MARTIN SAMUEL’S DAMNING COLUMN
YoU hate our club. Sportswriters get that a lot. The accusation that we are biased against a team. Any team. Doesn’t matter what team really. West Bromwich, once. I don’t even know why anyone would think I cared about, let alone hated, West Brom, but there it was. And it isn’t true.
I love football, always have. And if you love football, you love football people and therefore football clubs. Particularly the good ones. And, let’s face it, the good ones tend to be the big ones. Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Liverpool.
How can you not love the skill, the artistry, the joy you have seen them bring? How can you not admire the work ethic, the relentless drive and ambition of serial champions, serial winners, those who never give up, never seem to know when they are beaten. So, no, I don’t hate your club, I would say. And I meant it. And then, on Sunday afternoon, that changed.
No matter how this shakes down, no matter where this ends, nobody who truly loves football can feel for these clubs the same way again. Nobody can love the individuals and institutions that have tried to steal the pleasure from the lives of so many; that are attempting to ruin what began as, and remains, a game. The working man’s ballet, as Alan Hudson had it.
They are attempting to take that away from us and for what? For money. And not money that would feed the poor, or change society or be used for humanitarian good. Money to make insanely rich people, insanely richer.
Men like Andrea Agnelli and Joel Glazer, born into extraordinary wealth, the members of royal families, businessmen and investors who have been successful in life beyond their most fevered dreams. These are the people who were not satisfied with their ladle from football’s pot; who would not share; who do not care for the very structure of the industry that supports them. Basic principles such as competition, or fair play that is more than just a marketing man’s slogan.
So damn them. Damn them all to hell. They think they can carry on as before. That we will still be interested in their ambitions and achievements. They are wrong.
It is meaningless now, because we know the contempt that lies beneath. Spurs and Manchester City will contest a final on Sunday of a competition we know means nothing to them. An event they would sacrifice with a signature on a contract and consign to the dustbin of history, along with the institution, the Football League, that relies on its existence and has stood since 1888.
So why should we care who wins it? Why should we watch, or celebrate that victory? Sunday’s announcement rendered it worthless. All of it. We know this season is not what these clubs want, or care for. They say fine words about the progress of opponents like Leicester or West Ham, but these sentiments are hollow. The rich despise interlopers, really.
They have never forgiven Leicester for winning the Premier League in 2016. While the rest of the nation celebrated one of sport’s most inspiring narratives, their lips grew thinner. Mine, they said. We are useless, but mine. We’re not good enough, but mine. They’re better than us, but mine.
And this is their payback, their response to that wave of national, even global joy. A spasm of pure greed, and hatred for the very essence of sport: competition.
This has been coming. Coming since the very first mention of financial fair play two decades ago. This was always the end game. FFP sought to limit investment and investment is one of the keys to competition.
It is hardly a convoluted path to move from financial means of limiting challenge to purely practical means by announcing a closed shop. June 30, 2008, was the first column I wrote linking financial controls to this denouement. The most depressing aspect of cynicism is how often you get proved right. I got a text from a friend of mine at City yesterday
They have tried to steal pleasure from so many lives
morning. It was very honest. He admitted: ‘We had a choice.’
And that is true of us all. We have got choices. I was scheduled to go to Aston Villa v Manchester City tomorrow. I won’t bother. Right now, I don’t care about City’s title. Don’t care how they play. Not interested in praising them if they win. Not interested in their dreams, their ambitions. It’s all a sham anyway.
I would turn up just in the hope they would lose, except that would let Manchester United in, and they are worse. Ian Wooldridge, who did this job with such great distinction, didn’t much bother with football in the end. I used to find that strange. How can you write about sport, but not the national sport? It’s like doing mathematics but not the number three.
This morning, I get it. His stance wasn’t a battle that could be won. Football wasn’t going to change, he knew that. But we all have the right to no longer feel moved, inspired or compelled by it. We all have the right to say: no thank
you. Including you. What a club has with its fans is a social contract. Six clubs have broken it.
‘The most important of all the least important things,’ was Jurgen Klopp’s definition of the game, because of what it means to communities and wider society.
And he’s right. Watch a funeral cortege pass and you will know the team favoured by the departed because of the colour of the flowers. A football club is an allegiance taken to the grave. A man can have four wives and no one bats an eyelid, but if he changes his team his friends will be outraged.
But not this time, perhaps. Not having reneged on the social contract. Your club, if it is one of the six, has shown how much it cares about you. Shown how much it respects the moments that were important in your life. Now you can show them something, too.
Just keep in mind a date. April 18, 2021. That’s your free pass. Produce it and we’ll understand.
‘I was an Arsenal supporter, until April 18, 2021 … I followed Chelsea, but then April 18, 2021, came along…’ We get it. No one will judge you.
‘RIP LFC 1892-2021 — SHAME ON YOU’ read a sign outside Anfield yesterday. And, of course, Liverpool supporters are not going to start attending Goodison Park. But Tranmere Rovers will always need fans. I went to Marine when they played Tottenham in the FA Cup and they seemed a lovely club.
