Visions of a different Leicester City: Why I’ve joined the Foxes Trust
On Thursday 21st March, Union FS held a Fans’ Forum at Duffy’s Bar in Leicester city centre. I couldn’t make it, but the conversations that night made a big impression on several people I know.
These were people I’d got to know through either The Fosse Way or the BSLB podcast, both set up in the summer of 2022 to give an alternative voice to Leicester fans. TFW and BSLB are clearly cut from a similar cloth, and there’s been lots of overlap in the past with guests from one appearing on the other and vice versa.
What these people were telling me struck a chord - that when the Foxes Trust joined forces with Union FS on the general sale issue, that strong, combined voice carried weight with the club.
Trust: the process
Suddenly it felt negligent to be using this platform just to have a moan about the club without making any attempt to influence the change I want to see through the existing democratic channel.
Some of the people associated with TFW and BSLB started talking about what could happen if we were able to bring more people to the Trust and strengthen their hand with numbers and expertise in various areas.
So on the Tuesday evening following the Union FS Fans’ Forum, I found myself at Leicester City’s vast Seagrave training complex attending the Foxes Trust’s AGM as one of around 40 new members who had joined during those four days.
I was heavily conflicted. I felt there were things that a supporters’ trust should be pushing the club hard about, which seemed impossible while it was holding a cosy AGM within the club’s inner sanctum. How do you hold a club to account and ask the difficult questions while maintaining a relationship that gives you the access needed to have any kind of influence? It must be a tricky balance.
But truthfully, that night, it felt like the £10 joining fee had already been worth it to see Seagrave from the inside and get the chance to ask Ricardo Pereira a question as part of the AGM.
Expecting all the other questions to be some variation on the theme of the financial situation and its effect on the squad from a senior player’s perspective, I instead asked whether Ricardo shared Enzo Maresca’s view that the atmosphere at home games needed to improve.
In fact, that question was a bit of an outlier. The toughest question he faced was more along the lines of his favourite curry or whether he’d been to Bradgate Park.
Of course, that’s absolutely fine. Ricardo Pereira shouldn’t have to answer for the club executive. But it reinforced something we’ve known for a while: the complete absence of a voice from the club answering these questions at any other time. You see other clubs’ chief executives or directors of football on camera setting out their visions and it must be reassuring. Meanwhile, our decline continues.
Communication problems
Where is the dialogue between the fans and the club? The club does very little proactively in this area. I’ve never really been sure what the overall plan or vision is, other than King Power’s much-stated “commitment to the club”.
Short of the occasional statement in legalese, there seems to be no outreach or engagement with fans on issues of any seriousness. Perhaps, with the recent appointment of a new head of fan engagement, this will change.
There are fans’ consultative committees and the club have worked with fan groups on various projects, but the feedback I’ve heard from the supporters involved in such conversations hasn’t been particularly positive.
I knew I had to be a member of the Foxes Trust to be able to look at myself in the mirror when complaining about this kind of thing. I’d been complacent, having attended the first meeting of the Trust in a backstreet pub in Leicester back in 2002 and then relinquishing my membership at some point in the past.
Once the club was financially secure, I probably backed off. When, a decade or so later, King Power took over and success started arriving on the pitch, I probably didn’t see the need to have any kind of say in how the club was being run.
I was wrong.
Even during periods of success on the pitch, there would always have been little things I didn’t agree with or would change if I could. I’ve always viewed things like the FSA, supporters’ trusts and the concept of football fans having some kind of say in how their club is run as unquestionably positive things, without following through by getting involved in our own.
This isn’t about the fans being in control of the club (I can’t think of anyone I’d trust less in charge of a football club than me, or most Leicester fans I know), but about the club listening to its fanbase and being receptive to change.
Basque in the success
A slight confession at this point. There’s another football club I feel a strong and growing affinity towards. This meant that last Thursday evening, in between those dismal defeats at Millwall and Plymouth, I was glued to a live stream of a boat.
This was how Athletic Club Bilbao celebrated their first major trophy in 40 years, by continuing the tradition of their players and coaching staff boarding La Gabarra, a blue barge permanently moored next to their San Mamés stadium, and sailing it down the river Nervión that winds through the heart of their city.
I could bore you to tears about Athletic Club and the city of Bilbao, but I won’t. The words emblazoned in gigantic letters behind their fans’ section at that cup final a couple of weeks ago say it all: Unique In The World.
Athletic Club is a vision of another possibility, where there’s a fiercely strong connection between the players, the fans and the club.
Willingly taking 99% of the world’s transfer market off the table imbues the idea of playing for Athletic Club with a genuine sense of romance. Not just anyone can play for them, it means more to those who can and they treat it as a privilege.
I’m not suggesting Leicester should start only fielding players born in Leicestershire, or who have come through the ranks at Quorn or Oadby Town. The pride shown by Athletic Club supporters and the subsequent bond between the fans and the club leads to all kinds of other brilliant ideas.
Athletic Club holds its own football film and book festivals in Bilbao. It displays the names of various fan groups on the stadium’s big screens before games. On the past two occasions the UK supporters’ group have gathered in a pub before a friendly on British soil, the club’s president has gone along to catch up with them.
All of this adds up, making Athletic Club supporters feel an affinity for their club even when they’re not winning trophies and sailing down the Nervión. We wouldn’t be able to replicate that, but it makes me want to take one or two baby steps towards at least trying. When I feel proud of our club off the field, it’s usually because of the fans - when it’s Leicester helping Leicester.
Each to their own
Of course I’d be deliriously happy if Leicester City won every week, but there are other ways I can be proud of the club. It can be something more than it is.
When the call for people to join the Foxes Trust started gathering attention on social media, I was drawn to the few negative voices. I had answers for each one - the ones who called the Foxes Trust “they” without realising that by joining and helping, “they” becomes “we”; the ones who said we’d wasted £10, a small price to pay for hope of positive change; the ones who said we wouldn’t be able to do anything about £90million losses, who don’t see that this is about trying to gain smaller victories like the example of the general sale issue to nudge our club in the right direction.
We’ll all have our own niche interests. Mine is the highly questionable gambling partners the club have jumped into bed with. Among the Trust, or even among the new members, we won’t always agree. That’s not the point. With greater numbers, we start to reflect the fanbase more. We encourage greater accountability and wider communication from the club and its board. And we start to feel valued in exchange.
Another suggestion I’ve seen is that the only way to bring positive change is to walk away. I’ve spent the best part of 35 years being completely obsessed with this football club and I’ve already made peace with the fact I’ll still be completely obsessed with it when my time is up.
I want it to be here after I’ve gone, for Leicester City to continue to be successful and for fans of other clubs to gaze at us with envy.
And I want to be able to say I’ve played even the most miniscule part in that happening.
Join the cause
The Fosse Way is supporting the current drive for new members to join the Foxes Trust and have their say on the future of Leicester City Football Club.
Annual membership costs
Adult: £10
OAP, unemployed or students: £5
18 to 21 years old: £3
Under 18: Free
