It hasn’t been a particularly great week for football’s traditional paying customers.
A VAR delay of almost six minutes at West Ham, price hikes at Manchester City, OAP concessions scrapped at Tottenham. At Chelsea, meanwhile, relations between the club and its fanbase continue to deteriorate.
It’s a grim picture, for sure, and it’s one painted on a landscape already pockmarked with ongoing and ingrained disregard for match-going football fans. Prices, kick-off times, public transport challenges. The direction of travel has been set for some time and shows no sign of turning round. It’s quite shameful.
However, a lone voice when seeking context has belonged to Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou and it’s worth listening to.
Postecoglou was born in Greece and has spent most of his life living in Australia. As such, the 58-year-old knows how it feels to follow football from a relative backwater. He knows what it is to invest fully in something from a distance. He knows it can be done.
Ange Postecoglou has responded to Tottenham’s controversial plans to increase season ticket price by six per cent
Postecoglou made it clear he wanted local loyals to be accommodated as well as fan from around the world
The disregard for matchgoing fans was made clear by the long VAR delay during West Ham’s clash with Aston Villa on Sunday
And now he has spoken up on the matter of overseas fans attending Premier League football matches.
Some have suggested they are taking the place of supporters more local to our football clubs. They aren’t really but to some they are not welcome nevertheless. They call them ‘plastics’ and scoff when TV cameras at games show rows of them holding up mobile phones like tourists. These people are not proper supporters, we are told. They are a problem. They are taking our game away from its roots and from communities and from the people it is traditionally supposed to serve. But that’s actually nonsense and Postecoglou has been confident enough to call it.
‘I want Tottenham supporters in the stand, I don’t just want anybody,’ he said.
‘But I am probably ‘plastic’ and ‘touristy’ because I was coming from the other side of the world really passionate about football and if I could get access to see a Premier League game that was the world to me.
‘This football club has supporters all over the world and I think we should always be able to accommodate them. You don’t know how passionate they are about their football club. Maybe they only started supporting it in the last two years. It doesn’t diminish who they are.’
This whole debate points to a slight conflict in terms of English football’s identity and in particular that of the Premier League.
We talk about the English game but in reality the Premier League has become an elite football competition that just happens to be played in England. Foreign owners, foreign coaches and foreign players make it what it is.
Why then should we only care about the supporters who happen to live down the road? The make-up of our game has changed forever and the truth is that without the enthusiasm and deep pockets of those who follow it around the world then it simply would not exist in its current form.
For example, it’s TV that makes players rich in 2024. It’s not gate receipts or the sale of match programmes or hot pies handed over at a wooden kiosk.
All of that stuff helps but it’s not that which drives our game forwards. No, it’s money paid for broadcasting privileges and a look at the numbers tells us that the billions of pounds paid to Premier League clubs by overseas rights holders currently exceeds the amount by our domestic outlets for the very first time.
Tottenham fans have protested against the club’s decision to scrap OAP ticket concessions
Decisions taken by clubs such as Tottenham over concessions are lamentable. Supporters are right to push back. City, our champions, are being placed under pressure by fan groups who point out that raising prices during a cost-of-living crisis that continues to hit families in some of their traditional sky-blue heartlands feels wrong.
Fans in stadiums remain at the core of what live football is about. But that experience remains out of economic reach for many. For some the closest they will ever get to watching their team is through their Sky subscription or, if they are in America or Australia, on NBC or Optus Sports. Why should this make them less important to a football club than someone who grew up within sight of the floodlights?
As Postecoglou points out, it’s discriminatory, presumptuous and patronising. It’s an outdated view.
Supporters from China and South Africa are not the reason OAPs from Tottenham are not getting into the stadium on match day. That one is on chairman Daniel Levy. They are two separate issues.
The ‘plastics’, ‘tourists’ and those watching from their armchairs round the world are not just worthy, they are fundamental. They are the ones paying James Maddison’s wages.
England’s purple kit ploy
On the last day of the World Cup in Qatar I bought a fake England away kit for my daughter from a market stall for £3.
If she shows any interest in this summer’s European Championship, she can wear it again when England play. It still fits.
England have never played in purple before and the chances are they never will again
But the problem is that it’s red and this summer’s England away kit, launched this week, will be purple.
England have never played in purple before and the chances are they never will again.
But for parents all across the country, the trap has been set.
Out of date or out of pocket? It may be time to head back to the market.
An unnecessary trip Down Under
Tottenham and Newcastle will play a friendly in Melbourne on May 22. Arsenal ladies will be in town for a game at the same time.
There is too much football, they tell us. The players are tired, they tell us.
Yet still they just won’t stop.
England’s Euros warning
England are expected to do well this summer and that’s only right. Yet we have had good teams before and haven’t always managed it.
Twenty years ago, for example, Sven Goran Eriksson fielded a side in the Portugal Euros of 2004 that went: James; Neville, Terry, Campbell, Cole; Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Scholes; Rooney, Owen.
That team lost in the last eight yet how many of the current crop would get in it? Pickford, Walker, Bellingham, Kane. Who else?
Composite teams prove nothing but history does hold lessons. Summer tournaments are desperately hard to win, no matter who is in your side.
How many of Gareth Southgate’s current crop would get into England’s Euro 2004 side?
The FA Cup can still conjure up unbeatable drama
Last Sunday’s victory for Manchester United against Liverpool will live long in the memory but also served to illustrate how the FA Cup has been fundamentally changed.
Previously, Antony’s 87th-minute equaliser for the home team would have been a blow for Liverpool but not a mortal one. At 2-2, a replay back at Anfield would have beckoned and, as such, half a job would already have been done.
Previously, Antony’s 87th-minute equaliser for the home team would have been a blow for Liverpool but not a mortal one
But with replays now a thing of the past, United were able to take their momentum and energy into extra-time and deservedly win the tie.
I am disappointed replays from the third round onwards will be going. Nothing will change my mind.
But last weekend it was undeniably the case that a winner-takes-all scenario played into the hands of what became unbeatable drama.
