Geography, economy, and club success

[Swampy]

I intended to write a big fuckin' essay on this but work's being hectic today so I'll just start this as a freeform discussion.

I was reading a Millwall forum the other day and they had an interesting discussion going about catchment areas, club potential, average gates and so on, and someone pointed out that the north of England is struggling. If you leave the Manchester clubs aside, the likes of Bolton and Blackburn are at their lowest ebbs in the past 20 years as far as gates and success goes, and the entire county of Yorkshire hasn't a single top flight club. The guy who posted this argued that the trend is heading away from these clubs and more towards big city ones, and those in rich towns with lots of middle class families (such as Milton Keynes.)

I thought this was pretty interesting and frankly I don't see much to disagree with. You look at who came up to the PL this year and Leicester is a big city with a huge East Midlands catchment area, Watford is in the London commuter belt with plenty of middle class families. Bournemouth's a bit of an odd one but it's a combination of typical southern English wealth and a large white working class displaced from London.

It's pretty interesting how this works, and also how you have on the one hand the single-club-city, big-catchment area teams (Leicester) and those cheek-by-jowl with several other clubs (Watford) that can both succeed. In Scotland I think we make far too much of catchment area - it's really not that big of a deal, and there is anecdotal evidence that being surrounded by bigger clubs can actually help you, not least in terms of loan signings. I think of Getafe, the team I follow in Spain, and their legion of former Real Madrid youths and occasional Atletico loanee. These young guys don't want to leave the city for clubs like Numancia, who have a catchment area bigger than some European countries.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting, all thoughts welcome unless they're shit.

[Whitnail]

It well known how big the "London factor" is for foreign players.

West Ham find it much easier to attract the top foreign prospects relative to, say, Sunderland or Bolton.

I think it played no small part in Pedro choosing Chelsea over Manchester United and Fabregas only ever playing for London clubs.

London is a bit meh, but foreigners like it.

Also you have to be in the south to attract Sherwood or Redknapp - so there's positives and negatives.

[Swampy]

My hometown of Yarm was famous for being the place Middlesbrough showed their various Brazilian imports around, pretending it was Boro itself.

[Honest_Man#1]

My hometown of Yarm was famous for being the place Middlesbrough showed their various Brazilian imports around, pretending it was Boro itself.

Yarm is a lovely wee place, it's still where Boro players keep to as it's really close to the training ground as well.

[Swampy]

I've never actually been there.

Anyway, the North East seems to be a bit of an anomaly for the whole 'the north is dead' thing. The Lancashire clubs are struggling - forgot to mention Wigan earlier, but you can file them next to Bolton and Blackburn in the 'spent force' stakes. Yorkshire's troubles are well-known with Sheffield United still struggling. However, United (and Wednesday) at least both have excellent gates to fall back on. Leeds, the flagship of Yorkshire football, can't even fill three-quarters of their ground right now - by raw numbers their gates are healthy for the Championship but in terms of club size and potential they are very poor.

Germany is a very instructive example, though. Obviously you can't read too much into Hoffenheim because they were bankrolled to the top but even allowing for that, their gates are because they have a catchment area that's not just large but also well-connected to the rest of the country, fairly cosmopolitan (Heidelberg, not Hoffenheim itself) and above all rich. And the prime example: still no teams from the old East in the 1. Bundesliga (Hertha is a West Berlin club.) Even at that, when teams from the old DDR Oberliga were in the top flight it was generally not even the biggest ones from the Iron Curtain era: Energie Cottbus and Hansa Rostock were not historical forces in the old East, with far bigger clubs like Dynamo Berlin, Dynamo Dresden, Magdeburg and Loko Leipzig disappearing into the bowels of the league system (with Dresden managing just four top flight seasons - unbelievable for such an enduringly popular club.)

[Honest_Man#1]

Yeah I'd guessed it was some sort of Tryfield related dig, but it's genuinely a really nice place.

[Swampy]

I had a wee look on Google Street View, looks well quaint.

[Jacksgranda]

(with Dresden managing just four top flight seasons - unbelievable for such an enduringly popular club.)

Aye, they really bombed.

[Swampy]

Aye, they really bombed.

Same with Omagh Town.

edit: just looked it up and apparently they went bankrupt. Ha! Serves them right for being bombed once.

Anyway, with Jacksgranda's usual Britnat bunfieldery out the way, let's get back on topic.

[Whitnail]

I guess Swansea is one of the exceptions, surely very difficult to attract anywhere there, without a booming "middle class" fan base to rival even Bournemouth and yet playing great football and attracting some top players like Ayew and Gomis.

Should give hope to the Boltons and Leeds of this world.

Also makes the dominance of the Belo Horizonte clubs in Brazil even more perplexing - who wants to live there?!!

[Swampy]

I don't know a great deal about Swansea but a large white working class and a mid-sized stadium seems to be a good combination.

