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Pre-Season 2013/14 Thread


Toxteth O'Grady
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Doncaster happening then?

 

From Kenny Black's interview in the Wishaw Press.

 

"After the trip to Spain we have Doncaster away and Newcastle at home which is one to relish and we will also look to arrange more friendlies for the first team and under-20s before the season starts."
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I've already had a bit of a rant on here about folk comparing the Scottish game to what goes on in Germany. Its fucking ludicrous.

 

Exactly what does the size of Borrusia Dortmunds stand and how much they charge their fans to enter it have to do with Motherwells fanbase?

 

Absolutely. There are probably elements of just about every league in the world which we could adopt in order to try and improve things, but the idea that if we drop prices to ten quid we'll suddenly get gates of 7/8/9/10k is an absolute nonsense.

 

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen folk just bash out this tired pish of 'We should just be more like Germany, y'know?', without any idea of how they got there. Dortmund were on the brink of going out of business ten years ago, were saved at the last minute and the fans have been battling on ticket prices for years in order to get them to the level they're at now, it didn't just happen over night, and they're still well organised and powerful enough to be part of the decision making process. This is the same as Holland, where being part of, and actively participating in a sports club is almost ingrained in the culture of the country. We don't have this, and haven't for an age. I've got all the time in the world for the Bois, and the club seem to as well, and we're all benefiting from their contribution, but that's about as close as we've got. What the future of the Society is going to be seems to be up for debate, and as I'm not a member, a lot of that has passed me by.

 

In addition to that, a lot of the football clubs in Germany grew out of multi-sport clubs to begin with. The 51% thing isn't that remarkable, the clubs have always had an element of membership power because those that are involved have been there for in some cases, generations. As well as that, it's much easier to fund memberships of clubs because of the sheer number of them. Of our gate of 5/6k, you're asking each to contribute a large amount of money in order to be part of it, as opposed to the 25/30k which reduces that significantly.

 

As well as that, as mentioned, the vast, vast differences in television funding make an enormous difference. And contrary to the popular belief, all Bundesliga tickets are not 10 euros. The cheapest parts of the ground are, a bunch of the rest of the tickets are at similar levels to the Premiership, which the fans are attempting to make a stand on in some quarters.

 

Someone else with more economic knowledge could probably make a link between the strength of the German economy and the Scottish one as well. But I'm a thickie so cannot.

 

tl;dr: yeah, comparing us with Germany/England/France/Spain is almost completely pointless, as it's comparing apples with massively over subsidised and well marketed oranges. Apologies for the essay, I'm just fed up of the shitey and lazy comparisons to Germany from a position of 'enlightenment', when in fact its about as ignorant as it comes along. It won't fix it now, it won't fix it ever. What we need is a Scottish solution to Scottish league problems.

 

Finally,

 

Scotland population: 5,295,400

Germany population: 80,399,300. - 15.18 times the size.

 

Motherwell average attendance: 5118

Dortmund average attendance: 77,248 - 15.09 times the size. Oh.

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Exactly.

 

I think we could learn a lot from the German financial model, and the French 10 year plan they adopted to improve their game from the grass roots (albeit on a much smaller scale).

 

However, while that would improve the quality on the park and maybe (just maybe) lead to more financial stability, I doubt it would have much of an impact on attendances.

 

We could make it free entry at Fir Park every week and I doubt we'd ever see it full.

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.....................................................

Scotland population: 5,295,400

Germany population: 80,399,300. - 15.18 times the size.

 

Motherwell average attendance: 5118

Dortmund average attendance: 77,248 - 15.09 times the size. Oh.

 

Dortmund, (and many other German Clubs), have managed to double their stadium capacity and attendances in the last 30yrs, while in Scotland I think attendances have dropped.

 

Good post tho Graeme

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Really glad about the Morecambe game as I have a good mate who is a Morecambe fan and I been to see them a number of time when I visit my mate (he's also come to a number of Well games and has never seen us lose!)

 

The only problem is that I'm due to working that day (arse) but I'm begining to feel a bad cold coming on which might take a few weeks to really kick in..............

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