Any football team that wants to change their crest must be careful.
Consider the following: Everton’s attempt to do so in 2013, which saw close to 24,000 sign a petition demanding the club revert to their previous badge, or Cardiff City’s rebrand at the start of that same season, red shirts and all, replacing the club’s bluebird with a Welsh dragon.
Perhaps the most famous was Leeds United’s short-lived proposal of A badge showing the Leeds Salute almost five years ago — a design so garish that it left fans almost unanimously questioning how many presumably pretty intelligent people could possibly sign off something that so easily lends itself to parody.
It doesn’t take long to look back in history to find a few cautionary tales, not to mention the ire. For those who are embarrassed by their outdated tattoos. These cases are not about an aversion to change itself but the idea that the views of supporters — regardless of how many of them have supposedly been consulted in some form along the way — get ignored entirely, and a club’s history discarded with them.
Teams who want to reboot will need to look for the best way.
Regardless of your views on League Two side Bradford City’s redesigned crest, unveiled today, the process to get to this point was, at least, robust enough.
