Enter the Dragon

How much of your team's identity would you be willing to sacrifice for the promise of championship-caliber performance in the future?  Would you trade your team colors for a new stadium?  Would you change your team logo for a roster of star talent?  These are exactly the questions that the fans of Cardiff City have had to ask themselves this past season.  

Last week on Dragon and Bluebird, we recapped the decades-long path the Bluebirds travelled to reach the Premier League.  This week, let us find out what Cardiff City lost during that journey and if the Bluebirds' fans have found success has been worth the price.

To set the context for this post, we need to look again at Cardiff City's run in the Football League Championship Division (i.e. Tier 2) during the 2000s.  Without question, these were several years of fine performances by the Bluebirds, capped by a playoff appearance in the 2009/10 season.  But behind the scenes debt was piling up due to a new stadium, legal issues with former owners, and recruitment of players.  Cardiff City was stronger than ever on the field, but the club was on financially-unsustainable ground.

During the 2010 off-season, new ownership came to Cardiff City in the form of a group of Malaysian investors, including current majority owner Vincent Tan.  The new ownership stabilized the club's financial situation, recruited new talent, and hired current club manager Malky Mackay.  The 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons saw Cardiff City take two more swings at Premier League, only to fall short in the playoffs both times.

In the off-season of 2012, Vincent Tan made the decision to improve the marketability of Cardiff City in Wales and in Asia by rebranding the club.  Here is how the "Bluebirds" kit (i.e. their uniform) changed between the 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons (images from Historical Football Kits):  

2011/12 Cardiff City Kit

2012/13 Cardiff City Kit

Try to ignore the fact that both kits of this Welsh club say "Malaysia" on the front and not "Cardiff City".  This is actually pretty normal for professional soccer; the advertising is as garish as NASCAR.  

Anyways, now let's see how Tan changed Cardiff City's badge (i.e. their logo) between the 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons (images from Wikipedia):

2008-2012 Cardiff City Badge

2012-Present Cardiff City Badge

Realizing how these changes would go over, Tan simultaneously poured even more money into the club.  He created a new training facility, expanded the stadium seating capacity, and set aside a huge budget for player recruitment following the 2012/13 season.  

There obviously weren't many admirers of the Cardiff City front office on the day of the rebrand announcement.  But in the 2012/13 season Cardiff City went on to have their greatest start in club history, their longest string of home victories, and their first ever championship title leading to direct promotion into the Premier League.  Whether they liked the rebranding or not, most fans were stoked at the prospects of their club's future.  Winning is a very strong deodorant.

We are now in the 2013 off-season.  Cardiff City fans are split into two camps, let's call them the Anti-Reds and Reluctant Reds. This paraphrased Twitter conversation (@bluebirdsgossip) summarizes the opinions of these parties nicely:

• Anti-Red:  I won't rest until Cardiff is blue again!  Oooh, I hope we get that new star player.
• Reluctant Red:  So you hate Vincent Tan, but you can't wait for big name signings using Tan's money?
• AR:  I hate Tan for ruining our history, but I respect the fact that he saved us from oblivion.
• RR:  How has he ruined our history, it will always be there.
• AR:  I can't explain this yet again to another sell-out.
• RR:  I'm not pro-red, nobody is, we just love Cardiff City and support them no matter what.  I'm not a sell-out.

For the record, I've never been to Cardiff, nor have I spoken to anyone that lived there during this rebranding.  So in the event that opinions expressed on Twitter may not be the most reliable source of historical reference data, I decided to do a sanity check.  

This week I asked some of my friends what their reactions would be if their favorite teams were in Cardiff City's situation.  Their responses are below:

