Inside Dagenham and Redbridge's plans to emulate Wrexham and Manchester City
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Their plan looks like a cross between Manchester City and Wrexham. But Dagenham and Redbridge’s US-based multi-club ownership group say the quest to climb up the pyramid will be done with a whole lot of East End grit. The Daggers visit Millwall tonight looking to knock out another League team after beating Wimbledon in the second round and Crewe in their opening tie.
And chairman Daniel Hall, from Kent but now based in Los Angeles, has made it clear the medium-term goal is to reach League One – just like Wrexham. Hall’s Club Underdog are just the latest group to buy several teams with ambitions to develop a network that shares mutual benefits.
At a base level it seems rather familiar, another organisation influenced by the City Football Group. Except, Hall emphasises, their “unique selling point” is in the group’s title. “The name describes what we do,” he says. THE FA CUP GIANT KILLERS: Get your special edition magazine celebrating some of the game's greatest-ever upsets.
In other words they are interested in distressed and under-performing teams at a low ebb but with huge upside. “We’re doing our own thing,” Hall continues. “Rob and Ryan have done a fantastic job at Wrexham and they are similar to Dagenham after a decade in non-League.
“But if you look at our Italian team, Campobasso, their trajectory matches Wrexham’s. They’ve gone from the fifth tier to Serie C. So we've our own history of taking under-privileged teams and moving them up.”. Going forward, he says of a collective that also includes clubs in New York and Switzerland, “we’ll look to integrate the clubs from a financial point of view and a player pathway.”.