In fairness Atletico Mineiro only recently became good - they've always been a *fairly* big club but not until the last five years when they started spending an absolute fuckton on established players (Ronaldinho, Jo, Gilberto Silva...) did they even overtake Cruzeiro*. Cruzeiro are historically more successful, but even allowing for that, Sao Paulo is historically the engine of Brazilian football, although it's struggled greatly recently. Palmeiras even got relegated a couple of years back, almost unthinkable.

Brazilian football is a really interesting one economy-wise because the southeast of the country is the richest area (and in fairness also the most densely populated) and it's seen a lot of success. Porto Alegre, along with Sao Paulo, is a major area for football, and so of course is Rio thanks to Flamengo and Fluminense.

Economically Brazilian football was once very, very stratified, even moreso than England (where the gentlemen amateurs of the South were displaced by the rough and ready professionals of the North - how ironic that it's now happening in reverse). Teams like Botafogo were essentially for the white middle class, while there were also ethnic teams like Palmeiras and Cruzeiro for Italians and Vasco da Gama for Portuguese. These lines are a hell of a lot more blurry now but the story of Brazilian football can't be understood without knowing those origins.

I don't think any country does ethnic football quite like Australia used to, though. Before the A-League all its biggest clubs were ethnic in origin. Marconi Stallions were Italian, Bonnyrigg White Eagles were Serbian... there's teams for Maltese, Albanian, whatever you can think of if you look at the Australian local leagues. Of course the same is true in Canada to this day and also to a great extent in the US amateur leagues.

*edit: and that didn't last long, did it?

[Sloop John B]

Interesting stuff, there's always odd ones out like say Millwall who have a newish stadium in London should be a lot better than a Championship/League 1 yoyo team or Coventry who have a similar population and location to Leicester but are underachieving massively. Other Examples could be Luton Town, Charlton, Swindon and Oxford. League 1 is a collection of utterly soul destroying locales.

Scotland has a very small sample size so it's almost certainly complete crap from myself but there is an upturn in teams from provincial towns that weren't ever that industrial like Dumfries, Perth and the Highlands whilst the Dundee teams recent upturn seems to close to the improvement in Dundee post industrial fortunes. Whilst teams from Paisley, Kilmarnock and Motherwell seem to be slumping.

Another classic example is Italy where just about all the top flight football is in the wealthier North East rather than Rome.

[highlandcowden]

I've never actually been there.

Anyway, the North East seems to be a bit of an anomaly for the whole 'the north is dead' thing. The Lancashire clubs are struggling - forgot to mention Wigan earlier, but you can file them next to Bolton and Blackburn in the 'spent force' stakes. Yorkshire's troubles are well-known with Sheffield United still struggling. However, United (and Wednesday) at least both have excellent gates to fall back on. Leeds, the flagship of Yorkshire football, can't even fill three-quarters of their ground right now - by raw numbers their gates are healthy for the Championship but in terms of club size and potential they are very poor.

was at leeds on a Tuesday night game a few weeks back;no wonder they cant fill 3/4 of their ground-theyre shite and along with that they were charging £27 a ticket for behind the goals seats.if they made going to their games a bit more affordable they might magically find more people go irrespective of catchment areas etc.

im going down to see crewe in a couple of weeks;theyre at the arse end of their division and are charging £22 to get in although at least decent seats will be available at that price.im making a crazy guess that the crowd will be shite for that too,for the same reasons as leeds.

clubs really need to start looking at the cause and effect of trying to screw their supports and dwindling crowds.

[Zanetti]

Italy's quite a good example of this. Footballing success is pretty limited to the much richer north, whereas some very big cities in the south aren't even represented in the top division. The metropolitan area of Bari has about one million residents, and they haven't been in the top division in five years, generally yo-yoing between Serie A and Serie B.

[Zanetti]

Have a look at the map of Serie A clubs this season for a better idea.

[Swampy]

I 'follow' Bari in the sense that I track their results, and what I like about them is that their fans don't take any shit. Under the last regime their home gate was down to around 3,000 at one point, but after the takeover and when they got into the playoffs it was back up to 40,000 (albeit only for the big games.)

Italy's wealth gap is well-known but that map really spells it out almost as much as the German one. It's unreal how many little northern towns are in the top flight now, with scope for more to come.

[Swampy]

Good input btw lads, will post more when I get home (flights about to take off.) This thread's going to be a beezer, I can feel it.

[HoBNob]

Was in Hull last week, a truly desolate place. Filled with people incapable of saying the word "the". Deserve all they get.

[Swampy]

Whenever Hull City are doing shit (almost always) the 'people' of Hull point out that it's a 'League' town. Then you point out that when Hull were in the PL they got better gates than both rugby league teams put together, and it goes a bit quiet.

[nsr]

Middlesbrough is a truly awful, soul-destroying place. Anything of note is named after Captain Cook, because literally nothing else has ever happened there.