Great article in NY Times about AFC Wimbledon and the danger of franchising

[Comedy Steve]

I just read this. Thought it was very nice. So much so that only a little bit of sick came up when I kept reading 'soccer'.

For A.F.C. Wimbledon, Every Win Is a Point of Pride - NYTimes.com

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

And a really good front page article about Messi in today's edition

 

[Fungus]

Good article.

"Their Champagne on Saturday tasted similar to the stuff sprayed around by the big boys, but some of the pioneers have not forgotten the putdown of an F.A. official, who nine years ago said that it was not in the best interests of soccer for A.F.C. Wimbledon to start up."

 

[Art Vs Science]

Great read. The Commercial director did not hold back did he.

 

[HastingsSeagull]

Very good read and a good day for football

 

[readingstockport]

Any chance of a cut and paste for those of us who do not have accounts with murdochs rags.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Any chance of a cut and paste for those of us who do not have accounts with murdochs rags.

Does he own the New York Times?

 

[Norman Potting]

Any chance of a cut and paste for those of us who do not have accounts with murdochs rags.

I don't have an account and it worked by just clicking on the link. Excellent article.

 

[Braders]

Any chance of a cut and paste for those of us who do not have accounts with murdochs rags.

In City That Lost Its Team, Every Win Is a Point of Pride
By ROB HUGHES
Published: May 22, 2011
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With due deference to the millionaire superstars whose soccer skills are followed across the world, the story of English soccer’s final weekend was the rise of A.F.C. Wimbledon.


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A decade ago, Wimbledon F.C., the original team in the suburbs south of London where tennis is king, was lured away by Milton Keynes, a town that did not want to build up its own club by winning its way through the minor leagues. A music entrepreneur treated sports like show business and persuaded the venerable Football Association to sanction a move familiar to American sports fans — shifting a franchise from its roots for the convenience of a new audience 60 miles away in another county.

It amounted to the only case of identity theft of a club in the nearly 150 years of English tradition. Four Wimbledon fans rebelled. They called for open tryouts for players willing to start up a new club, A.F.C. Wimbledon. The tryouts, held on Wimbledon Common in June 2002, attracted 250 volunteers. Players came from near and far, including one from Finland and another who was a member of Chile’s under-21 national team.

Out of that defiance, A.F.C. Wimbledon began one of the swiftest ascents English soccer has ever seen. In just nine seasons, the new Wimbledon club rose through five promotions and on Saturday night in Manchester beat Luton Town in a playoff to earn Football League status in League Two, three levels below the Premier League.

The game itself was not much to watch. Neither side scored in 90 minutes, or in the tense, nerve-racking 30 minutes of extra time. Wimbledon prevailed in a shootout, largely because its locally born and bred goalie, Seb Brown, guessed the right way and leapt to stop two of the penalty kicks. Those saves and nine years of a community’s willpower were rewarded with entry to the pyramid of full-time professional soccer.

It is one of life’s modern quirks that the playoff game Saturday was held at Eastlands, the stadium that houses a team, Manchester City, currently bankrolled by the ruling family of Abu Dhabi.

From Wimbledon Common to Eastlands in less than a decade prompted an outpouring of “Nine years! It only took nine years!” by the Wimbledon supporters who made the trip to support their team.

Brown was born the year after Wimbledon beat Liverpool to win the F.A. Cup in 1988. His parents were at Wembley that day.

“We were involved in all the protests,” Brown said. “My dad kept all the banners and stickers in his loft along with the 1988 Cup final flag. He’s the most excited one of us all.”

Fathers, sons, mothers and daughters were motivated by the uprooting of their team from their town. Followers of the N.F.L. might equate it to the raw emotions of the rebellion in the 1990s, when Art Modell, the owner of the Cleveland Browns, relocated the team to Baltimore.

The N.F.L. later awarded Cleveland an expansion franchise, which was allowed to keep the team’s name, logo and legacy when it started play in 1999. Fan power from the grass roots up did the same on Wimbledon Common.

“I’ve been driven by righting a wrong,” says Erik Samuelson, one of the founders of A.F.C. Wimbledon. “You have to channel that feeling into something positive. I sometimes felt that if we did right that wrong, and get back into the Football League, I might just collapse.”

Samuelson is the chief executive of the fan group that owns and runs Wimbledon on behalf of 3,500 other trustees. They started with nothing, with no home stadium, no players and no money. The team still shares a stadium it helped buy with a club in the neighboring town of Kingston upon Thames. The players who won promotion on Saturday are paid, at most, £750, or $1,200, a week.

They were promised a trip to Las Vegas if they pulled off this promotion. But the club is the antithesis to gambling.

“We go up not owing a penny,” said Terry Brown, the team’s manager. “We live on what we earn. If we bring in 100 pence, I can spend 99 pence on the team, that’s it.”

Out of its income, A.F.C. Wimbledon also runs boys and girls teams from ages 7 to 19.

All Wimbledon business is taken care of by 35 voluntary staff members whose full-time chief, Samuelson, draws a nominal annual salary of one guinea — the old, gold-coin equivalent of a pound sterling.

“It sounded posher than a pound,” Samuelson said.

More than a pound was at stake Saturday. The directors of Luton estimated that promotion even to this tier of organized soccer in England would have been worth income of almost $1.3 million a season.

How far voluntary labor can drive Wimbledon, everyone waits to discover.

Their Champagne on Saturday tasted similar to the stuff sprayed around by the big boys, but some of the pioneers have not forgotten the putdown of an F.A. official, who nine years ago said that it was not in the best interests of soccer for A.F.C. Wimbledon to start up.

The F.A. backed the appropriation of Wimbledon’s status by Milton Keynes, operating under the name the M.K. Dons. The Dons are now one division above A.F.C. Wimbledon.

“I don’t ever want to play them,” said Wimbledon’s commercial director, Ivor Heller. “I don’t think they are a real football club. They shouldn’t exist, and they don’t exist in my eyes. The real dream is we go up, they go down and disappear into oblivion.”

 

[Tomnorthi]

Saw them promoted Saturday was a quality day out:
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[Gritt23]

"It amounted to the only case of identity theft of a club in the nearly 150 years of English tradition."


Is that true? Didn't North London effective steal the identity (and certainly the League place held) of the team supported by residents of Woolwich?

 

[Easy 10]

Martin Samuel has done an excellent piece on it today as well

Martin Samuel: Nine years on, AFC Wimbledon come wombling back from the wilderness | Mail Online