Just when you think that no other group of supporters have had to put up with as much crap as we have comes the news that Cardiff City's Malaysian owners have decidedly that from next season their team should play in red and have a dragon motif on their badge. Out goes the blue shirt, bluebird badge and nickname which has worked well enough for over a century.
Supposedly this re-branding will help raise Cardiff's "profile", "marketability", "development" and no doubt a dozen other crappy buzz-words.
The upshot is that the new foreign owners couldn't afford to buy Manchester United, so have decreed that the team they have should at least look like them. Perhaps they believe they'll shift a few shirts to particularly short-sighted Malaysian teenagers, thinking they're shelling out for the latest ManUre kit. They'll need to. I can't imagine Cardiff's new owners will sell a single red shirt in South Wales!
You can almost see chief apologist at Cardiff, Chief Executive Alan Whiteley squirming and looking suitably embarrassed when he poured out this guff -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jun/06/cardiff-city-red-kit-blue
Basically, football is so screwed up in this country we all need dodgy foreigners who have assembled suspiciously large fortunes in third world countries wanting to own English football clubs. Football can't stand on it's own two feet without such "investment", which, as we are all painfully aware, is actually a loan that the new owners will want back. Even when they are introduced to the crowd before the game, holding up new scarves and beaming from ear-to-ear, those evil bastards are already counting the days until they can screw the club out of everything its got.
When a club of Cardiff's size, with unprecedented TV money and £40 a pop to watch the game can't generate the funds to keep a bunch of players and administrators going they, and the rest of us are going to be continually shafted and find our game drifting further away from us all the time. Hopefully once the top four or six teams in this country are creamed off into a permanent pan-European league the rest of football can take a step back from the financial precipice. Sensible prices to the supporters. Spend only what you make. Perhaps bring back a payment cap? Do we have an obligation to turn people who can kick a ball moderately well into millionaires?
Shirt colour, badges and nicknames mean nothing to these people. They have no heart or understanding. And when a football club is shaken lose from the foundations that bind it to the fanbase all things become possible. Who knows, teams may be transplanted into other towns just because their ground looks nicer!
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