What Is... Club DNA and does appointing legends work?

Colin Millar (0:01)

The Athletic FC.

Emma Paton (0:07)

Hello and welcome to The Athletic FC Podcast. With me, Emma Paton. Well, we are switching it up this week. This is What Is. We're asking ourselves the question, what is club DNA? And does appointing club legends actually work?

Well, with me in the studio today, one of our regulars, football reporter for The Athletic, Tim Spiers. Hello.

Tim Spiers (0:31)

Hello.

Colin Millar (0:32)

You're right.

Tim Spiers (0:32)

Yes, it's going to be good.

Emma Paton (0:33)

It's going to be good, isn't it? And senior editor Colin Millar, thanks for joining us.

Colin Millar (0:37)

It's a pleasure to be here. What a great topic to be in for as well. I know.

Emma Paton (0:40)

You joined at the right time.

Colin Millar (0:41)

Very much so.

Emma Paton (0:42)

I was going to say this is your What If debut, but what if, debut of both basically. How are we going to cram in a mention of Wolves this week?

Colin Millar (0:49)

It's easy. It really is this week.

Tim Spiers (0:51)

Yeah, I'll think more on Spiers' duties today because the three Spiers related reports we've had in the last few weeks have all abandoned the podcast.

Colin Millar (0:57)

They've been beaten down, haven't they?

Emma Paton (0:58)

Yeah, they've had enough right now, yeah. We're not coming back.

Right, here are the three major talking points we're going to be focusing on this week. What is club DNA and does anyone actually have it? Does hiring legends work? And don't worry, what if superfans will still do an alternative timeline for you? We're going to be asking, what would the top six look like if they could only have a club legend at the helm? Right, let's start today's show with a definition. This is from Google, all right? So DNA, this is the definition of DNA. A molecule that carries the genetic instructions for development, functioning and growth.

Hmm, so with that being said, what does club DNA look like, Tim?

Tim Spiers (1:46)

Good question. I'm not sure it's got much to do with the sort of dictionary definition. I don't think it does, does it? I think like every football club is different in some way. Maybe a lot of them will share similar traits, but in terms of the journey, the successes, the failures, the sort of tragedies and how they sort of, how they come out of that and what values and attributes sort of emanate from those experiences, I guess, over the years. I think there are a lot of clubs overseas that might sort of associate playing style more with DNA. I think DNA can be something as simple as like hard work or humility. We saw Michael Carrick sort of reference this last week when he went on his pre-match monologue of what Man United football club is. He said the words football club 14 times in those six minutes. I did count that up. It's very, very important that that's part of Manchester United's DNA, they may say that football club's DNA. But yeah, I guess it can be related to class or politics. Again, this is probably more common overseas than in England, I would say. It might be a particular style of football like tiki-taka or possession-based football at Barcelona or total football at Ajax. There might be sort of a focus on academy players being part of your DNA. I'd say Man United will be strongly linked to that. Nottingham Forest as well, very proud of their sort of academy players and their history. It might be winning at all costs, which obviously can only be attributed to a few clubs. I would say Juventus will be one where just winning is everything and they're defined by winning. Real Madrid, probably another example, but then they're a club that's got to win with sort of glamour and style.

DNA could also refer to religion. Celtic being a very sort of well-known example.

DNA could also come from something like a tragedy, like the Hillsborough disaster, which I think has defined Liverpool's modern DNA in terms of the traits that fans and players and managers really hold dear like togetherness and justice, I guess, and sort of solidarity and fairness.

It can be a lot of different things, I think.

Emma Paton (3:48)

I feel like you set that up perfectly. Well, thanks.

Colin Millar (3:50)

Yeah.

Emma Paton (3:51)

How do you see it?

Colin Millar (3:52)

Well, it's really interesting because obviously DNA is something in scientific terms that people get from birth and from your parents and your sort of heritage. Football identity is a big part of that. But as Tim eludes to there, it does evolve over time as well.