LONDON: Katrien Meire endured a baptism of fire in English football, with disgruntled fans even travelling to Belgium to present her parents with a dossier on how terrible she was as chief executive of Charlton.
But the Belgian lawyer, one of a handful of women in the boardrooms of English clubs, refused to be cowed and is now plotting how to lift sleeping giants Sheffield Wednesday back into the Premier League.
The 34-year-old was chief executive at Charlton from the start of 2014 until the end of 2017, during which time the south London side were relegated to the third tier of English football.
She was blamed by supporters, who were angered by the manner in which she and owner Roland Duchatelet ran the club.
They took exception to being labelled “customers” and to the succession of foreign managers — one fan harangued Meire on a train over the appointment of Israeli manager Guy Luzon.
A statement on the Charlton website accused some fans of wanting the club to fail as the atmosphere turned toxic.
Meire, who had initially approached Duchatelet out of the blue, offering him advice on broadcasting rights, understands that fans are emotionally involved but says the Charlton supporters went too far.
“It is not nice to read in the papers you are a horrible person, that you are horrible at your job, attacking my personality, attacking me as a whole,” she told AFP.
“However, they did not succeed in intimidating me, so they then tried the same tactics on people close to me.”
This meant not only going to the houses of other Charlton staff but even closer to home.
“They went to the front door of my parents’ house in Belgium, rang the doorbell and gave them a folder detailing how bad I am at the job and then hung posters in the village saying the same thing.
“At first they did not tell me about the incident. I was Skyping and I saw my mum crying. She would not tell me why but after a while, they told me what happened.”
Meire says despite such sinister intrusions, her parents are broadly supportive of her as they know she loves what she does and she refused to be bullied out of the job.
