10 August 2012

VICENTE'S OTHER ROLE

An Argus headline caught my eye today. New Role For Vicente it read, obviously referring to some tactical tinkering in the middle to support our playmaker.

On the theme of 'role' though, I got thinking about Vicente's role for the club off the field. By this, I don't mean visiting local schools, doing signings, etc. To an extent I'll forgive his miserly complex as a) his English isn't great, b) he's quite shy and c) apparently he's a bit of a nutter.

I'm talking about Vicente as our most famous player. Our icon. The player that the papers want to print a picture of on a Sunday.

As top dog at the football club, I wonder why the club have not brought any Vicente specific merchandise out. And it's not just El Punal, what about Gus or other players with real status amongst fans, like Calderon, El-Abd or new heart-throb Bruno.

With regards to Bruno, the club have infact promoted the player's own merchandise more than the player has promoted the clubs'!

The Albion's evidently successful BOGOF deal on shirts over the summer has been great, mainly because it gets kids wearing the stripes in Brighton and Hove again (almost unheard of when the Co-editor and I were growing up in the mid-90s). We've no doubt that the most popular name to have on the back of the shirt was a certain SeƱor Rodriguez, but that's about it as far as it goes with club/player merchandise.

It made me wonder, do Albion refuse to sign image rights on players and are therefore not allowed to use the name to sell clobber with players names and faces on? On the other hand, do the club just choose not to? The latter surely too naive a move for our growing team of staff at Falmer to miss.

New CEO Paul Barber is here to make money for the Albion, amongst other things, we hope he is looking into the cash-cow that is Vicente.

Hands up who wants a Vicente t-shirt? Everybody wants a Vicente t-shirt.

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