Why sport’s age of rage is fuelled by toxic short-termism

The rush to condemn on social media has fed into some fans’ sense of entitlement to cause the disturbing scenes witnessed outside the house of Ed Woodward this week

It says much about our mutinous times that Ed Woodward’s most significant signing at Manchester United this week was not an attacking midfielder, but a bodyguard. After a mob of alleged fans decided that the most eloquent rebuke to his stewardship would be to hurl flares into his Cheshire garden and daub graffiti on the gate to his home, United’s executive vice-chairman, who has two young daughters, had little choice but to reinforce his security. This, though, is only the immediate consequence. The more troubling question is why sport has lurched so sharply into the age of rage.

You see it everywhere: in the thuggery of the “Manchester Education Committee”, committing criminal damage at Woodward’s property, and in the belligerence last month towards Robbie Lyle, founder of Arsenal Fan TV, who had to be led from Goodison Park under police escort, simply because fellow supporters felt he was not enthused enough by Mikel Arteta’s arrival. Given that the very concept of fan TV was to give people an uncensored forum in which to vent their indignation, the insurrection against Lyle was the type of meta-narrative only football could conjure.

In the same way that premillennial angst was triggered by the mere ticking of the clock, these bouts of fury in football have a habit of peaking in January. The difficult mid-season transfer market is the perfect recipe for artificially-engendered panic. It renders some United fans incapable of celebrating a 6-0 FA Cup win, such is their agitation about signing Bruno Fernandes. It means Tottenham diehards cannot draw consolation from having the finest stadium in the league, or the most box-office manager in the game. All that matters is whether they can entice Willian Jose from Real Sociedad.

It is a type of lunacy, borne of the false urgency of rolling news. Never mind the countdown ticker to Brexit at 11pm tonight. The real question is whether, by the same zero hour, Arsenal will have paid Shakhtar Donetsk £30million for Mykola Matviyenko. “Spend some f------ money” was the chant assailing Arsene Wenger in his final years, and the toxic spirit of that era has proved contagious. The health of a club can now only be validated once Sky Sports News confirms that it has paid vastly over the odds for some player X.

The poison of short-termism is today fuelling more dangerous fires. While the discontent at United covers a range of grievances, from the Glazers’ preoccupation with finding “global noodle partners” to the lack of investment in club infrastructure, it is aggravated by the team’s flaws in the here and now. As such, during the 2-0 home defeat by Burnley, one portion of the fan base sang, in an updating of the American folk song Clementine: “Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put Glazers on the top, put Woodward in the middle, and we’ll burn the f------ lot.”

Amid the outrage that ensued, the scholars behind this little ditty clarified that they were not actually calling for Woodward to die. How reassuring. They created, however, a climate in which cowards in balaclavas felt emboldened to throw flares and fireworks at Woodward’s house, apparently with intent to endanger life. Increasingly, all accepted codes of decency are being eroded. The perversity arises not only from the chants aimed at Woodward but from the fact that those responsible, once publicly condemned, still demand to know why they are in the wrong.

It is 25 years since this provocation from the stands produced its most explosive response, in the form of Eric Cantona’s kung-fu kick at Selhurst Park. Cantona would not accept the unwritten rule that fans paid their money, ergo they could say what they wanted. Confronted by one Matthew Simmons, a diagram of snarling unpleasantness, the Frenchman poleaxed him with a flying kick, followed by a roundhouse right. Somehow, Simmons imagined he could scream the words, “f--- off back to France you French mothers-----”, without comeuppance. In a hilarious attempt at mitigation, he later insisted that he had said: “It’s an early bath for you, Mr Cantona!”

The anniversary of the Cantona incident is an apt reminder that however great the anger arising from sport, abuse cannot be directed at players with impunity.

We saw this in South Africa, where one mouthy malcontent received more than he bargained for from Ben Stokes. While Stokes’s response was crass, it was a reminder to the moronic minority that they should be prepared to take it as well as dish it out.

“Cancel culture” is one of the grimmer manifestations of public outrage, much of it fanned by social media. Usually, the antagonists are not satisfied until the subjects of their ire have been not just de-platformed, but defenestrated. One sees it at United with Woodward: many fans want him “cancelled”, while some, it seems, will not be happy until his children have been terrorised out