Plastic fans? There’s no such thing. If it wasn’t for them there wouldn’t be a Premier League
IT hasn’t been a particularly great week for football’s traditional paying customers. A VAR delay of almost six minutes at West Ham, price hikes at Manchester City, OAP concessions scrapped at Tottenham. At Chelsea, meanwhile, relations between the club and its fanbase continue to deteriorate.
It’s a grim picture, for sure, and it’s one painted on a landscape already pockmarked with ongoing and ingrained disregard for match-going football fans. Prices, kick-off times, public transport challenges. The direction of travel has been set for some time and shows no sign of turning round. It’s quite shameful.
However, a lone voice when seeking context has belonged to Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou and it’s worth listening to.
Postecoglou was born in Greece and has spent most of his life living in Australia. As such, the 58-year-old knows how it feels to follow football from a relative backwater. He knows what it is to invest fully in something from a distance. He knows it can be done.
And now he has spoken up on the matter of overseas fans attending Premier League football matches.
Some have suggested they are taking the place of supporters more local to our football clubs. They aren’t really but to some they are not welcome nevertheless. They call them ‘plastics’ and scoff when TV cameras at games show rows of them holding up mobile phones like tourists.
These people are not proper supporters, we are told. They are a problem. They are taking our game away from its roots and from communities and from the people it is traditionally supposed to serve.
But that’s actually nonsense and Postecoglou (right) has been confident enough to call it.
‘I want Tottenham supporters in the stand, I don’t just want anybody,’ he said.
‘But I am probably “plastic” and “touristy” because I was coming from the other side of the world really passionate about football and if I could get access to see a Premier League game that was the world to me.
‘This football club has supporters all over the world and I think we should always be able to accommodate them. You don’t know how passionate they are about their football club. Maybe they only started supporting it in the last two years. It doesn’t diminish who they are.’
This whole debate points to a slight conflict in terms of English football’s identity and in particular that of the Premier League.
We talk about the English game but in reality the Premier League has become an elite football competition that just happens to be played in England.
Foreign owners, foreign coaches and foreign players make it what it is. Why then should we only care about the supporters who happen to live down the road? The make-up of the English game has changed for ever and the truth is that without the enthusiasm and deep pockets of those who follow it around the world then it simply would not exist in its current form. For example, it’s TV that makes players rich in 2024. It’s not gate receipts or the sale of match programmes or hot pies handed over at a wooden kiosk. All of that stuff helps but it’s not that which drives the game forwards. No, it’s money paid for broadcasting privileges and a look at the numbers tells us that the billions of pounds paid to Premier League clubs by overseas rightsholders currently exceeds the amount by domestic outlets for the very first time. Decisions taken by clubs such as Tottenham over concessions are lamentable. Supporters are right to push back. Manchester City, the champions, are being placed under pressure by fan groups who point out that raising prices during a cost-of-living crisis that continues to hit families in some of their traditional sky-blue heartlands feels wrong.
Fans in stadiums remain at the core of what live football is about. But that experience remains out of economic reach for many. For some, the closest they will ever get to watching their team is through their Sky subscription or, if they are in America or Australia, on NBC or Optus Sports. Why should this make them less important to a football club than someone who grew up within sight of the floodlights?
AS Postecoglou points out, it’s discriminatory, presumptuous and patronising. It’s an outdated view. Supporters from China and South Africa are not the reason OAPs from Tottenham are not getting into the stadium on match day. That one is on chairman Daniel Levy. They are two separate issues.
The ‘plastics’, ‘tourists’ and those watching from their armchairs round the world are not just worthy, they are fundamental. They are the ones paying James Maddison’s wages.