Beautiful game is buried by money

Football is about more than money, however much lucre has come to shape the beautiful game. Over this summer, English top-tier clubs spent a total of £1.41 billion. Yet this amount and the teams that spend it are symptoms of an unsentimental business model that is indifferent to tradition, place and practice. It is eroding the sense that many football clubs are a central and vital part of people’s identity.

That is why the end of Bury Football Club after 134 years is important. The club disappeared last week after prospective buyers said that there were ‘‘systemic failings’’ that could not be overcome. Bury’s mayor, David Jones, said the club’s demise would be the last nail in the town’s coffin.

Today, football typifies British inequality. At

Tottenham Hostpur’s new stadium, for instance, the elite ‘‘H Club’’ pay an estimated £30,000 a season for their seats, and are offered carefully sourced half-time cheeses.

Bury, by contrast, is not a club of big cheeses. Bury was formed from teams of football-loving Victorian churchgoers. It was brought low by Mammon: ending life as an asset-stripped shell, sunk by debt and mortgaged to a company based in Malta via the British Virgin Islands.

It’s too soon to say if Bury FC’S fanbase can bring the club back from the dead. For now, an unfashionable club in a small English town has been destroyed by speculative capital while the football authorities paid insufficient attention. Bury deserved better.