• If my favorite team was that bad for that long, I'd probably be open to just about anything as long as the team wasn't being moved away.
• You need the tradition of what the team is and was even if it was a bad history.  The longer the frustration and bad years, the more you celebrate when you finally win it all.
• I wouldn't be happy about the change, but would probably get over it.  I would definitely feel some bitterness though if the team in its new form was all of a sudden good.
• I would rather my team close up shop and still be the team I grew up with than to have the name or even the colors change.
• I would hate the change at first, but if it was literally a worst-to-first situation I would probably warm up to it pretty quickly.
• I would accept any and all change if that meant a winner.  It's still my city's team no matter what the name.
• The long history of suffering through bad seasons is part of what makes up our team identity.  If ownership rebranded one of my teams with a new name, I couldn't accept it.  I could accept some crappy new uniform, but I couldn't handle a name change because that isn't the team that I rooted for and would never be.  Even if it meant winning, I couldn't get on board.
• I am fine with long-standing historic teams changing their colors and logos, as long as ownership isn't moving the team and is committed to making and keeping the team good.  However, I wouldn't be crazy about a name change.  Anyways, all teams rebrand to some degree at some point in their history.

In these responses, you can clearly hear the voices of both the Anti- and Reluctant Reds.  

My survey set is admittedly limited, but it does seem to support my suspicion that most fans would be a Reluctant-[insert color here] if push came to shoving their own team.  Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, fan podcasts, and pretty much every Cardiff City-centric website I've visited all tell the same story:  Yes this sucks, but holy crap we are excited to have finally made it to the Premier League!

I should probably mention at this point where the nickname "Bluebirds" came from in the first place, and why Vincent Tan chose the red dragon motif in his rebranding.  

For about one hundred years, the Cardiff City kit was blue and white.  Very early on in their existence, Cardiff City gained the nickname the "Bluebirds" in part because of this color scheme and (allegedly) in part because of a very popular local play called "The Bluebird" that was performed in Cardiff around the time of the team's founding.  It's hard to verify the second origin story, but it is very common for clubs in the Football Association to derive their nicknames from birds that resemble their jersey colors (e.g. Norwich City Canaries, Newcastle United Magpies, etc...).

The dragon motif on the other hand was a nod to another trend in soccer.  It is very common to derive the club's badge from elements of local culture and that city's coat of arms.  Cardiff's coat of arms contains a red dragon, as does the Welsh flag itself.  This was no accident on the part of Vincent Tan, but instead a calculated marketing move to brand Cardiff City as the team of Wales.

Interestingly enough, Cardiff City was not the first Welsh club to rebrand themselves with the dragon theme.  From 1973-1975, their rivals at Swansea City also went through a phase of rebranding with the dragon.  Images from Historical Football Kits

1972/73 Swansea City Kit

1973/74 and 1974/75 Swansea City Kit

1975/76 Swansea City Kit

If Swansea City can be rebranded as the dragons and eventually return to their original identity, then maybe Cardiff City will someday return to being unequivocally the blue Bluebirds.  The Anti-Reds certainly hope this will be the case and continue to seek signatures on a "Keep Cardiff Blue" petition.  Whether or not they will be successful remains to be seen.

So what is my opinion on the rebranding?  If it were the Philadelphia Eagles turning red and being renamed the Quakers, I'd be pissed.  But I'd rather cheer for the Super Bowl-capable Quakers than have the Eagles fold and there not be any NFL team in my home city.  

Do I think that Vincent Tan could have found a better way to recoup his multi-million dollar investment other than rebranding a 100 year old club to potentially sell more jerseys in Asia?  Yes.  Do I think Vincent Tan is stupid or a villain?  Absolutely not.  The club that marches out onto the field in August will be far superior, and will stay far superior, than they would have been without his leadership.  And at least he didn't pretend to be rebranding for purely altruistic reasons like the owner of the Washington Bullets did when he renamed his team the Washington Wizards (shout out to my brother-in-law who sent me this great Washington Post article on the subject).

Bottom line.  As long as Cardiff City stays up in the Premier League, the number of villagers with pitchforks and torches outside of Vincent Tan's office will dwindle each year.  Like it or not, Cardiff City fans are going to be seeing red for the foreseeable future.  But at least they'll be seeing red in the Premier League.  

Want to know what else Cardiff City will be seeing in the Premiere League?  Nineteen other clubs that are more experienced, better-funded, and just as hungry to survive.  Next week on Dragon and Bluebird, we're going to meet the competition that the Dragons...er...Bluebirds will face in the upcoming season.  

Thanks for reading and if you are so inclined, you can now follow Dragon and Bluebird on Twitter (@dragon_bluebird)!