, and not every club will be equally addressed in every field. Again, many of the strategies or developments presented in the following chapters cannot be fully identified with each of the analytical, ideal-typical fields.

Communitisation and societisation processes can exist in a conflicting relationship with one another; sometimes they are even diametrically opposed. All-inclusive mechanisms at play in community programmes do not represent the realities within the football club’s internal fan communities. In these communities, collective identity formation is far more specific in terms of its construction than it is in more universally conceptualised community projects found in the urban community. Furthermore, more professional structures in terms of full-time employment or the separation of a capital company have the potential to disrupt relationships between the club and the club community. These dynamics, and how these conflicts appear and are addressed, will additionally be described in Chapters “Economic Coping Mechanisms:​ Professionalisat​ion, or—Creating Sustainable Structures”–“Social Coping Mechanisms:​ Societisation, Or—Improving Credibility as Social Institutions”.

© The Author(s) 2020

D. ZiescheLower League Football in CrisisFootball Research in an Enlarged Europehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53747-0_6

Begin Abstract

Qualitative Case Studies from England and Germany

Daniel Ziesche¹

(1)

Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Sachsen, Germany

Daniel Ziesche

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Eight clubs from different leagues and backgrounds have been chosen as qualitative case studies with the goal of determining how these clubs adapt to the challenges described up to this point. I will first present the case selection as well as the characteristics of each case in greater detail. German clubs have been given three-letter acronyms and English clubs’ four letters acronyms so as to more easily differentiate them.

Case Selection and Methodology

Of the eight clubs from England and Germany four have been selected from each country. The clubs in turn fall into two categories. Four clubs are from the third to fifth tier and are referred to in the following as established traditional football clubs (ETFCs).¹ The other four clubs are from the tiers below, with the highest level being the sixth level of the league pyramid and since they all have a protest and/or political stance at their core, they are referred to as protest and political football clubs (PPFCs). Again, each category includes two clubs from each country. Besides their political or protest agenda, all PPFCs are significantly younger—the oldest one was founded in 1999—and thus can also be considered ‘new’ football clubs. Generally, the four basic club structural alignments identified and described in chapter “Setting the Scene:​ Structural Differences and Theoretical Considerations” are represented in the clubs investigated. These are the classic company club, the classic Verein, the separated Verein+X and the community club structure usually found in SOFCs or STs owning an SOFC. Thus, both the club structural as well as the club cultural differentiation dimension is represented in the case selection.

From the ETFCs selected, some have seen better times in terms of league affiliation and all have experienced increased financial pressure in the past. One is a phoenix club—Lokomotive Leipzig (LOK)—two have dealt with administration—Rot-Weiss Essen (RWE) and Chesterfield FC (CFFC)—and all have had or still have severe issues concerning stadium ownership. At the time of study, CFFC was the most successful club as it was briefly promoted to FL 1—third tier—at the end of the 2013/2014 season. Two clubs never left level four—Mansfield Town FC (MTFC) and RWE—and one—LOK—was relegated to level five to be promoted back up to level four in 2015.

Of the PPFCs, both the English cases are SOFCs. FC United of Manchester was founded as an act of protest against the owner of Manchester United FC. AFC Liverpool (AFCL) describes itself an ‘affordable football club’ and was founded by fans of Liverpool FC. It sees itself as providing financially affordable and accessible live football. HFC Falke (HFC) from Germany is a protest club founded after the separation of structures at Hamburger SV, a case comparable to FCUM in terms of the founders’ motivations. Roter Stern Leipzig (RSL) is another football club from the largest city in Saxony intent on combining a left-wing political agenda with football. All clubs played between levels six and ten of their respective league system during the time of study with FCUM ranking highest playing four seasons at level six, RSL and HFC playing at level seven and AFCL meanwhile competing at the tenth level.

Table 1 presents an overview of the investigated clubs, their league affiliation listed in the course of the seven seasons from 2013/2014 to 2019/2020, and their ‘character’, agenda or other crucial characteristics which might influence either the way the club is perceived by its members or the club’s developmental agenda.

