Fans' community website MyFootballClub has agreed a deal to take over Blue Square Premier outfit Ebbsfleet United. The 20,000 MyFootballClub members have each paid £35 to provide a £700,000 takeover pot and they will all own an equal share in the club.

In a landmark for English football, members will vote on player selection, transfers and all major decisions.

"We are united in believing this is a great opportunity," Ebbsfleet chairman Jason Botley told BBC Sport. This extra finance and support will enable our club to progress."

The deal is expected to be completed in a few weeks after a due diligence process and the website will purchase a 51% controlling stake, while also having the option to buy the club outright in the future.

The takeover is unprecedented in English football, given the website's stated intention of involving the members so radically in the running of the club, particularly with team selection.

BBC Sport
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Anybody fancy a real-life game of Fantasy Football?

Happy Hammer wrote:

Anybody fancy a real-life game of Fantasy Football?

That would be awesome, if we got a few more members we could buy a team lol

That would be awesome.

Having a selction panel of 4 or 5 members it's hard enough for them to be objective in selecting players so I wonder how 20,000 voting members are going to fare

"Democracy" has it's place but there are times when it's not the best option in my opinion...especially when cold factual decisions need to be made. "Democracy" is the process that should be used in putting that panel in to place and the panel should then be given the authority to carry out i'ts mandate and changed if it is dysfunctional.

It will be very interesting to see how the clubs ratings go

Indeed, Graham. The whole team selection thing is a no-go for me. It's the manager's job to pick the team, it should have nothing to do with the "men upstairs". As for player transfers, these tend to take place fairly quickly and, occasionally, snap decisions have to be made to secure a player before he agrees a deal with a different team, something that can't be done if they have to organise a 20,000 people strong web vote in order to make decisions.

I wonder how long it will be before someone decides they can do a better job than the current manager?

I'll be keeping an eye on the developments, the club itself is only about twenty minutes up the road from me.

It's a very novel concept I think Dan and great that ownership of a club can be in so many hands. That can only inspire support and I sincerely hope that "model" works and is adopted more widely.

Here, probably as with you in the UK, clubs are owned as "play things" by the wealthy and it's not always soccer that's the winner.

We've just had a bit of a furor here about individuals within our Professional Soccer League management being paid massive sums for negotiating game TV broadcast rights. They're all club owners and seem only interested in enriching themselves. Almost Pds Stg 100 million is involved and as management of the league ought not have been due a fee from the broadcaster at all. It's more like bribery and corrupt if you ask me. That money put into development of the sport...playing fields and other facilities and services like training at school level, would have gone a long way to improving the standard of our soccer here.

Off my soapbox now

It's unfortunate but the whole world of professional football has now become a business first and a sport second.

Clubs look more to their profit than they do to their fans. A perfect example of this can be seen at the new Wembley Stadium. The Corporate seats, the ones that costs thousands of pounds a year to secure, are nearly always empty during the second half as those that use them have no interest in the sport, they simply want to enjoy the benefits given to them by Wembley Stadium for having such a seat.

Wembley have refused to sell tickets for the seats that go unused and only started trying to force the Corporates to return to their seats after the break because the television cameras are directly opposite them and having large banks of the stadium empty doesn't reflect well on them.

The normal football fan contributes only very slightly to the finances of the clubs these days whereas they used to be the lifeblood. Without fans buying tickets, the clubs simply couldn't survive. Now they make more money from television contracts, sponsors and the corporate boxes than they do from the sale of season tickets.

It's all very sad.

Well something worked!

Congrats to Ebbsfleet for winning the FA Trophy last week!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_conf/7382167.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7403862.stm





Absolute-Zero, the riddle of your location "The cake is a lie...." is doing my head in!

Congratulations, indeed, to 'Fleet. A good job done by all, by the looks! Let's hope it continues!

"The cake is a lie..."

Quote:

Roughly translates to "your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator". Popularized by the game "Portal" (found on Half-Life 2's "Orange Box" game release for PC, X-Box 360, and PS3). During the game, an electronic voice encourages you to solve intricate puzzles using cake as a motivating perk. When you have "broken out" of the game's initial testing phase (from threat of death), you find scrawls on walls of the innards of the testing center warning you that "the cake is a lie". Employee #1: Yo, Dave, manager says we will probably get a promotion if we meet the sales expectations for this quarter. Employee #2: Yeah, so, don't get your hopes up on that one, Ed. The cake is a lie. Employee #1: Really, aw crap.

From UrbanDictionary.