The sight of European soccer fans protesting against their club's owner has become commonplace, but even so, the scenes at West Ham in east London last weekend were remarkable.
Hundreds of fans gathered below the owner's box to hurl abuse at owners David Sullivan and David Gold. Several fans ran onto the field, leading to the absurd sight of team captain Mark Noble tackling one of his own team's fans to the turf. A fan picked up a corner flag and planted it in the center circle. Another fan ran onto the field, back into the stands and immediately got into a fight with a fellow fan.
The problems at West Ham run deep. Two years ago, Gold and Sullivan moved the club out of its historic stadium and into the sterile, cavernous Olympic Stadium. It was supposed to take West Ham into the financial stratosphere at the top of the Premier League. Instead, West Ham, which before the move nearly sneaked its way into the top four of the standings, has since plummeted and now is in real danger of being relegated to the second division.
West Ham is not alone in its current revolt against its owners, with such other clubs as Newcastle and Arsenal in various stages of protesting against ownership as well. Add in ongoing sagas of former Premier League teams run into the ground, as with Charlton Athletic and Blackpool, and it feels like fan animosity is at an all-time high in England. And never mind the rest of Europe, where numerous clubs have equally angry supporters.
We don't often get this sort of vitriol in American sports, because the leagues are set up to prevent it. It's hard to sustain that get-out-of-our-club kind of anger when losing means top draft picks, instead of relegation and enduring embarrassment. Repeated failure is spun as laying the groundwork for future success.
The exception is when an owner moves the team across the country, like Norm Green or Art Modell did. That's where Major League Soccer is starting to catch up to the rest of the soccer world.
Columbus Crew owner Anthony Precourt is the most hated man in the league right now, because of his harebrained scheme to move his team to Austin, Texas. This is potentially the team's last season in Columbus. You could imagine Crew fans gathering beneath the owner's box, as West Ham fans did, to chant at Precourt, "You've destroyed our club."
This isn't the kind of passion that MLS wants to build. The obvious solution is for the league to unequivocally state that the Crew is staying in Columbus, but MLS is currently too caught up in raking in expansion fees to be bothered with the franchise stability of a club that doesn't make big money. In this case, West Ham-style anger is justified. MLS needs to reverse tack before — as in east London — the situation gets out of hand.
