Time we all did a little soul-searching in our game...
IT WILL go largely unnoticed among the plethora of high-profile derby matches that will grip the top tier of English football this afternoon but a small-scale invasion of north London that does not involve either Arsenal or Tottenham will take place today.
Seats on the fleet of coaches carrying Stockport County fans to the FA Cup second-round tie with Barnet at The Hive, the price of which were subsidised by the club and set at £15, sold out quickly. Extra coaches were laid on. They sold out, too.
Stockport play in the National League North, the sixth tier of English football, and, at a conservative estimate, they will have 1,500 travelling fans at the stadium, which means their allocation will be sold out and the atmosphere in the away stand behind the goal will be raucous and loud.
I bought tickets for my son and me last week. I want to take him partly because his last game was a 2-1 defeat at Kidderminster in August and big games have been few and far between for County in recent years.
At Barnet, there’s a chance Stockport might reach the third round for the first time in more than a decade. But it’s about more than that. It’s about the search for something that English football lost some time ago.
It’s about the feeling that the atmosphere might be raw and wild, the way our game used to be.
I envied the journalists who went to Buenos Aires last weekend intending to see the second leg of the Copa Libertadores final between Boca Juniors and River Plate at El Monumental.
To watch a Superclasico there or at Boca’s La Bombonera stadium is something I’ve always wanted to do because something survives there that is almost extinct in football here.
Our football used to hum to colour, passion and frenzy a little like games at La Bombonera do now. But that was before the corporatisation of our game, before many working-class fans were priced out. That was before our stadiums started being named after airlines. That was before football tourism.
And, yes, two generations ago, there was violence and tragedy in our game, too. So as the missiles rained down on the Boca Juniors coach last Saturday and tear gas filled the air and the game was postponed, we glimpsed not only what we have lost but what we have gained.
In England, we have gained safety for fans, prestige and TV contracts worth billions. But we have lost something visceral. English football has lost its soul. Like Argentine football, we had something beautiful but we neglected it. We treated football fans like animals and realised too late that it was their fervour and the communal frenzy of the terraces that made our game so special.
What is left is to seek out pockets of fervour where they remain. Maybe that will be at Anfield today or at La Bombonera, before the process of emasculation takes hold. Maybe it will be at Barnet this afternoon. Wherever it is, the remnants of the way we were are part of football’s disappearing world. We should seek them out while we can.