The Archive

Adam Bate explores the unwanted attention that success in Europe’s lesser leagues has brought from the big fish in England and Spain

“Before we declare that Wolverhampton are invincible, let them go to Moscow and Budapest. And there are other internationally renowned clubs: AC Milan and Real Madrid to name but two. A club world championship, or at least a European one – larger, more meaningful and more prestigious than the Mitropa Cup and more original than a competition for national teams – should be launched.”

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Cameron Carter Begins our new column by scrutinising the way we decide which team to follow

Morality is nomadic, we know this from history. The Ancient Greeks believed it was perfectly acceptable for a man to love a boy – and I mean any boy – whereas trousering stray apples was punishable by death. In the West it was only in the last decade that fidgeting was legalised in infant schools. Yet there remain some last taboos that prevail across most cultures: murder, incest and changing the football team you support.

Most of us have selected our team for life by the age of five – an age when we can spend the best part of an hour smacking a mud hill with the back of a spade while conspicuously wearing safety pants. Would we choose our career, our political affiliation, our life partner at this age? The answer must be a resounding no – otherwise there would be a surfeit in society of apolitical train drivers holed up with a jingly panda. So surely there should come a point later in our lives when we might legitimately, and without censure, make a more informed choice about which club we would like to follow and, as a consequence, switch allegiance.

Just as we are permitted to vote for one of three Conservative parties upon turning 18, so we should have the opportunity to fix upon our football team at that age. I chose to support Arsenal when I was five, probably because they won the Double that year but also because I liked the kit and Charlie George looked like every single one of my older brother’s friends.

Had I waited until my 18th birthday, I may have opted for Southampton, as the nearest team to my hometown and one I could more easily mention – along with names like Reuben Agboola and Ivan Golac – in a facetious tone, to comply with the prevailing college-boy snobbery towards the game. It would actually be quite reasonable for a psychometric test to be applied in early adulthood to match individuals to the most fitting club.Home-loving, spirited but ultimately unambitious? Try Norwich City. Confident and charismatic in public but afraid of the inner silence when alone? Take Chelsea. New to football? Sign up to the Manchester City Project.

For that matter, why not free ourselves of these self-administered chains entirely and change teams whenever we choose – or not support an individual team at all? If the owners of clubs wish to commercialise the game to make maximum profits, then perhaps fans should act more like conventional consumers and treat the game as a product and the teams as brands. Should we cling to a half-remembered childhood vow when most players manifestly look elsewhere towards the end of every season, and our club tacks and lists on the commercial whims of a foreign gentleman who made his money in the post-communism cupcakes boom?

Shouldn’t we, as consumers, look around for a cheaper or more accessible team that brand loyalty had previously prevented us from considering? Why not try another team on a trial basis, at trial size (say, two or three games) and if they give us a better experience than our previous club, or the same experiences at a lesser cost and inconvenience, we might legitimately stay with the new brand.
But we are not ready for this yet. Researching this topic, I asked a handful of people if they would ever consider changing team. The query resulted in four swift one-word rebuttals, with only one person bothering to supply a rationale, peppered with abuse words, to their answer. Loyalty is not necessarily a force for good. Many more atrocities are committed through loyalty to a flag or charismatic leader than by dangerous loners acting on their own free will. Loyalty also breeds complacency in its subject. Look what happened to Tonight-period David Bowie and to West Ham every other season.

The philosopher Josiah Royce argued that to lead a morally significant life, one’s actions must express a self-consciously asserted will. It is not good enough to simply copy the conventional moral behaviour. This is the time to assert that self-will and wield our little wooden sword of consumer choice. The herd mentality can be consigned to the past – we should by now be heading towards an enlightened society of limitless possibilities, as acted out by the Deal Or No Deal participants in their hotel and television studio demi-monde.

It is time to be moving away from the one man-one club mentality of those ghostly pre-Premier League days. As we are paying 21st century prices and player wages, we must counter with a vigorous new philosophy and go where the spirit and the marketplace take us. Or veer towards the football that is most aesthetically pleasing to us at any given time. Love of tradition has painted the British fan into a corner: we allow ourselves to admire foreign teams, we merely support our own.

