Football – facing fans’ disgust at this World Cup – should beware a plummeting status in the face of a critical mass of frustrationLook at a photograph of the crowd at the 1923 FA Cup final and pretty much everybody is wearing a hat. Fast-forward a quarter of a century and a rough estimate would be that a little under half the crowd at the 1948 final are similarly clad. Go forward another 25 years to 1973 and although Bob Stokoe, the Sunderland manager, topped off his tracksuit-and-mac look with a trilby, almost nobody in the stands at Wembley has their head covered.In the unlikely event that anybody at the first Wembley Cup final gave the matter any thought, it...
Every match should be a challenge, teams rewarded for success, but not so that superclubs’ domination becomes permanentIt’s been another fine week for the people’s game. The Super League Three – two of whom will probably be eliminated from the Champions League at the group stage despite the enormous advantages they enjoy both financially and via the coefficient system – continue to agitate for a competition that would make them even more money.Fans chant disgracefully about tragedy and find their club not merely not condemning them, but blaming the manager of the other side for having made an entirely reasonable observation about the financial advantages enjoyed by state-run clubs. That manager, on the very weekend local referees had gone on...
As this week’s semi-finals lineup shows, the Champions League is no longer a fair competition but in the grip of a few franchisesThe two best teams in Europe, the most successful club in the history of the competition, a gritty outsider – in some ways the lineup for this week’s Champions League semi-finals is perfect. Each offers in addition an intriguing subplot: Pep Guardiola fighting the curse of overthought, Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool chasing an implausible quadruple, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema raging against the dying of the light, the frankly hilarious prospect of Unai Emery returning to Paris for the final and making a point to Paris Saint-Germain, a club that never took him seriously (perhaps he could have...
European Super League protests showed us that when fans and players are on the same page, no one in the game can stop themRemarkably, the website is still live. Eight months after the European Super League disintegrated in an embarrassing fireball, you might think its founders would be minded to erase all trace of their hubris and humiliation. But perhaps that would be to credit them with too much competence. And so there it remains to this day: “The Super League is a new European competition between 20 top clubs comprised of 15 founders and five annual qualifiers.” Well, good luck with that.There is, of course, an alternative theory. After all, the Super League is still not quite dead in...
Transfer culture is a basic part of fandom and sustaining concerted opposition to owners is almost impossible Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood upon our side, we who were strong in love. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be on Fulham Road, wreathed in canisters of blue smoke, holding a home-made banner reading FANS NOT CUSTOMERS, was very heaven.Yes: who can forget the famous European Super League protests of April 2021? They were a vibe, weren’t they? Peace and love and Florentino Pérez memes. Prince William ferrying cups of tea and bottled water out to the picket line. Gary Neville, hair wreathed in daisy chains, serenading...