The biggest crime: Criticising a football club
In its simplest form, tribalism is the very essence of what it means to be a football supporter. Travelling 200 miles to and from Loftus Road to watch my team get relegated to League One created a shared grief that forged unspoken bonds, communicated largely through slow shakes of the head and occasional tears. Different genders, ages and backgrounds come together, united by a common love.
Tribalism can also – when displayed appropriately – be hugely beneficial. Show your colours, express your love and get your fix without unnecessary shows of aggression. This is not a rose-tinted assessment of the hooliganism problems of the 70s and 80s, but there were positive aspects to that fan culture that are now treated with deliberate retrograde amnesia by those who had selfish reasons to force change.
Crucially, this tribalism was non-club-specific. Of course Chelsea, West Ham and Millwall fans might not see eye to eye on certain aspects of their own and each other’s clubs and might even treat each other appallingly, but they at least realised that they were basically all the same, just wearing different colour shirts.
Tribalism became a pejorative term used by those who looked down on football supporters, and English football allowed its baby to be thrown out with the bathwater. The homogeneity of stadia has eroded the match-day atmosphere, while increased ticket prices have allowed a widespread gentrification of the national game. That has abraded part of the culture of being a football fan.
Yet tribalism has also been twisted within fan behaviour too. A growing proportion of supporters are no longer defined by a shared experience, but by their own individual relationship with their club. They take their joy not from their involvement in a club’s success or failure (though it is alien to some young supporters that even defeats can be enjoyed), but through defence of their club’s reputation.
For those fans, it is the club itself that must be protected rather than their support of that club. Allowing criticism to pass unquestioned is to admit a crack in your loyalty. Suddenly you’re not a ‘proper’ fan.
It makes discourse with some supporters – particularly on social media – difficult. On Monday I expressed disappointment with Manchester City raising season ticket prices by between £10 and £20 for most adults, a move that generates the club precious little money (that they really don’t need anyway) but threatens to anger local supporters who feel they are being increasingly exploited.
The response was largely positive, as you might expect when offering sympathy to supporters, but plenty reacted angrily that I had called out Manchester City on the issue. Why shouldn’t the club charge what they wanted? Why did I care as long as tickets were sold out? What business did I have expressing sympathy with people in a similar situation to me? Why shouldn’t a football club take the p*ss out of those in the local community?
Protecting something you love dearly is hardly unusual, but there is a difference between love and deliberate blindness to flaws and faults. Many football supporters have been conditioned into believing that exploitation is something to be grateful for, and to abide nobody who tells them any different.
Even ten years ago, the greatest critics of a football club were its own supporters. Now, social media foot soldiers will defend the indefensible just so long as it wears their shirt. That’s why you hear “he’ll shag who he wants” sung by Sheffield United fans about Ched Evans.
Perhaps this trend is partly due to the rise of the long-distance fan. I draw no judgement between the merits of these two distinct supporter types – they are merely different, not worse/better – but being unable to experience the buzz of a matchday means that loyalty must be displayed in alternative ways. The purchase of merchandising is one, but so too is staunchly defending the club.
Elite football clubs’ greatest trick was making fans believe that their love was requited. With occasional, honourable exceptions, they don’t care about you, just what you represent: revenue.
This warped tribalism, or perhaps not even tribalism at all but club-specific protectionism, really becomes a problem when it weakens the power of football fans to force change. In the same way that cruel politics has been so effective because people see things solely through their own prism rather than thinking of others, a growing number of football fans view issues solely through their own eyes.
It’s why a Manchester United fan might see some empty seats, and rather than think ‘yes, continuously increased ticket prices have deliberately alienated a worrying element of football’s traditional fanbase to create a product that is closer to theatrical entertainment than sport, haven’t they?’ instead opt for the more pithy ‘Emptyhad, lol’.
“Had you been born ten miles down the road you would support Derby,” as one family friend once said to me: part-threat and part-philosophical whimsy, I think. So many football supporters seem to forget that they could so easily be in the opposite camp.
Nobody is calling for an end to rivalries. They are part of what makes football so great, as is teasing opposition supporters with half-truths for a reaction. But the inability to look beyond the end of your nose forgets the basic principle: It might be your club, but it’s our game.
The ‘without fans, football is nothing’ line is repeated so often because it is true. Yet elite clubs depend so little on supporters attending matches – in financial terms at least – that we are more ripe than ever for exploitation. Sticking together is the only way to effect change, but many supporters are doing the opposite. Insularity is rising…
Daniel Storey