Students of international affairs might recall a famous
example of American ‘expertise’ when it came to educating local farmers in a
distant country on how to expand upon their own endemic traditions. These
farmers were, simply put, growing an array of crops on rocky surfaces, even as
these rocky surfaces climbed up and down a remote landscape. They had been
farming this way for decades, perhaps centuries. At the invitation of the
distant country’s ambitious leadership, American engineers arrived with
blueprints, and heavy machinery, and advanced agrarian know-how. They bulldozed
the rocks, did the Americans, they smoothed the earth, they sowed the seeds,
they clapped the local farmers on the back. “It’ll be so much better,” they
promised. “You’ll be able to feed your families, your village, and your
countrymen.” But the crops did not grow. According to the textbook where the
famous example appeared as a cautionary tale, the engineers attempted to remedy
the situation by churning up the soil again and again, applying fertilizer,
installing an irrigation system. But the crops would not grow. Eventually, the
befuddled Americans returned home, but the local farmers, who didn’t have the
resources to relocate, could never farm there again. Who knows whatever
happened to them.
In a moment, we shall describe a similar scenario that has
played-out over the past couple years in Wales at Swansea City Association
Football Club, where the Swans, once nearly purged from the professional
football leagues altogether, not only regained their stability, but climbed all
the way to the top tier, the English Premier League. In 2014-2015, Swansea’s
fourth consecutive season in the Prem, the Swans defeated Manchester United
twice and Arsenal twice en route to an eighth place finish on 56 points. At
that juncture, the Swansea City ownership included a Welsh-led consortium of
individuals as well as the Swansea City Supporters Trust, a grassroots
organization which held a 21 percent stake in the club. Collectively, this
ownership structure was responsible for rescuing the club many seasons earlier
when its former owner might’ve fleeced it, misplaced it, and fled. Garry Monk,
the team’s former captain, had managed the Swans to these 56 points. Yet scant
months later, Swansea sacked Monk as punishment for the club’s tepid start to
the 2015-2016 campaign, setting in motion a trend that would see managers and
caretaker managers alike—Curtis, Guidolin, Curtis again, Bradley, Curtis
again-again, Clement, Britton, Carvalhal—arrive and be nudged aside in short
order.
The appointment of Bob Bradley, former manager of the U.S.
Men’s National Team, is emblematic of how American ‘expertise’ would come to
educate a Welsh football club on how they should expand upon their own endemic
traditions. Bradley was installed by Americans Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan a
short spell after they assumed majority ownership of the Swans. At the time,
Swansea were entrenched in the relegation zone. Bradley had no experience in
the English football leagues. An American—probably for good reason—had never
managed a Premier League side. The appointment was a massive blunder and club
legend Alan Curtis stepped in again-again as caretaker, before the English
manager Paul Clement improbably pulled off a “great escape” and led Swansea toward
another year at the top flight. And yet Clement himself would be sacked a few
months into the 2017-2018 Prem, but this time, the team’s panicked squirming
wouldn’t produce a survivor. Even before Swansea City suffered relegation into
the second tier of English football they had already lost their possession-based
playing style, their status as a community-owned team. They were adrift,
lacking soul. They’d lost the incalculable gift of their identity, and the
American owners, through their cold corporate aloofness, compounded the
problem.
Swansea City supporters cannot heap blame entirely on the
American owners. They must also scrutinize the figure of Huw Jenkins, the
chairman who guided Swansea from the Vetch Field to the Liberty Stadium, and
eventually to the top flight. He’s demonstrated greatness and great misjudgment
alike, he’s a curious fellow. We could recite the list of dud managers and dud
players, but we could also remember the brilliance we’ve all witnessed, in
recent-enough managers like Roberto Martinez, Brendan Rodgers, Michael Laudrup,
and Garry Monk, and in recent-enough players like Michu, Wilfried Bony, Gylfi
Sigurdsson, and Garry Monk. We should probably say Ashley Williams, too, and of
course, we should say Leon Britton, but to label Leon “recent-enough” would be
to understate his lengthy devotion to the Swans. I can’t ‘un-witness’ Michu’s
two goals at Arsenal, for example, or Bafetimbi Gomis celebrating as the Black
Panther, or all the blank sheets kept by Michel Vorm and Lukasz Fabianski, or
the life-affirming defensive touch by Garry Monk in the playoff win versus
Reading, or the argument between Michu and Nathan Dyer over who would take the
penalty when the Swans beat Bradford City at Wembley. Jonathan de Guzman ended
up scoring from the spot. In the end, I return to the managers and to the
players, who I can support under any regime.
What if the American engineers had listened to the
indigenous farmers, rather than bulldozed their traditions? Last year, the
Swans sold a captain, Jack Cork, and the leading goal-scorer, Fernando
Llorente, and the club’s best all-around player, Gylfi Sigurdsson, without
adequately replacing them. Those sales brought in tens of millions but where
did those pounds go, exactly? Forgetting the sale of those players—where are
the other resources for vital recruitment efforts? What if the American owners
weren’t so cold and aloof? What if there were information-sharing and
transparency? I don’t know much firsthand about the Swansea City Supporters
Trust, but it has the word “Trust” in its title. I’ve watched a few
documentaries about Swansea, including Jack
To A King, and I recollect that the members of the Supporters Trust collected
coins at the gate to the stadium. It would do the owners and the chairman good,
to get out into the community like that, and establish some Trust. Luckily for
them, and perhaps as a sign of hope, there appears to be a manager, Graham
Potter, who cares about reestablishing the Swansea Way (of playing) and a cast
of young players who appear hungry to reestablish this system as well. So yeah,
because of them—the gaffer and the boys—I am still Swansea. It may be a little while
before we beat Arsenal again, but I’ll be wearing the Swan on my chest when we
do.
This Posts Is Part of New Home California Day.
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