Editorial Gabi Glăvan – Dinamo has changed its logo

For supporters

From the supporter's perspective, any such change is instinctively seen as an attack on identity, fueled by fear of the future and deep nostalgia.

Emotional attachment is the foundation of the relationship between fan and team, and the logo represents the shortest bridge. You cannot ask a man who lives by the colors of the club to be objective or rational, because he is looking for only one thing: respect.

The problem arises, however, when this respect is translated exclusively through immediate results. The supporter feels respected when the team wins and ignored when they lose, sometimes ignoring the fact that the club needs the same form of respect from them.

In Dinamo's case, the fans have shown a rare loyalty, keeping the club alive through direct financial involvement. Genuine respect for an organization should also be manifested through constant support, and the organization for supporters through a strategic positioning that builds and maintains a high-performance and modern status.

If we talk about status, the current figures in the Super League, where the big clubs sell only 2-3 thousand season tickets for the price of a single ticket to a top European match, show that the huge pressure we put on the mandatory result on Saturday does not always have a solid economic foundation in the local reality.

In this sense, we can take examples from countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic.

Club

On the other side, at the club level, the situation is often misunderstood by the masses. A football club is essentially an organization that needs a stable financial balance to perform in the long term.

In Romanian football, strategic plans often fade in front of a goal scored from a corner in the 93rd minute, and the development vision is postponed until the team manages to tie two or three victories. However, the supporter needs guarantees related to communication, transparency and meritocracy, elements that build a healthy organizational culture.

The correct form is one of administrative and sports organization based on a mission, a reason for existence. A culture is formed around this mission, and that culture has some values. The interesting part is that that culture is formed whether you want it or not, and the values ​​are either built or appropriated from the social environment present in the life of the club.

The problem is that there is such a diversity of backgrounds in a club (players, officials, supporters) that without well-defined values, success ends up depending only on the dominant characters of the moment and less on a real growth plan.

In this context, a logo is not only an image for fans, but also a vital tool for strategic partners. The business world today thinks differently than it did 30 years ago, and to attract modern sponsors, a club needs a new story for them to believe. Marketing can no longer be just a hope to pay a month's wages, it must be a valuable image association to take on as one's own.

Education and trend

Maybe I'm talking too much about it, but it's the major problem we face that we don't want to understand. It's not about school, it's not about intelligence, it's just about empathy and understanding a context.

The current Dinamo context is one that has also developed on some unusual principles for Romanian football: active partnership with the supporters, mentoring and selection based on the education of the people in the departments, volunteering, coach hired after an interviewa process of recruiting players in stages, but perhaps most distinguished by the language adopted.

Dinamo's new logo tends to express in the image what the club has expressed through communication, namely that it does not want to make noise and, equally, to align itself with certain image trends related to simplicity. Although “trend” seems to be a word that is not specific to football, in reality Western football shows us both the sporting trend (that of playing ultra-offensive and adopting 1 on 1 duels all over the field), but also the administrative trend of looking as simple as possible, equally recognizable.

Empathy and partnerships

Empathy needs understanding. Personally, I think that the understanding we need to have is related to the need to develop the environment and align to a series of standards, at least the image. It's not about whether we like how it looks, but what it expresses.

A brand like Dinamo is not only influential in the country, but also in the entire eastern, south-eastern and central Europe, and our need to remain nostalgic can be moved towards our need to progress.

Dinamo, like any other club, needs support to move to a higher level, and I'm not talking about money per se, but about partnerships that include a common story, that creates an associable image.

All the details in the new logo, even explained, are meant to tell that story. If until some time ago sponsors were only looking for exposure, today they are looking for lasting relationships. The famous “New Dinamo” may have a more correct connotation in the structure of partnerships and trust, while sports culture must be based on organizational principles that originate in education and mentoring, things that were also implemented and adopted in the years when Dinamo had the highest performances at the European level.

Changes are difficult, but football has changed, even if we don't feel it locally. It is no longer about opinions, but about measurements, market studies, trends, image, presence and above all profit and status.

I'm nostalgic too, I have opinions too, but I can't help but notice what movements are taking place at the social and cultural level. It's not about evolution or beauty, it's about constant adaptation. Normality is just a social trend.