Cant see Charlton fans ever doing this, although my two friends, who are big Standard fans couldn't wait to share this with me when I was telling them about the recent train incident video.
My friend said to me "you English fans, so polite, this is how its done in Belgium"
I wont translate it all, but the fans in the video, wade in very strong language wise, accusing him of being the lowest of the low, this is his office by the way....a proper storming.
If this has been shared before, then Colin or Titanic me
http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1745/Standard/article/detail/1648999/2013/06/10/Ca-degenere-au-Standard-des-fans-s-introduisent-dans-le-bureau-de-Duchatelet.dhtml
Comments
Two thing strike me. One , look how calm he is. Two, the fans fall into the trap of not allowing him to answer. They just vent their own feelings.
It is almost as if he actually enjoys this sort of confrontation. I would be interested to know if anyone in Belgium has understood why RD has got into football. What does he get out of it? It's not money. At the moment our info is that all the clubs are running at an operating loss of various size. At the same time, he seems to have made enemies not just of Standard fans, but of other club owners and the Belgium football authorities. Why? What drives him?
If we dont buy another striker then I'll probably still not go over to Belgium and storm the office of a man who doesn't give a shit what I think. Not because of the pointlessness of the act but because I'm really, really lazy.
Jordan
Whelan
Murray
Walker
Fernandez
All fans of their clubs they owned and what's the common denominator there
All look like they will lose money and their clubs suffered greatly
Two chalets is running it as a business emotional Ties have no place, losing millions will, if he gets it totally wrong the bloke will lose loads
Get it right he makes money,
I don't know how it will pan out these things take time, a man who makes no mistakes makes nothing in his life
You and I may not like the changes or the way the club is moving, but without him we would have gone under, because the two clowns wouldn't sell to any one else
So for now it's his ball we have to let him play with it and watch what happens, imo the stuff off field that seems to be happening, the training ground offices and pitch improvements indicate that he is willing to improve the infrastructure and that's got to be good because if he does sell up it will increase the value and attraction, if he don't, we will have better training and potential coaching, better youngsters coming through and a better ground to play in
Football is all about results, the thing is people want it instantly, but our club was run dry by the two previous sets of mgmt and it's staff at a time when we dropped like a stone
Rome wernt built in a day
He had a political carreer (which didn't have a lot of success) and we (i mean some supporters at Liège) suspect that he does that to prove that some football club can live without relying on outside income. For the Standard he refused money from the region (there is some type of regional sport ministery which gives money to the sport clubs) saying that the public taxes shouldn't go private clubs.
It's not a bad idea in itself but the problem is that he doesn't work with the right people. He always seems to pick the worst player agents and make the wrong choices.
I wonder if we'll ever understand his purpose. Maybe in the end it's just an old man hobby ...
As for the "we would have gone under" comment. We were in bigger danger in League One before they came along and got us out of it in their first full season. Near enough every Football League club reckons they "would have gone under" at some point in the last 5-10 years - rarely that straight forward though, we all know that.
That video gives me the impression RD might be open to a more professional direct approach from our fans.
(2) True they were running out of time, but it's a bit far-fetched to say they wouldn't sell to anyone else. Jiminez & co would just have had to sell cheaper to someone soon to avoid a total loss of all the money they'd put into the club. They were just fortunate a suitable mug turned up before they slashed the price again.
I respectfully draw the attention of such Lifers to the just-announced annual figures for Swansea City FC, a club who were in the fourth division long after the last time we beat the Spanners. They have just announced an operating profit for the second year running.
Not only are the directors fans, but 20% of the club is directly in the ownership of fans.
It seems to me as though the man has socialist principles which he wanted to disseminate via politics, that didn't go brilliantly well so now he's using football to prove the point.
I would be happy seeing some sort of collective activity among the blokes dressed in red on the pitch tomorrow, however.
For Prague to try and compare their situation, previously or now, is as laughable as pretending the trust has 5k followers.
