Daily Mail

PASSION PLAY BEGINS AT HOME

-

NOW SO much Premier League revenue is generated abroad, one can understand why chief executive Richard Scudamore wishes to keep the foreign market sweet. His assertion, however, that fans in places like Hong Kong invest as much, physically and intellectu­ally, as domestic fans is simply wrong.

‘The bit that always strikes a chord is how knowledgea­ble and passionate they are,’ Scudamore said. ‘I would put a lot of people here in Hong Kong up against anyone back home, in terms of knowledge of the club. The fact they haven’t walked down through terraced houses, smelt the hot dogs and onions and dodged the police horse crap on the pavement, that’s not to say there isn’t an appreciati­on, a knowledge, a passion . . . ’

. . . an off switch. That can be pushed the minute the final whistle blows, at which point they’re in their own little bed, in their own little home, nice and warm and tucked up and ready to surf the net and get all that lovely knowledge at a time when the real fans are being herded freezing on to a coach for a five-hour return journey.

The minute football thinks it can get by without those guys, the ones with horse crap on their shoes and onions up their nostrils, queuing in the rain, it is dead. Fans are not fools. Largely, they understand why kick-off times get moved. They understand the role television plays in the modern game. They know what broadcaste­rs’ money has done for their club and they put up with inconvenie­nces for that reason.

Yet if those who run football think the personal investment of domestic supporters is worth no more or even less than that of remote fans whose only sacrifice is a subscripti­on and an early-morning call, there will be a revolution. And football will deserve every empty seat it gets.

Try selling the Premier League in Hong Kong then. English football comes as a package. And part of that package is the atmosphere of English football grounds, the feeling of belonging to a noisy army of supporters that foreign fans enjoy. Their passion comes from us. It is a reflected image. And if we lose it, they will too.

So, yes, when in Hong Kong it pays to be polite to the locals. But never forget whose league it is, or that people here can change channels, too.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom