Not to get too semantic, but what you’re saying is that 99+% of all teams are not clubs but call themselves a club, so contextually it does make sense for the Fire to use the word. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ha. In a very sad way it does; local institutions just becoming faceless corporations. The new name just reeks of phoniness or pretending to be something you’re not to me. Here’s a good local analogy. Calling yourself “a football club” when you’re a franchise is like saying you’re from Chicago when you grew up in Naperville.
or, in other words, language changes and words don't mean the same thing today they mean 100 years ago. Quelle surprise.
It’s not that “football club” means something else today; it’s that it is completely meaningless as a word now / is used as a “cool branding” for new teams coming out of thin air that want credibility (NYCFC, LAFC, etc.). There was already a term for what you are describing as a “football club,” it’s called a soccer team which is what I have always called the Chicago Fire and still what describes them best.
It still means something. The definition that bunge supplied was directly on point. It just doesn't mean what you want it to mean anymore (if it ever actually did). Loyal language descriptivist checking in.
Being a season ticket holder and going to the games, I felt part of a "club" in 1998-2003 or so, maybe a bit later, whether it was dues paying "club" created by an organic assemblage of workers at a factory, or a region within a city, or distinct ethnic group within a city/other geographic area or a prefab, corporate, single-entity "franchise." I felt part of a club. -Part was the comraderies among the fans (tailgates that were just- fans cooking and drinking in the parking lots, the tiny fan groups that sprung up around the area to meet and watch the games). -Part was the treatment of fans by the team and management (especially, but not exclusively, Peter Wilt. The season ticket reps were part of that, as well.) but also the "events" like the meet and greets, where we were able to actually meet and greet the team. -Part was the success, the feeling that the team could (no should) win it all each year, or, at least, win something. Those feelings are long, long, long gone. They are not, ever, coming back to the Chicago Fire, Chicago Fire SC, Chicago Fire FC or whatever the name becomes. The landscape has changed. The "culture" is gone. No rebrand, no change in the team colors, no new "logo" or "crest" or whathaveyou, will bring that back. Of course, we are all older, as well, and that has changed things quite a bit. The only thing that can right this ship at this point, and this has been the case for several years, is success. It is going to take a massive investment in talent, and some really good PR, to bring the fans back, the passion back.
Not only did it mean what I said it meant, but it’s where the term came from. Please prove me wrong if you have evidence to the contrary that football clubs started as social clubs of people from the same location who came together to form a team to compete against one another. I’ll concede that many that bear the moniker today long ago stopped being football clubs, sold themselves to the highest bidder, and didn’t change their name because it was their identity. By this new definition you’re suggesting every college soccer team in the US is a football club. Their playing is subsidized by someone besides themselves and they play in front of fans. Hell every youth soccer team is a football club then since parents pay to organize the tournaments / watch the games. Basically any soccer team is a football club now, making the term... meaningless and totally interchangeable.
Sure what's wrong with saying there are amateur and youth clubs? Still consistent with the definition and therefore not "meaningless." I think instead of "meaningless" you really mean "valueless" in that you held this preconceived sanctity to the concept of a club, but which even you admit is basically antiquated in the modern world. In fact, I would go as far to say that if 99% of the world uses the word in a different fashion then the definition has substantively changed and those who use an outdated definition are in the wrong.
I demand we continue the pedantic nature of this debate! (I’m bored and this is the only real Fire related news until April). I agree it’s an antiquated (but romantic) notion. I also agree that any value of being a “football club” is derived from being related to that antiquated notion. If it is truly valueless today though (meaning nobody associates “football club” with “being authentic” anymore), why has the Fire FO added it to the team’s name? Why are all the new MLS teams adding this valueless term to their name? Why not just be the Austin Aztec instead of Austin FC? The reason is because the moniker “football club” must still have value because enough people associate it with storied European “football clubs” and not Timmy’s AYSO team.
I didn't mean intrinsically valueless, I meant valueless to you specifically since it no longer carries the same reverence.
you literally just said "It’s not that “football club” means something else today; it's that the word "football club" no longer means what it meant before and now it doesn't mean what I think it should mean" There was already a word for lots of things that are described by new words today. You need to get over the idea that you can freeze or impose meaning on language and just admit that "football club," "soccer club," and "soccer team" are synonyms today. It really doesn't matter what they meant a century ago any more than it matters what word like cute or nice meant 500 years ago.
but they don't associate it with the rich history of factory towns distracting their indentured servants from the misery of working 70 hour weeks for sub-subsistence wages in filthy, dangerous conditions by having a group of (occasionally) local lads run around a muddy pitch in the pretended name of civic pride. They associate it with some text they vaguely recall seeing on the screen under a Ronaldo or Messi highlight.
They have become so, but in doing so, the meaning has eroded to the point that club doesn’t mean anything more than team as you admit. It went from being something very specific to becoming a totally generic term (generic=meaningless in my mind since it applies to everything rather than to a specific thing) My point was being a club meant something once, now it’s a cheap branding sticker applied to every new team to seem cool when all being a “club member” gets you now is to be on an email distribution list and get sent some junk in the mail occasionally. It’s transparent pandering to europhiles. Do we agree on that point at least? I think we’re agreed on it being dumb pandering?
Gotta love these off season threads. When we can’t argue about which of our players/coaches/opponents sucks the most, we really get into some fun territory.
Next subject: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin at the same time? Honestly, I couldn't care less about the current conversation. However, I'm also all for it as what else are you gonna talk about during the opening dregs of the preseason?