Table 1

Case study overview

Structural Type	Club Name	League Level (2013–2019)	Specifics	^aRegion
Company Club	Chesterfield FC	4-3-3-3-4-5-5	Administration	EML
	Mansfield Town FC	4-4-4-4-4-4-4	–	EML
Verein	Rot-Weiss Essen	4-4-4-4-4-4-4	Administration	NRW
	HFC Falke	x-x-9-8-7-7-7	Protest	HH
	Roter Stern Leipzig	8-8-7-7-7-7-7	Political	SNY
Verein+X	Lokomotive Leipzig	4-5-5-4-4-4-4	Phoenix	SNY
Community Club	AFC Liverpool	9-9-9-9-9-10-10	Protest	NWE
	FC United of Manchester	7-7-6-6-6-6-7	Protest	NWE

^aRegions: EML = East Midlands, NWE = North West England, SNY = Saxony, NRW = North-Rhine Westphalia, HH = Hamburg

Source Own table

FC United of Manchester has been the focus of numerous academic studies which might give the impression that the club is a bit ‘over-studied’ (Brown 2008b, 2010; Millward and Poulton 2014; Porter 2019). Porter (2019) has included CFFC in his volume on supporter-owned football clubs due to its period of supporter ownership. Academic, single case studies of the other clubs are non-existent. There is a rather dated and brief overview on LOK (Nöldner and Pfitzner 1987); all ETFCs have been the focus of historical, belletrist accounts and image collections (Schrepper and Wick 2004; Wick and Schrepper 2015; Franke and Hofmann 2017; Giles 2013; Taylor and Shaw 2007) the likes of which can be found for numerous clubs and which will not be taken into account further. In the following I therefore rely heavily on the respective club’s website, which usually contain sections on the history and structural setup as well as information on admission prices, youth teams, etc.

Interviews were conducted with actors of five of the eight clubs: CFFC, MTFC, RWE, LOK and AFCL. These semi-structured guided interviews were conducted in April 2014 in Germany and October 2014 in England. Interview partners were persons involved either at the executive level or in the communications or public relations department and lasted between thirty and seventy minutes. Two additional, shorter interviews were conducted with both the chairman of AFCL and an AFCL fan.

With the exception of HFC, all clubs and their grounds were visited on one or more occasions. Match day experiences were part of the research at FCUM, AFCL, RSL and LOK and field observations flow into the descriptive part of the analysis. Additionally, a content analysis of club policies and statutes was conducted, as well as the collection of data on the specifics of the clubs. Furthermore, the social activities or community programmes of the clubs have been included in the research in order to gain an understanding of the size, shape and foci of these programmes. In addition, the specifics of the clubs’ stadiums and position within the community are rendered in order to analyse how the club draws on the space of the stadium to create a community connection or how the stadium reflects club and community connections.

The data was thus collected applying a variety of methods from the social sciences and cultural studies, based on a concept of methodological triangulation—the collection of empirical data, content analysis and expert interviews.

Club Profiles

For a better understanding of the clubs investigated in the study, the following section will introduce each club with background information and facts to contribute to an overall understanding of the specific club situation. In the English cases, the profiles will put more emphasis on the status of ownership whereas in the German cases, a little more emphasis is put on the club histories.

Established and Traditional Football Clubs

The four fully professional ETFCs in the study played in levels three to five of their pyramids during the research. Common among them is that they recently experienced what might be considered ‘exogenous shocks’ of a game-changing nature for the clubs that forced developments which encouraged the need for adaptation.

Chesterfield Football Club

Chesterfield FC is a company club from the East Midlands. After gaining promotion to the third tier in the 2013/2014 season, they came close to another promotion in the 2014/2015 season as the club managed to enter the playoffs for promotion to the championship but failed. ‘The Spireites’ take their name from the ‘spire’, the twisted church tower of St Mary’s church in Chesterfield’s city centre which features prominently in the club’s crest.

Founded in 1866, the club is recognised as one of the six oldest clubs in the world. The most turbulent period in the club’s history started in 2000 after the club was relegated to tier four of the pyramid and Darren Brown, a local entrepreneur who owned ice hockey clubs both in Sheffield and Hull as well as a basketball club in Sheffield, to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Introduction: Football Clubs, Community and Legitimacy
• Setting the Scene: Structural Differences and Theoretical Considerations
• A Threefold Dilemma of Legitimacy
• Ways Out of the Crises
• Back Matter