From WSC 295 September 2011

There are problems with the Brandywell but, as Aidan Bonner explains, Derry City’s frustrating search for a new stadium continues

Derry City are a club that is neither here nor there. Located in Northern Ireland but competing in the Republic, they have often found themselves caught between two worlds. Based in the Irish FA’s jurisdiction, the club were forced to leave the Irish League as the political situation and sectarian tensions worsened around them. After kicking around junior leagues for 13 years, Derry eventually re-emerged in the Republic of Ireland’s national league in 1985. This bout of border-hopping can still cause the club problems from time to time.

Drowned by a saga of double contracts and financial mismanagement in 2009, Derry City returned as a new, debt-free entity last season. Although the new DCFC were initially left to explore the delights of the lower of Ireland’s two senior leagues (dubbed the “Discover Ireland” division by fans) their budget still outstripped many of their rivals and they were promoted at the first time of asking. Back in the Premier Division, things are going swimmingly. But many fans have long viewed the club’s Brandywell home as being in a location that discourages potential new supporters.

Situated in the heart of what was once the predominantly nationalist “Free Derry” district – a no-go area for the RUC at the time – the ground remains unpoliced, with the club relying on the services of a dedicated band of stewards. This arrangement has been largely successful but can still prove problematic on occasion, as potential flash-point fixtures with the big Dublin clubs have recently shown.

Health and Safety officials reduced the Brandywell’s capacity by 700 this year. With the ground’s slightly dilapidated state, the promise of one new 2,500-seat stand does little to satisfy supporters, many of whom would prefer a more permanent move to either the vacant Templemore or Fort George sites in the city. The Fort George site is in the hands of Ilex, the company set up to take charge of the regeneration of the city, who have yet to engage DCFC.

Proposals and projects are nothing new to City supporters. In mid-2006, the club unveiled plans for a new £15 million complex to be built on the site at the Brandywell, complete with 6,000-seat ground, synthetic 3G pitches and retail development. This bid fell apart and the eventual demise and rebirth of Derry City brought them back to square one – a “new” club with an old ground, hoping to be gifted what they cannot afford to build.

But who is going to hand them anything? The Maze Stadium project was an ambitious plan to build an all-encompassing home for Northern Irish sport which collapsed. Instead, the money set aside for this plan has been dispersed to football, rugby and GAA clubs around the country. The cost for the proposed new stand at Derry is to be drawn from this funding, but that alone would be a poor return.
Derry City officials have watched as new stadium projects for clubs such as Crusaders began at great pace. In fact, across the town work is nearing completion on major improvements to the home ground of Institute, Derry’s Drumahoe-based Irish League neighbours. Meanwhile, just over the border in Donegal, a new 6,800-seat home for Finn Harps has been given the green light. For Derry supporters, seeing the door to 21st century facilities opened to a host of “smaller” clubs has raised serious questions.

The belief that Derry City playing across the border could harm their chances of receiving funding from the Northern Irish executive grew to the extent that in 2008 local MLA Raymond McCartney challenged Gregory Campbell, the minister for culture, arts and leisure, to acknowledge publicly that the club’s cross-border status would not be an issue. Recently, however, the lack of progress has mostly been blamed on the apathy of local politicians and the failure of club officials to apply any pressure.

For the time being, as the city council, rather than the club, own the ground, they must apply for funding and also have the final say on any proposed improvements. The suggested changes are unlikely to attract new supporters or to appease those already there. On the positive side, all signs indicate that money may be available for the right project, with the right pitch. The drawback is that this may be a brief opportunity for clubs seeking funding, and that local officials seem content to sit on their hands and let it drift by.

From WSC 294 August 2011

Football journalists were made to eat their words when a Lionel Messi-inspired Barcelona produced a stunning performance to beat Manchester United in the Champions League final

Opinions can change quickly in football. Only a few months ago sections of the press were berating the BBC for having the temerity to expose corruption at the top of FIFA. The broadcasting of a Panorama episode that outlined why FIFA need to reform was deemed “disgraceful”, “ridiculously unpatriotic” and “laughable” in the Sun. This month Sepp Blatter was placed beside Colonel Gaddafi on the paper’s front cover above the headline Despot the difference.

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Simon Tyers reveals the farcical pre-match build-up of the 2009 FA Cup final

Now that every ultimately meaningless mid-table game shown live on Sky gets at least three quarters of an hour of build-up, it’s odd to feel nostalgic about old FA Cup final broadcasting marathons. Yet if it hadn’t happened already, this was the year when the Cup final became self-referential.

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