Sunday, August 09, 2020
Ooh, It's The Latest Craze
Once upon a time any new football club called itself United. Pattaya United. Muang Thong United. Sulut United. Felda United. Quite why clubs would go down this Anglicized naming route was beyond me. I mean, they couldn't all be aping Manchester United, could they?
More recently we have seen new clubs calling themselves City and again you wonder what the motivation could be? I mean, if you want to copy English names where are the Wanderers, Athletics or Wednesdays?
But no, ever since the oil dollars started gushing into East Manchester, and they have been lifting trophies for fun, City has become THE suffix to add to a football club.
When Pattaya United were bought out and relocated to Samut Prakan last year, they became known as Samut Prakan City.
In Malaysia when it was decided, finally, to put MISC-MIFA out of their misery they were rebranded as PJ City. In fact it wasn't long before the club were being linked with a takeover by the City Group, something that was soon shown up for what it was, a fantasy.
PJ City did adopt Manchester City's sky blue colours and even added the red rose of Lancashire to their club badge before being threatened with legal action.
South of the Causeway, when it was decided to erase Home United from the history books, the new license owner went with the name Lion City Sailors. Singapore of course is often known as Lion City and indeed what is Singapore if not an Anglicized version of the Sanskrit for Lion City so in a way this example could be described as tapping into local history.
The Philippines doesn't have much of a football tradition and their most successful clubs in recent years, Ceres Negros, were owned by a bus company. With Covid 19 however the transport company withdrew from football and new owners rebranded the club United City Football Club, a moniker which defies any football logic.
It's not often I have anything good to say about the short-lived Indonesia Premier League from 2011 but one they did do in part was try to adopt names that had some meaning for their region. Hence we had Minangkabau, the team than famously though they could sign Dennis Bergkamp, Cendrawasih, Bali De Wata and Batavia Union among others.
And shouldn't that be the point? Rather than trying to hang on to the coat tails of a successful club thousands of miles away shouldn't these new-ish clubs being doing more to appeal to the people who live in their backyard?
The other side to the story is familiarity. For good or bad the top five clubs in England are massively popular in South East Asia, their branding easily identifiable. More so than than local clubs. Perhaps, in a bit to attract new supporters, clubs feel the best way to do this is to tap into that familiarity.
Maybe. Look at Buriram United and Muang Thong United. Then look at Johor Darul Ta'zim who eschewed English naming etiquette and have done all right for themselves.
I guess if I was ever in the position to spunk heaps of money on a football club I would be looking to develop a name that tapped into local traditions but I also realise I am just a football traditionalist with a romantic interpretation of someone else's past and my interpretation may not be everyone's.
As is so often the case I have argued myself out of the original premise of a post. I started out wanting to mock, ever so gently, the recent craze of clubs adding City to their name but end up accepting there is a certain logic to
Like yesterday's post, at the end of the day it comes down to management and what they have in way of a vision for their club. Malaysian football is the winner if PJ City can be built into a powerhouse boasting 10,000 fans every home game and giving JDT a run for their Ringgit and the same goes for Samut Prakan City, Lion City Casuals and United City. I have been crying out for new money in local football and now it's here it does seem petty to get up het up about club branding.
And anyway, anything is an improvement on football clubs named after roads, government departments or the stock market!
