Click for linkBy: John DillonPublished: Fri, March 14, 2014
JOSE RIGA, the new, Belgian manager of Charlton Athletic, greeted the stunning transformation he wrought in the club's fortunes in the goalless home draw against Huddersfield Town on Wednesday by saying afterwards: "I like football."
That's handy, isn't it? He's in the right place, then.
A lot of people at Charlton like football. There are, for example, quite a few left of the 15,000 who voted for The Valley party in the local council elections in 1990 as part of the memorable fight to get the club back to its famous old stadium.
There are thousands more still around who were part of the great clean-up of the near-derelict ground in 1988 - three years after Charlton had to leave.
They picked up the rubble, dug up the weeds and swept and cleared the huge terraces by the Thames. Then they had a huge bonfire on the remains of the pitch.
Four years later, after seven nomadic years at Selhurst Park and the Boleyn Ground across the river, Charlton went home.
This remains one of English football's great stories of supporter devotion and defiance. It is also one of many epic and hugely emotional examples played out across the land which capture the unique entwinement of the game with the roots of English society.
Did it all happen just so that an electronics magnate from Antwerp - Roland Duchatalet - could come along and turn the place into a feeder club for a bunch of other middle-ranking teams he has collected across Europe?
A testing ground for his soulless business ideas?
REVEALED: Jose Riga has yet to sign a contract at Charlton
There are now many examples of the cynical modern way in which grand old English football clubs have been taken apart by foreign owners.
The current events at Charlton - crystallised this week by the sacking of the stalwart manager Chris Powell - strike a particularly poignant chord because of those memories of the battle to resurrect the ground.
Most people guessed that trouble was coming at Charlton as soon as the club was purchased by the Belgian multi-millionaire Duchatalet in January.
It was quickly learned that Duchatalet owned five other clubs, most notably the Belgian outfit Standard Liege.
Quelle Surprise, a job lot of average players deemed surplus to requirements at those other clubs then arrived at The Valley.
The new owner, you see, has a smart alec new football theory, dressed up as revolutionary thinking attuned to the changing demands of the 21st century game. It involves feeder clubs supplying each other and he summed it up by saying: "Charlton can offer players the chance to play in the Champions League with [Standard]."
In other words, he is running a collective of clubs across Europe and their players will all be inter-changeable. If, you guess, there are a few Euros to be made, so much the better.
It seems that when Powell declined to go along with this and didn't pick the new arrivals, his number was up.
The fans sang his name on Wednesday and after three minutes, broke into applause in honour of the number he wore on his back 270 times as the team's left-back.
Then they chanted: "We want our Charlton back," which is an uncomfortably familiar number across English football grounds these days.
Duchatalet, 67, is clearly no fool. As a political "liberal," who founded his own "left-ish," party called Vivant and who took part in the 1968 student riots in Europe, some expected him to grasp the community issues surrounding The Valley.
But, either willfully or ignorantly, he clearly has no understanding of why supporters love their clubs. In fact, he has expressed his puzzlement over why the former Belgian Prime
Minister, Yves Leterme, would travel hundreds of miles to watch Standard in action.
Now, he thinks he is doing the fans a favour by offering Charlton the opportunity to become a holding depot for the Champions League ambitions of Standard Liege. And de rigeur, he has dumped an English manager for a foreigner.
The Valley could have been turned into a depot in 1985 when Charlton moved out. B and Q perhaps? Argos.
The fans stopped that. But now, dismally, their pride and their devotion are being trampled for a second time.
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AGREE OR DISAGREE with John Dillon's well published article?
Comments
Why would so many national journalists write bits about us unless they thought there was a real story going on? Maybe if the local papers were pushing the story, but they are not, its the nationals doing it. Maybe we should all get out of the 100% for or 100% against whats going on and have a closer look with an open mind.
Guessing at saving us from certain administration is guessing, was he the only group interested in us at the time? I don't think so, just the one that was accepted
Regarding the pitch, I believe we are under contractual obligation to supply the service we do as a football club, if we carry on with that pitch games would be postponed and we would end up with a hefty fine and be ordered to change it anyway, it is essentially a requirement for him not an option.
Request to develop the academy fits in line with this mans point, part of his soulless business ideas breeding players that can go on to play CL football with Standard Liege (his words in a different order, not mine)
Don't particularly like RD, but this kind of reporting is basically written to fit an agenda. All speculation, no facts.
It may well be that Chris Powell could not come to a working understanding with Roland, but it seems that Roland simply wants to dictate, and yes he has the money, saved Charlton Athletic from administration so he can, (and is) do what he likes.
Is it not tragic that instead of harnessing positives, many are minute by minute becoming fractured, and disassociated?
I can't reconcile the approach, where Roland seems to be grinning and waving his wad in our faces like a latter day Loadsamoney, when he really could be engaging with aspects of our club that can be so positive. I can't reconcile what appears to me to be a very credible man seemingly acting so cynically and missing decent opportunities to allow us to move on together.
This is not a 'should have kept Chris Powell' rant (and since his departure, if you care to look, I have not indulged in...even if I have felt it), but a what about the future rant if you like.
Roland are you going to throw ALL the babies out with the bathwater?
So, come January when RD purchased our club, I think we all gave a huge sigh of relief, however, since then, we have lost our best striker and not signed an adequate replacement, despite the fact that it's been glaringly obvious that we have struggled in this department all season (even RD surely noted this fact) we have had players in from the rest of his co-operative who are not up to the job of fighting for Championship survival, sacked our manager and replaced him with someone who will do as he"s told and we are still staring relegation full in the face.
Personally speaking, at this point, administration looks the better deal, we would have had more interested parties willing to purchase the club at a knock down fee.
Time will tell if the stories regarding Charlton being a feeder club are correct, I truly hope my concerns regarding RD"s brave new footballing world are wrong but I won't hold my breath.
There are positives and a lot of ifs and potential problems. Some of his clubs have prospered and some have not. Personally I think that we are too big to be a feeder club and I am still to be convinced from RDS statements, press reports and what has actually happened that there is no evidence of that intention (yet). There does however remain the possibility and it is right that all of us remain vigilant.
Personally I still think that there are many positives (as well as a few high profile negatives) and hope that my optimism is rewarded. I don't really think that we will know the direction of this club until the Autumn.