Articles

Fans must come together to stop football’s gravy train

Email this to a friend Print Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit

by Steve Powell, Director for Campaigns & Policy at the Football Supporters’ Federation
The Journal - 20 April 2009

On Monday night I spoke at ippr north’s Café Politique and was asked whether financial elitism will ruin football? The short answer? Yes, but only if we let it. There’s still time to save our game.

The Premier League is now in its 17th season. It is bigger and more dominant than ever, not just in England, but across Europe. Three of the remaining four Champions League teams are from the Premier League while last season’s final was contested by Manchester United and Chelsea. The only teams beating the English ‘big four’ in Europe are other English teams.

Clubs share £3 billion TV deals and splash amazing sums on astronomically well paid players, gates in the Premier League are as high as they’ve ever been and fans watch from brand new stadiums, post-Hillsborough. The Premier League’s competitive, cultural, and financial dominance is seemingly complete and the life of a football fan in England is just great, right? Well not really.

The Premier League has run away with itself. The same ‘big four’ will again take the Champions League positions and it doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon. The days of a Nottingham Forest winning the top-flight appear to be over.

As with politics there’s a growing feeling of disenfranchisement. Is anyone at the top listening? Here at the Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) we’re hearing from more and more people who feel enough is enough. All they hear from the Premier League and beyond (greed is contagious) is “sit down and shut up while we empty your wallets.”

Clubs just don’t seem to care. Games are moved at the last minute to suit TV schedules causing all sorts of problems, as Newcastle fans travelling to Liverpool in May for a 1.30pm Sunday kick-off can testify. Clubs are bought and sold by unwanted owners with no feeling for their local community. Sound familiar?

And that’s before we even get onto the infamous Game 39, ticket prices that are among the most expensive in the world, or wider issues such as policing and stewarding where football fans are used to being mistreated.

We need to tackle redistribution and the management of elite clubs. It won’t be easy but we’re making headway. While the Premier League’s domestic spin control has been excellent Andy Burnham, the current Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, has recently dared to gently question the money-obsessed Premier League.

Likewise Uefa president Michel Platini has raised similar concerns. This has been met with (predictably) gratuitous insults from the Premier League and the British media. Encouragingly the Football Association, under its new chairman Lord Triesman, is showing signs of an independent mind. Good. Somebody has to stop the runaway train before it crashes into the buffers.

But fans also have their own part to play and you can make a difference. The FSF lead the battle against the dreaded Game 39 and campaigns on a whole variety of issues at a national and regional level - some readers might be familiar with our north-east based Fair Cop? initiative.

Steve Powell, Director for Campaigns & Policy at the Football Supporters’ Federation spoke at ippr north’s Café Politique on The Politics of Football on Monday night. For more info on Fans’ Parliament 09, which takes place in Newcastle on Saturday, June 20th, email fp09@fsf.org.uk.