Ebbsfleet a hellish vision of the future

Fascinating stuff this internet contraption, ain’t it? As a Luddite who preferred writing with quill and parchment by the light of a burning lamp, it took me a while to come around to appreciate its usefulness but now I’m hooked. Facebook is a particular addiction. So is Skype. I can bank online. I can buy a house online. I can meet my next wife online. And now, the pièce de résistance, I can buy my own football team. Do the wonders ever cease?

The unusual tale of Ebbsfleet United, a team in the Blue Square Premier (the Conference, or the English fifth division), is a glimpse of the future of sport. An internet site, MyFootballClub.co.uk, was set up by British football hack Will Brooks six months ago with the express purpose of raising funds to buy a club. The pitch to online subscribers was simple. Cough up $80 to buy a share and, along with your fellow investors, get to have a say in the day-to-day managing of a real football team. None of this Fantasy League bollocks.

And so by last week MyFC had raised enough money to buy a 51 per cent controlling stake in a real bricks-and-mortar football team, with 20,000 would-be Harry Redknapps from all over the world signed up on the (virtual) dotted line. Over 500 joined up from Australia alone. For their hard-earned, each investor has a direct say in club affairs, including team formation and nominating a preferred line-up by online poll each week.

This bypasses the usual maker of such decisions, the coach, in Ebbsfleet’s case former Ireland international Liam Daish. When the results are collated, the final XI is determined. The gaffer, however, still gets to make intra-game decisions on matters such as substitutions and tactics.

Daish is all for the idea, and why wouldn’t he be?

“It gives us the chance to compete,” he told The Independent. “We’ve tried everything to improve attendance, profile, fan base. Unless there was some Russian guy turning up with millions, we needed something different. This is different. This is all about shared responsibility from the top of the club to the bottom, not just team affairs. It’s about what to do with the training ground, whether to get a new roof, anything and everything. It’s more than just picking a team on a Saturday.”

Maybe so, but what Daish neglects to mention is that if ever there was a way to ensure tenure in football management, this is it.

Under the MyFC model, how can a coach ever be held responsible for a crap performance?

With each of the club’s 20,000 co-owners also vetting transfer activity in the January window, personal liability for bad recruitment is a thing of the past, so when that Togolose midfielder that looks like Emmanuel Adebayor turns out to have the on-ball skills of Steve Urkel from Family Matters, everyone carries the can.

What a concept! No wonder the Americans are copying it. And undoubtedly it’s on its way here soon. Too late to save Ron Smith but maybe just in time to keep Ernie Merrick from joining the unemployment queue.

It’s a wonder the MyFC concept didn’t happen earlier.

This is the age of Australian Idol generation, where tomorrow’s pop stars get picked by SMS today. The age of the worm, where one utterance by a politician is rendered graphically and analysed instantly on our TV screens. The age of the Hollywood movie by focus group, where a director’s masterpiece can be butchered because one fat frump in Wichita doesn’t like the ending.

In many ways what’s happening at Ebbsfleet is an exciting democratisation of a sport that lost its connection to the grassroots a long time ago. By logical extension, there’s no reason to say it can’t happen with a Manchester United or a Liverpool or even a national team. What more emotional stake can you have in a team than being able to say you picked it?

But it’s not for me.

That’s not to say I don’t want to see less Roman Abramoviches in football – the fewer shady Russian billionaires running the Chelseas of this world the better. And the idea of MyFC, of fans owning the team, is undeniably romantic. But equally I’m still old-fashioned in that I want to ride a team’s success or failure with the personality that helms it, the coach.

I want to be able to blame him for stuffing up or equally to laud him when he gets it right. Take away the element of personality and fallibility from football and you end up with something soulless and anodyne.

Just like Australian Idol. Just like our politicians. Just like those Hollywood movies by focus group.

The internet is a wonderful thing. It’s changed my life. It’s probably changed yours. But I don’t want it running my football team.

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