Tradition, but not just for tradition's sake

Debate rages between the modernisers and traditionalists in football. There are those who are willing to rebrand their clubs in an effort to secure extra commercial benefits - whether that is through a change in the kit of a club (as in the case of Cardiff City) or a change in the clubs name (as in the case of Hull City/ Tigers). In both of these cases, the new owners of these clubs claim the rebranding helps them to secure greater access to lucrative Asian sponsors and fans. But fans responded furiously, upset that their clubs' histories and traditions were bring cruelly discarded and that they, as die hard fans, deserved to have their voices heard and that these traditions deserve to be protected in their own right too (as in a leading editorial in this Saturday's Times). And not to say that they are wrong in voicing this opinion, but it would seem to be that this argument is like a red rag to a bull and that it would be better to place their argument in commercial terms. Their argument could be that, just as with the success of luxury European brands in Asia, so can these teams build successful brands based on an image of tradition and history. The new branding can always be integrated sympathetically over time through away kits and nicknames, marketing and mascots.

But as with Cardiff's new kit, I suspect that the drive for rebranding will win through, as commercial priorities force smaller clubs to be more bold in their changes than the larger clubs, just as young professional rugby clubs all started adopting new names to compete with the likes of Leicester Tigers and London Wasps, or how IPL teams adopted solar branded names, along the US sports model. In an increasingly crowded sports market place internationally, the drive to adopt successful practices from other sports will almost certainly continue...

KP decision - gossip seeking and meddling

The decision to sack Kevin Pietersen from the England cricket team was certainly a shock, despite all the speculation that had been going on for the last few weeks. But the clamouring for more information seems to be more of a desire to get juicy gossip on how KP is a nightmare to work with and how he's been mismanaged. Frankly, the brief communication from the ECB makes this very clear - they want to rebuild the team with younger players and hit reset on the culture of the team. And that means, rightly or wrongly, that players who are reaching the final stages of their career and who think they're bigger than the team have to go. Its not something particularly revolutionary - Alex Ferguson did it on a biannual basis and Stuart Lancaster has recently successfully taken the same approach to the red rose team. And although he obviously loved playing for England, it also strikes me as being pretty decent timing for Pietersen too, as it will give him time to sample life in the IPL and Big Bash leagues while he's still got enough mileage left on the clock to really make a success of his twenty20 career. What really makes this a shock is is that the decision has been taken before a head coach has been appointed. Surely the new coach would want to give his input into how he wants to build the team? Does this mean that Peter Moore's is back in the frame? Or that Ashley Giles has already given his input as the as yet unnamed coach? Or does the new Managing Director of the ECB, Paul Downton, fancy himself as able to interfere in playing arrangements? How the new management structure works out will be very interesting...