David Villa to Melbourne City is huge for Australian Football Well done to Melbourne City on this first piece of the puzzle that we will see develop from now on given the backing and expertise that being part of the Manchester City family brings. David Villa is also to be congratulated on putting his own enormous brand to Melbourne City en route to New York City. I am sure he will love Melbourne as it is a really magnificent international City. David Villa signing for Melbourne City made front-page headlines in all the big European sports papers and websites. Confirmation once again, that our A-League is now gaining genuine recognition outside of Australia. In the main, the reaction from fans of football and media has been sensational to say the least. Villa’s capture throws the gauntlet to other A-League Clubs to match Melbourne City’s ambition. I did see a few non believers comments on social media, most of which were from jealous fans of rival clubs and the usual critics that have too much time on their hands. One point that was raised caught my attention as I lived through this particular experience. In late 1990’s, in the then National Soccer League we had a new Club called Northern Spirit enter the scene. At the time I was running Carlton Soccer Club so I saw first hand what success the then owners of Northern Spirit had created with their Club getting regular crowds of over 12,000 to their games at the quaint North Sydney Oval. After a few years Northern Spirit was sold to Glasgow Rangers FC. Northern Spirit even had the famous Glasgow Rangers FC logo positioned on their shirts. What happened over a period of time then was that crowds started to drop off substantially. While there were always other reasons for the crowd decline, namely the NSL was pretty much a basket case, TV coverage non existent etc etc, there was also a drop off because of the Rangers connection. Many founding Northern Spirit fans were not going to continue to support Spirit when it was owned by a Club (actually it was owned by same family that owned Rangers rather than Rangers directly) that they hated given some fans supported Celtic, or were not Protestant or didn’t like Scots etc etc etc. Its always easy to find a reason to complain. I suppose the point this fan was making in his social media post was that he would stop supporting Melbourne Heart now that is changed name to City and had dropped the Heart shirt as their first choice to move to a more Manchester City type shirt and by the way, this fan supported Manchester United in the EPL. Is there a risk that some founding Heart fans that support the red half of Manchester may drop off? Is there a risk that other Heart fans that support other EPL Clubs drop off? Yes there probably is. But over time, if the level of investment and the quality of players that are brought in are similar to the arrival of David Villa, the new Melbourne City should grow into a serious Club in it’s own right. I would love to read what Heart fans who support other EPL Clubs think and also non Heart fans as to whether Heart becoming City and with massive names like Villa will be the sign to start supporting them?
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 23:38:51 +0000