Aren't Barcelona and Rael Madrid owned by the fans and controlled by directors ,voted onto a board by fans ?
Surely that's a better option than the situation for many uk clubs ,who are owned by attention seeking business men who seem to have little knowledge of how to run a football club .
As I said, it's not the model of this country. Real Madrid & Barcelona are members clubs for sure - so is Osasuna and one or two others in Spain I think.
Even that isn't perfect, Barcelona is £500 million in debt with over £50 million of negative equity. In 2010 they couldn't pay their players salaries and went cap in hand to the bank for a £100 million loan to keep the club running. Only a certain law in Spain called the 'act of sport' stops Barcelona being treated like any other business. Barcelona & Madrid also wield heavy political influence and their strength is unfair in Spain, between them they take around 75% of the broadcasting revenue with the other 18 clubs sharing the rest. In England at least every club gets equal share.
Practically every German club was a members club from day one and some of what they achieve is great. Bayern Munich subsidised their fans tickets for their trip to a***nal last season, because Bayern view a***nal prices as obscene. The tickets were £60 or something, but Bayern paid nearly half of it for each of their supporters.
Our model has always been private ownership and for the most part that's fine. a***nal is probably the best run club in the country & people can criticise Chelsea & Manchester City all they want but my god they've made football incredibly interesting. Those Arabs especially are obsessed with football, they love it. I'd rather have them involved than Liverpool's situation whereby Liverpool FC is just a subsidiary of a Boston based sports franchise company.
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