Ownership tiers

MLS is a different structure altogether. American sport owners, from what I gather, buy into the league with a club/team in mind, so the conglomerate of owners "owns" the league. It's not like each team is a separate entity like in Europe.

Getting that out of the way, I'm interested in the European structure, which DOES treat each club individually within a league/European alignment. I look at three tiers of owners, and they're as follows.

Foreign owned: this is the worst, for me, and I group them all here for a reason. Personally, I can see why people get annoyed with certain billionaires and states owning "their" clubs for various reasons, but I don't look at it that way. None of these people buy these clubs from an altruistic perspective. If you think that's the case, you're lying to yourself. These are either business ventures or ways for criminals to launder money. The extent to which these people are well and truly evil varies, but they're by an large not good people and their intentions are not to "save" clubs first and foremost.

Domestically owned: This is where the "happy medium" can be found, potentially. There are legitimately some owners out there with a real connection to the club that haven't done evil things to attain their wealth that fall into this category. I think of Brentford, Brighton, and Norwich in England. The problem comes with fans and their ambitions to win. If teams have infinite money due to being state run, it's nearly impossible to compete in the short or long term without such funds. For context, two of the top 10 in England are owned by English people (Spurs and West Ham). Look at the way those fan bases view said owners. It's not overly favorable. It also helps (or hurts) that neither wins trophies (nearly 15 and 40 years without, respectively), which is one of the main things fans care about. Brentford haven't been where they are before, so fans are happy. Same with Brighton, having a sustained top flight period after languishing in League One. Norwich though, logically, would be in the Spurs camp, in that they are THE yo-yo club in English football. They operate the way they do because they don't have the funds to do anything else. Sure, they win the moral argument, but that's not really a trophy, is it?

Fan owned: I'm biased and admit to it, but this is the only way fans can have a say in what happens to "their" club. It's really not theirs whatsoever, otherwise. It's not flawless, however. I look at the "big two" in Spain, and while they're technically fan owned, they have countless sponsorships and individual socios have no leverage whatsoever due to how many there are. It's the same in Germany with Bayern, Dortmund, and Schalke, simply because they have so many members. I think good examples these days would be Athletic Club, the top Portuguese clubs, and the lesser Bundesliga sides. There's a balance between having enough fans without it being to the level that the individual doesn't matter, if that makes sense. They hold elections to decide who's in charge for a period of time, like a democracy, and it's not down to one individual who decided to fund the club. Of course, there are the inevitable loopholes, exploited in particular by "RB" Leipzig. Even before that Hoffenheim, Leverkusen and Wolfsburg weren't necessarily in it for the "right reasons", as they're company clubs as well. It's sad that these four, along with Bayern and Dortmund, are some of the only clubs in Germany with a chance to do anything significant in a given year. You see Frankfurt, Gladbach or Koeln occasionally play in Europe, but then their players are poached and the cycle continues. Even in Portugal it's not all gravy. That has more to do with players being poached though and ineptitude at board level. Same with Athletic in Spain. They obviously have the Basque policy that's a source of pride but also hampers them in the modern game. They have plenty of money, actually, but choose to stick to their roots and do things their own way.

To conclude, it's all personal preference. Personally, I don't have a strong connection to any particular football club anywhere, so I can look at things objectively. I see no difference between most of the super clubs, as they all exist to win trophies and make money. That's it. There are slight differences in wealth, history, philosophy, but the overall fan experience is the same, especially if you don't go to matches. If you want to watch good football and see "your" team win trophies, why does it matter how much the owner has and where they got it? It doesn't. I remember before Liverpool started winning trophies, fans would console themselves by parroting the "net spend" figures, as if that has any relevance to anything. Funny how that doesn't happen anymore aside from being compared to Man City. Point is, and this is cliché but true, do what you want. I like to have a legit reason to support a club, so at some point I might get around to that. In the meantime, I'll do my thing writing about one club for a while and then another, until one maybe sticks. Or not. I just think there are few clubs out there that can have a superiority complex, and none of them are the popular English ones. Or Italian or Spanish, for that matter, but I digress. All I'm saying is I'm not gonna "support" a super club I have no connection to, and it's slightly weird that people arbitrarily do that or just pick who's good at the time.