City Research Online

Abstract

This paper focuses on a 100-year period in the near-140-year history of Sheffield United Football Club (nicknamed ‘the Blades’), founded in 1889 in the city where the game of Association Football (‘football’) was begun, and which hosts the 1857-founded Sheffield FC, the world’s oldest football club. Since its beginnings and an ensuing successful first 35 years, Sheffield United FC (SUFC) has been unable to win a major domestic trophy over the past 100 years and concomitantly has never qualified to compete for one of the three trophies available in UEFA-regulated European competitions. In that same time 43 English clubs have won one of the three trophies, and more have played in the European competitions. Nevertheless, the Blades have sustained a loyal fanbase of some 30,000 who attend home games, mostly drawn from a city population of 556,500 (2021 Census) and a regional conurbation of around 1.5 million, who hope that their team might, in their lifetime, lift a trophy. For the past 100 years others clubs with less history and from smaller demographics and indeed with lesser economic facilities have achieved what SUFC have not, i.e. win a trophy. When considering the club’s history, the size of both the fanbase and the city-wide demography, such a victory would free the club of the current unwanted accolade of being the most under-achieving in world football (in the authors' opinion). The authors – both Sheffield born and raised and lifelong Blades fans – attempt herein to provide a dispassionate analysis of this footballing institution. We feel it pertinent to ask as to why SUFC have proven unable to accomplish the most crucial element of what it was established to do. We wonder what stories does SUFC tell the curious primarily about the governance of a football club but also of the city whose name it carries? Where, we might ask, stand issues of trust in these processes and which, do Blades fans agree, are legitimate by way of excuses for not winning trophies?

Publication Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Sociology & Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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