Football

Now I know I’ve been a bit absent with my blog posting recently. To be honest the only reason I haven’t written one over the past few months is because I’ve been busy pretending I have better things to do. However its been an eventful summer so far, I’m moving out on the 12th of September, I attended my personal best Glastonbury yet, successfully broke into the Glade festival, paid off a huge fine that has been haunting me for almost a year, as well as general dicking about. But I’d thought I’d get back to writing today to touch on some issues that I feel I have to touch on, after being inspired to do so throughout the summer by certain events that I attended. So as another typical English summer ticks away we draw closer to one of mine, and probably over half the population of the country’s favourite time of year… The start of the new football league.
Now those of you who know me won’t be surprised to know that I love football. It is joint top of my passion’s list along with music and film. Like my other passions I love everything about it, I love playing it, watching it, talking deeply about it, studying it, using up general memory space remembering facts about it, but most of all just like my latter passions I love attending it. But unfortunately also like my other passions, there are elements I hate about it and that is the fact just like all other things pure, great and innocent that I love it has been destroyed by big corporations, advertising, investors and an influx of yuppie scumbags.
The first football match I went to was a Chelsea V Wimbledon match at Selhurst Park, a few years before Wimbledon became the victims of franchising in football and probably because of their careless owners, started a trend where the passion that owner once had for their club, could be bought off them with a series of figures with a pound sign in front of them…Anyway the score of the game finished 2-0 to Chelsea thanks to a stunning 25 yard free kick by Gianfranco Zola, and an early second half strike by Mark Hughes I think it was. But one thing that stands out for me was the atmosphere. The true working class of Britain coming together in their thousands to watch their football team, friends, families, people who had travelled for hours to get to the ground. The songs, the taunting of the opposing fans, the general protocol of different chants and when to stand up and sit down, and the delight of seeing tens of thousands of people burst into a supernova of joy when Chelsea scored twice, nothing to this day has matched it.
Although I missed the Chelsea of the 80’s when opposing fans would literally be scared the opposing Chelsea fans, and violence marred it a little bit (until ecstasy whipped it out in the late 80’s, another part of football history I regret missing) I’ve been told that going to football was made less enjoyable after the Hillsborough disaster, when terraces were banned and all league clubs had to have seating areas, I can imagine this is true, but nothing could beat them matches I went to in the 90’s. More recently though however after even Chelsea were eventually bought out by a big money investor, which in hindsight was the most amazing thing ever. 5 days from administration and a Russian billionaire saves us and ploughs money into the club until we win trophies. But with selling your soul in exchange for glory comes an even bigger fate. That thing that I loved, the pure element of football being the ultimate working class game, being able to go every other week to support my team was stopped, when football became a trend for the rich and yuppie. Because of Chelsea’s success and having the misfortune of being in the Kings road area of west London, yuppies come in their droves to watch football, because of this the price became unaffordable and I haven’t been to a game at the Bridge for over a year. The noise from stands has faded, standing throughout games is near enough banned, and swearing and chanting could face you with evection from the ground. These days having to pay over 3 times the original price for a seat, to sit next to a bunch of yuppie families talking amongst themselves, complaining when someone stands up and occasionally getting a tap on the shoulder saying “excuse me, could you mind the language…I have kids with me”. In ways I think it started with the original “Kick racism out of football” campaign, which don’t get me wrong was a good campaign but it did inflict the first rules for the terrace protocol and then acted as a catalyst for other rules. I think that football itself is the main reason for racial harmony in the working classes. It didn’t matter what colour you were, you supported the same team, the fact that your clubs top goal scorer was a black bloke, he was scoring for your team. Although racism was heavily featured in chants on the terraces, I’ve been told that this just simply faded out after societies views changed.
I appear to be digressing a bit…Anyway back in June I worked at Royal Ascot, which I soon found out was a big week long piss up for posh people and yuppies. Possibly their biggest in their calendar. They all dress up, blow loads of money on horses, frolic around and at the end of the day have a sing song of traditional English pop music and songs by the bandstand. Its quite possibly the greatest display of Englishness that I’ve seen, and in a way I really enjoyed it. But one thing I did notice was the amount of “lamb dressed as mutton”. Parties of Tarts and Geezers from Essex, Slags and Blokes from London and Whores and Bastards from up north also coming down to enjoy the party, luckily I was one of the very few people attending that was sober, but this helped me see that we the working class scum were doing to the rich what they had been doing to us, crashing their favriote sporting event. Although seeing people who are all peoples parents frolicking about pissed, committing acts of debauchery and acting like the kids they read about in the Daily Mail a little piece of me leapt for joy as I knew some of these upper people who invaded our terraces and implied new rules to our game, were now having their party crashed by a bunch of louts dressed up.

So as another Premiership season starts after a break of record breaking signings for amounts of money we can only dream of seeing, for players getting a wage that we will never make, playing a standard of football which seems to be losing its manly image, for a club whose owners probably can’t even speak English, I thank Sky Sports for giving me Jeff Stelling and Chris Kamara on a Saturday afternoon, John Motson in the evening and Andy Graye on a Sunday, so I can watch my football from the best seat in the house. I can swear, smoke, drink, stand up when I want, cheer as loud as I want, even scream brutal racial based obscenities to Didier Drogba when he wont get off the floor if I want, because I have admitted defeat to the other lot. Back in the 80’s Ken Bates the Chelsea chairman considered putting in a 12 foot high electric fence to separate away supporters from the Chelsea supporters, and to stop fans getting on the pitch. 20 odd years later Bruce Buck the Chelsea Chairman has introduced “family stands” and suggested that “those fans who wish to make noise please sit….” Although fans of smaller clubs will probably read this and wonder how it must be so shit to be a Chelsea fan when we break records and win trophies every year now, but to me the Club is buying these trophies for their clientele. It’s strange that about 14 years ago I was watching the now defunct Wimbledon play and now I’m thinking of abandoning my team (a sin which is absolutely unforgivable in every way) to support the new AFC Wimbledon of the Conference. Until then I’ll shut up and enjoy my teams’ success.