AS Monaco fans demanding a refund on season tickets symbolises everything wrong with fandom

News broke in French tabloid L’equipe of an issue that really made our blood boil. A press release was made by a group of AS Monaco fans, via the website Planet ASM, that’s aim was to try and claim a refund on season tickets for the French club, after the departures of James Rodriguez and Radamel Falcao this summer, to Real Madrid and Manchester United respectively.





The sales come in light of Monaco’s owner, Dmitry Rybolovlev, having fallen on some hard times (you know, in terms of multi-billionaires). His net worth has decreased from 2010, which was around $8.8 billion, and his divorce settlement was the most expensive in history, his wife taking $4.5 billion of his fortune from Dmitry. Thus, poor Dmitry can be seen in any job centre in the south of France with his paultry $4 billion, and is looking to trim down the fat on AS Monaco so he can afford to put dinner on his table.

Radamel Falcao left Monaco for Manchester United on transfer deadline day on a loan deal.

But even as Falcao and James Rodriguez leave, the club still has names such as Ricardo Carvalho, Joao Moutinho, Jeremy Toulalan, Dimitar Berbatov and Geoffrey Kondogbia plying their trade in the principality. They still qualified for the Champions League in their first season after gaining promotion, and their favourable draw could well see them getting out of the group stages. They have still aimed to purchase some young, exciting talent to bring up through their system into the first team.

Before the club was taken over by Rybolovlev, the club went through no less than 8 managerial changes in the years between Monaco’s Champions League final in 2004 and the relegation and takeover in 2011. Three managing directors were also used in this short space of time. As well as superstars, the man has also brought stability to a club that was, when he bought them, languishing in the second tier of French football.

But should any of this matter, anyway? Even if the impact of players leaving isn’t as large as it may appear, should any impact on a club change your fandom? The very nature of being a fan is that you support the club through the highs and lows of its existence. Leeds and Portsmouth fans would look on and scoff at the petty plight of the Monaco fans, as would fans of Auxerre, Nantes and RC Strasbourg, historically successful French clubs who in the last few years have seen years of hardship. The demands of a refund are those of entitled, fickle and shallow people, who feel they are owed something that rarely even existed in the first place. The fans feel entitled to the glory days of Wenger and Tigana in the 90s, but have no interest in supporting a healthy club. The club achieved success in the 90s but fell to financial collapse in 2003, and the lack of fans and healthy, continuous financial income is exactly what the club needs for stability, and exactly what these fans wish to withhold from the club.

We regularly speculate with the oft-hated ‘sugar daddies’ of European football if they were to disappear. Clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City have worked to create and increase their support base, alongside policies of creating long lasting infrastructure to enable to club to survive in the longer term. Clubs like Anzhi Makhachkala failed to do so, selling their talent has resulted in them finishing with the worst points total of all teams in Europe’s major leagues, now playing in the second tier of Russian football. However, Monaco’s new training facilities point to them being closer to the former manifestation of sugar daddy, not the latter. Indeed, the club’s Vice-President has said that they wish to hit a sustainable success for Monaco, not immediately compete with the best in the word.

Monaco's new training facilities, bottom left.

The club will not have the ground torn from beneath its feet by the owner, but could very well lose its foundations if fans decide that the club is not worth their attention without a pretty centrefold signing to stick on the walls of their bedroom. If anyone is going to see the demise of AS Monaco, it is likely to be the ‘fans’ who are so fickle as to turn on their club after the departure of two big name players. One summer, one shift in policy, does not undo the positive work of four years previous. It does not undo the fact that Rybolovlev saved the club from the depths of obscurity. It does not undo Champions League football or the successes of last season. Yet after a single year of watching world class talent, the fans feel entitled to all the success they can get. I for one, find it deplorable.

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