Are New Brighton still going? FC United of Manchester was formed on June 14, 2005, by disillusioned supporters of Manchester United, with the Glazer takeover as the catalyst. It can happen.
Followers of Wimbledon did not decamp to Milton Keynes in 2002 but founded a phoenix club. These are revolutionary steps. Revolutions are ambitious, so let’s start with resistance. To consumerism, to merchandise, to ticket renewal programmes, to subscription services, to social media.
Liverpool’s website on Sunday contained the announcement of the Super League, but no comment from any Liverpool director. Quoted, though, was Joel Glazer of Manchester United.
That is the understanding Liverpool’s owners have of their fans. They think they want to hear from a United man at a time when the club’s history is in the trash, and its future is a plastic plaything for US venture capitalists. These people do not deserve you. They don’t deserve your time, they certainly don’t deserve your money. How many matches do you think they have watched, the ones who are trying to steal our game? Actually watched by attending? Sheik Mansour has been to one, we know that. Stan Kroenke? John W Henry? Joel Glazer? Joe Lewis?
These are, to a man, absentee owners. Some would barely run out of fingers counting the matches they have seen. So it is not disloyal to turn your backs on them and the soullessness they represent.
Your commitment is already so much greater than theirs. More than a club; this means more; these were all slogans, sales pitches. It was only ever the money, the money, the money, the money. It was only ever about them.
The pity is that fans are not allowed in stadiums to tell these creatures what they think. They cannot even make their voices heard outside, because if Henry cannot be bothered to explain through club media channels, he is hardly going to be troubled venturing to Liverpool to hear protests in person. Same with the Glazers in Tampa, the Sheik in Abu Dhabi, Lewis in whatever tax haven houses him these days. It is a pityp that, in the final two weekends when fans are allowed back, the numbers will be so small there t will probably be enough cheerleaders to reach capacity. Still, wouldn’t w it be wonderful if i nobody went? If City paraded their latest bauble to row after row of empty e seats, mirroring its worth. If United fans delivered a verdict every bit as damning as the days of green and gold. If Liverpool walked alone to You’ll Never Walk Alone.
They had a song at FC UUnited, to the tune of Mellow M Yellow by Donovan. ‘I don’t care about Rio,’ it bbegan, ‘RioRi don’t care about me…’ It was a reaction to Rio Ferdinand’s new contract, which came to symbolise the disconnect between players and supporters.
Yet the players were never the enemy. Most were working- class men rewarded at the going rate for exceptional talent. This is different. What talent have the venture capitalists brought to English football? What is their gift to us all? Theft. The theft of our game, its beauty and uniqueness.
Some are still not understanding what risks being lost here. A Leicester supporter was interviewed coming out of his team’s FA Cup semi-final on Sunday. ‘Sounds like a good idea,’ he said of the Super League. ‘It’s another trophy for us to win.’
No, it isn’t. It is specifically designed so you cannot win, so you can never win, so you will never win. The odds aren’t even 5,000-1. There are no odds. You are not on the racecard.
There is talk of five places being awarded in this league each season on merit. So, yes, technically Leicester could surmount all obstacles. Yet the merit qualifiers are excluded from the commercial pot worth 15 per cent of income, and half of the shared pot, estimated at £1.6billion.
The fee for playing in the group stage — for which the big 12 do not even have to qualify — is roughly £155m, for winning the tournament the bonus is just £25m. At the moment the Champions League winner trumps a group stage participant by 300 per cent.
So were Leicester to qualify, and win the competition, they would make half of what Real Madrid would receive for being entered in the group stage automatically.
So, no, it isn’t a good idea; it isn’t another trophy for Leicester to win, and by hijacking the wealth of European competition, the rich clubs are ensuring Leicester will never trouble them again.
And you are meant to be loyal, to this? Fascinated, by this? Impressed, by this?
Forget a takeover at Newcastle, forget thinking big at Everton or Leeds. Why bother? There will be no surprises in football any more, no spice. Liverpool finish outside the top four? Who cares, they are in anyway. Arsenal could continue their downward trajectory and
April 18, 2021, is your free pass to change clubs. We get it. No one will judge you
There will be no surprises any more so why bother?
it wouldn’t make any difference. There would be no winners in north London, except club owners.
The last five teams to eliminate City, Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal and United from European knockout rounds are Lyon, Dinamo Zagreb, Bayern Munich, Olympiacos and Sevilla. Not one of them are in this competition. How super. How convenient. How terrified of failure must these plastic titans of the universe be?
Ultimately, though, we have options. ‘If you support a club who have plotted this coup then you have a choice,’ wrote Danny Baker. ‘To submit and adapt to the will of your big business masters or withdraw your time and money from this insidious power grab made in your name. Don’t start up with “but my grandad supported this team, so I have to”. Your grandad would have spat on this travesty of his club. Your blind craven support is what the money men behind it depend on. Football will never forgive you.’
And he is right. Your grandad fought a war. Nobody is asking you to storm the Normandy beaches. Just don’t buy a shirt, don’t buy a ticket, do not behave in any manner that might be taken as encouragement by these charlatans.
Think you can do that? Right. Good. Off we go.