Hull Tigers in EPL Soccer Shocker

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November 13, 2013 by John

I didn’t know USA Soccer Guy has taken over Hull City. Oh wait…

It’s a shame that football has become the ugly Americanized business which we all feared it would become, but here we are. We had a good run, right? On 12th September Hull City AFC chairman Assem Allam confirmed his intention to rename the club Hull Tigers. The day before, Shortwood United were playing their first ever game in the FA Cup proper against Port Vale, 125 places above them in the football hierarchy. They managed to pull in a record crowd of 1300 to their tiny ground at the top of a huge hill in Gloucestershire, at the end of a long dirt track. When you make it up the slope you find there is no car parking. I don’t need to point out the juxtaposition with these stories. The game has changed and the gap between the lower leagues and the Premier League is mind-bogglingly huge, both in financial status and player ability.

As for the Hull (City) Tigers’ name, what’s the main issue here? Assem Allam is perfectly within his rights to try and change the name of both his business and the name of the football club he owns. There’s protocol to follow and he needs FA approval, and in turn fan consultation. Not only that, but he’s taking the club in the direction that I imagine most Premier League clubs want to go. I’d bet over half of Premier League club chairman would change the team name to something snazzier in a second if they thought it would significantly increase revenue and reduce debt. Is Allam just doing his bit to keep up with modern times? I think so, yes. Regardless, does it make me laugh at Hull’s new silly name? Yes. Personally, I hope that changing a name of a club doesn’t generate such significant income – it would say a lot about the world. If the club did make enough out of this to reduce their deficit (their losses still massively outweigh their income) and they manage to buy a £20m replacement for Danny Graham then I’m sure some of the ‘City Til I Die’ collective would soon pipe down.

I’m a Sunderland fan and I would be a bit miffed if we were suddenly called Sunderland Soccer Panthers or whatever. I wouldn’t want Ellis Short to make such a change on a whim, but if there was genuine belief it would benefit the financial state of the club then yeah, why not? Football’s been weird for long enough that I have already realigned my brain so that I think these crazy decisions are ‘quite normal’. If I hadn’t then I’d have switched to just watching grass roots games a long time ago. Football at this level has been horrendously monetised for years. Spending millions of pounds on an average player is completely nuts, any sane person knows that. It’s surprising to me that it takes a change of name for people to think money is taking over our much loved game. They have taken this moment to stand up and say ‘nope – I’m not having it, changing our name for money is one greedy step too far’. I’d have done that at the ‘we’re buying Curtis Davies for the equivalent of 12000 apartments for people in Mozambique‘ part.

Maybe it feels different for the supporter who first visited Boothferry Park in 1950, but I’m afraid this is a whole new game of soccer ball.