Now Wallonia is a region run more than 40 years by the socialist party. Half a year ago (for the first time) they were kicked out of the federal Government. The last 30 years we regularly had large corruption scandals in Belgium. Certainly contracts for the military (F 16's, Mirage fighters, ammunition, vehicles), always were a favourite of Walloon (and sometimes Flemish) socialist politicians. Some politicians even got murdered, using Italian mob hitmen, because they were about to spill the beans. Some politicians got convicted, but never went one day to prison. We had a NATO secretary general (guess what party) that had to step down from office because of bribes taken, etc ... Liège is the largest city in the Walloon region where everything and everyone is controlled, installed, etc ... mainly by socialist politicians. You want a contract for securing Liège airport ? Fine, here's a list of 50 things to do: Open up a firm and training centre for your security guards in the Walloon region, because imagine paying taxes to another region where your company currently resides (Flanders or Brussels capital region). Appoint some Walloon socialist politicians to your board of directors. Hire the main politician's daughter into this security company. Pay her, although she will never show up. If you want a meeting, please do this in a michelin star restaurant. In short: the most leftish of all socialist parties in Europe controls every part in the Walloon region.
Now, because after decades all this doesn't improve economics all this well there is now an even more leftish party, one Stalin would call nuts ! And ... where do you find these nice people also ? Indeed, some (not all of them) are an extreme ultra over the edge bunch of hard line communists supporting ... SL ! So, for those of you familiar with French cursing, what you could hear was that RD is a capitalist and so on ... he really had no chance in beginning a normal conversation with them.
Did I forget to mention that in the fifties lots of Italians came to work in the charcoal mines ? One of the reasons there's an enormous community of Italians in Liège (they speak better Italian than French or Flemish - even after 2 generations), hence the most corrupt region in Europe, after Sicely. Even Belgium's sole winner of the European song contest ( Sandra Kim), was ridiculed 'cause of her bad French (Italian ancestry, nice girl however).
On the bright side ... one can eat great pizza in Liège !
Now ... why do you think RD is selling SL ?
What is actually the matter with you?
I was pointing out that one of the very few FAPL clubs who make an operating profit is one that is both led by fans, and partly owned by them. That is a fact which belies the myth that there are owners who are fans, who make mistakes, and others who are "hard headed businessmen" who don't make such mistakes. Is it that clear even for you?
As to your second "point" i believe the current membership of the trust as recorded on the website, is 1,052. Furthermore I've several times written here that I think a Trust in club in our position will do well to get beyond 1,500 paying members. Swansea have 800, as I have also several times pointed out.
If you can find a record of me "pretending the Trust has 5k followers" kindly post it. Or post your apology.
@LenGlover. When they bought their share the club was bottom of the 4th and facing extinction. They raised a total of £50k. they now have to work on maintaining that 20% when the club needs to raise more capital. That is why they accepted a dividend last season when the club made a big profit, so that the dividend could be used to participate in future capital increases.
How's Jack Walker on that list? Bankrolled Blackburn into the Premier League and then bankrolled them to the Premier League title - that doesn't seem like suffering greatly to me. They have suffered a bit over the last few years, but only since the club fell into foreign ownership.
How's Tony Fernandez on that list? Firstly, he's chucked an absolute fortune at QPR and, secondly, he's a West Ham fan.
How's Richard Murray on that list, having overseen the most successful period in our history. I certainly didn't feel like we were suffering greatly during all those years in the Premier League, or the years that preceded that when the club went from strength to strength. We struggled after getting relegated from the Premier League, as have Leicester, Norwich, Coventry, Forest, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, etc, etc, etc.
As for going under without Duchatelet, I keep reading this theory, it's rubbish. Name me one club of Charlton's stature that has gone out of business EVER. Even Rangers and Pompey have survived from a position far, far worse than ours. If Duchatelet hadn't come along then someone else would have.
Dave whelan may well have done that but look where they are heading faster than us
Fernendez if QPR go down has pissed money in a hole and will be in trouble for breaching ffp in the championship when they went up
Murray over saw a huge up lift and then was steward when we sank and sank and couldn't keep it up so sold
And there was a second bidder I was talking to the person involved with them to a degree, and he made it perfectly clear to me that they wouldn't be sold to or get past a certain stage and I am led to believe they were considerably richer than two chalets
We owed good people money we had to buy food at makro to put on a function
Sounds to me that we were drinking in the last chance saloon and as such we got the first person who was prepared to play ball with the two stooges in the way they wanted
Therefore the only option available