What Makes a Football Club Important?

“I still believe a European league will be an unavoidable step,” announced Milan director Umberto Gandini, speaking of a future shaped by the “50 most important continental clubs.” This familiar talk of a superleague, where the richest play each other in perpetuity, rests entirely on a self-serving definition of importance.

The assumption is that importance equals commercial power, television ratings, and recent Champions League qualification. It is the logic that saw the G14 attempt to formalise a breakaway, a tendency that has not vanished just because Michel Platini invited its members for tea. But this vision of football, promoted by a club that has not won a Scudetto in five years, ignores the institutions that truly built the sport.

Importance is not about creating a closed shop for the wealthy; it is about changing the game forever.

The Game's True Architects

The foundations of modern football were not laid in Milan or Madrid, but in the industrial towns of England and the amateur grounds of Scotland. Sheffield FC, the world’s oldest club, holds a FIFA Order of Merit, an honour it shares with Nelson Mandela, not with the self-appointed continental elite. It was Darwen FC, an unassuming Lancashire side, that shattered the amateur ideal in 1879 by paying two Scottish players, Fergie Suter and James Love. Within a decade, professionalism was the standard. Preston North End followed, becoming “The Invincibles” in the first Football League season of 1888-89, going unbeaten while also winning the FA Cup. Their 26-0 FA Cup victory against Hyde from the previous year remains a record.

These clubs were pioneers. Glasgow’s Queens Park FC, ten-time Scottish FA Cup winners, revolutionised tactics with their passing style and played in Hampden Park, once the world’s largest stadium. And when the game went global, it was clubs like Exeter City who acted as its missionaries. The Brazilian national team played its first ever match in 1914 against the English side during a tour of South America.

Shaping the Modern Era

The evolution continued long after the rules were written. In the 1950s, Wolverhampton Wanderers used the new technology of floodlights to host a series of friendlies against top European and South American opposition. After victories against Honved and Real Madrid, manager Stan Cullis declared his team “champions of the world.” That statement so irritated French journalist Gabriel Hanot that it led directly to the creation of the European Cup.

Real Madrid dominated that new competition, winning the first five tournaments, but it was Benfica who broke their stranglehold in 1961, powered by one of Europe’s first black superstars, Eusébio. In Italy, it was the Grande Torino side of the 1940s, tragically lost in the Superga air crash, that popularised the 4-4-2 formation. Decades later, AFC Ajax’s academy system and its concept of ‘Total Football’ changed the game again, producing Johan Cruyff and a team that won three consecutive European Cups in the early 1970s.

A Broader Definition of Power

Global importance is measured by more than just European trophies. In Cairo, Al Ahly claims fifty million supporters and has been crowned African champions three times in the last four years. Penarol is supported by forty-five per cent of Uruguay’s population, while Flamengo, with thirty-five million fans, is Brazil’s most popular club despite its inconsistent success. Boca Juniors gave the world Diego Maradona. These clubs represent the soul of football in their nations and continents.

The youngest club to merit a place among the most important is Kashima Antlers, winners of six J-League titles since the league’s formation, establishing Japan as a rising power in the game. In Italy, Pro Vercelli, now in the fourth division, won five championships between 1908 and 1914 and was the club of Silvio Piola, credited with inventing the bicycle kick.

Even the definition of a club is being challenged. When the chairman of non-league giants Enfield FC sold their ground and squandered the proceeds, supporters did not despair. They founded Enfield Town, the first supporters’ trust-owned club, creating a model for fan ownership. After eight years in exile, they have just reached an agreement to move back to a renovated stadium near their original home.