FOOTBALL club boards have never been renowned for responsible and sensible behaviour. This is why a club board rarely condemns violence when its supporters are involved, this is why it issues official announcements blaming match officials when its team loses and this is why it usually blames the police when there is crowd trouble at its stadium. Boards are incapable of seeing beyond the narrowly defined interests of their club, even if this means undermining the sport’s standing and showing contempt for the law.
It was, therefore, no surprise to witness the antics of the Ael board over the past few days, which resulted in the police being called in to restore order before a match at the Tsirion stadium on Monday. The board decided that it wanted to break the contract it had signed with Lumiere TV, which expires in 2013, for broadcasting the team’s matches. Lumiere secured a court order preventing the club from selling broadcasting rights to another station, and the club has appealed. Last Friday, in what could best be described as a childish tantrum, the board publicly announced that it would resign en masse if Lumiere did not agree to break the contract.
And on Monday evening, in order to put additional pressure on Lumiere, Ael fans blocked the entrance to the Tsirion stadium in order to prevent the station’s van from entering the ground. Police arrived and removed the cars to give access to the Lumiere van with all the broadcasting equipment. However, the match was eventually shown by Plus TV, which meant that Ael had broken its contract with Lumiere unilaterally.
An Ael official yesterday defended the fans’ blockade of the stadium by claiming they were exercising their democratic right to demonstrate and that the police had no authority to intervene. A Limassol deputy asked why the taxpayer had to foot the bill for the heavy police presence, given that this was a civil dispute. In Cyprus, when a few hundred people gather together, nobody can touch them even if they are preventing others from doing their job – a crowd of people is always right in the eyes of populist politicians.
If the police had not intervened we would have had another victory for mob rule. The Ael board would have used its supporters to prevent Lumiere from entering the ground, claiming that it had broken the TV contract in the name of supporter power. It is disgraceful behaviour, but unfortunately this is the shabby way in which most football club boards behave. It is one thing to break a contract, but to use supporters in order to intimidate and bully the other contracting party, is deplorable.
