1. Dear Brian;
Dear Friends of Football;
The world is changing and football is
painfully trying to adjust.
Globalization is transforming our game
into a commodity, loyalties into market
shares and tradition into brand.
Supporters are today football’s last
remaining faithful stakeholders.
However, loyalty does not go shopping
for a better deal and therefore
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2. supporters develop all the entrapments
of a captive audience.
There is nothing positive in being part of
a captive audience…unless one develops
a way to fundamentally, structurally,
influence the programme, and this
Supporters Direct has achieved!
A few years ago, in London, I told you
that originally clubs did not have owners
but members, that the concept
embodied in the club notion implied
collective decision making and active
membership.
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3. UEFA does recognize reality and above
all the diverse reality that encompasses
our 53 national associations.
In some countries, football clubs have
owners or shareholders; in others they
have members under many different
guises and arrangements. In some
places, clubs are listed on the stock
market, in others they are cooperatives,
in others yet, they are not for profit and
so on and so forth…
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4. Our President, Michel Platini, likes to
repeat that at a time when the owners,
managers and players, the advertisers
and sponsors are all foreign, the only
element left that is local and loyal are
the fans.
In this country, the professional élite
game is run under the towering principle
of sugar daddying.
We are not talking about free
competition capitalism here; we are
talking about people, often from abroad,
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5. private or public, known or unknown,
unregulated and sometimes unreliable,
pouring huge amounts of mysterious
money into a sport without expecting
any financial returns or long term
sustainability.
This is what UEFA’s financial fair-play
rules are all about: introducing
transparency, predictability and
sustainability in a financial game that
was not going in that direction.
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6. Supporters’ trusts have been
tremendously successful in the recent
past at putting back on sustainability’s
track many small and medium football
clubs in this country.
This positive trend may be upsetting
some people, I believe it is a positive
influence on football as a whole.
We at UEFA strongly believe that
Supporters Direct need a strong,
dynamic and strategically-minded
central organisation. Anyone suggesting
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7. otherwise is just trying on you the age-
old tactics of divide and rule.
Supporters Direct, over the years, have
been a reliable and strategic partner of
UEFA. Together we have pooled the
experience of the different European
supporters movements with a view to
spread good practice and inform
objectively those who aspire to take
their clubs’ destinies into their hands.
Supporters Direct have been
instrumental in setting up with UEFA a
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8. vibrant Supporters Liaison Officer
network in all the European Clubs under
UEFA license.
Supporters Direct Briefing Papers have
become invaluable documents in
building an operative body of knowledge
that will help shape the football of
tomorrow.
At the European level, Supporters Direct
are well established in Brussels both at
the Commission and with the European
Parliament.
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9. UEFA is proud of our partnership with
you. It is the keystone of our
relationship with supporters and a great
building block for our club ownership
policy of the future.
We will continue to sustain and fund
Supporters Direct’s endeavours on the
continent and their efforts at introducing
both participation and rationality in what
will be our children’s football.
Before ending this short presentation I
would like to pay a heartfelt homage to
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10. a friend of mine who is also a former
Chief Executive of Supporters Direct and
without whom, this great movement
wouldn’t probably exist today, thank you
Dave Boyle!
And thank you all!
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