MyFootballClub: a recipe for disaster?

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It's an idea that could potentially change the way football is run: round-up enough fans – 50,000, to be precise, each chipping in £35 – and when you've raised enough cash, take over a football club. A real, established football club. As a member of the ownership trust, each member then gets to vote on transfers, squad selections and the running of the club. It sounds like the perfect combination: fans get to inject their passion for the game into the running of the game, clubs get a boost in finances and attendances. It's like Championship Manager – but for real, and with added democracy.

This morning, MyFootballClub, the website set up in April to change football forever by attempting such a scheme, announced that it had agreed a deal. Ebbsfleet United (formerly Gravesend & Northfleet), the Conference team just down the road, have sold 51% of their club to the MyFootballClub Trust for £70,000. The impact has been immediate and drastic: directors have all become non-executive; former "Manager" Liam Daish has become "Head Coach"; the (real) fans find themselves following a club with not one new owner, but 20,000.

The scheme might have good intentions, but on a practical level it's likely to run into problems very quickly. For starters, there's the pure logistics of enabling 20,000 people to follow the Fleet's games every week. How many will be well-informed enough to make decisions on who should play every game? How many of the 20,000 will still be interested in participating after a few weeks? What happens when their memberships' to the Trust expire after just one year? How long will Daish and the board remain in their positions, now that they've effectively been reduced to puppets?

I wish Ebbsfleet all the best with the experiment. I am genuinely interested to see how it pans out. I'm also very glad that the MyFootballClub Trust didn't choose us.

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