Right, let’s get this out the way: I’m a Manchester United fan with no connections to Manchester. I know I know we were getting on so well; you’re not angry you’re just disappointed; I represent everything that’s wrong with football; how can I have any valid opinions seeing as I’m a just a glory-hunter, so on and so forth.
The short answer to these accusations is usually two cold fingers: jog on; it’s been fourteen years I’ve heard them all before. You support your team, I’ll support mine and we’ll just agree to disagree (or not to discuss it). This argument however it somewhat at odds with the spirit of rational discussion this blog tries to evoke, so let’s try again.
I support Manchester United because as long as I’ve liked football, I’ve been drawn to them. This isn’t to say some divine voice came to me and just happened recommend the most successful team in Premier League history; just that as an impressionable seven year old with no family history of football fanaticism, I chose the team who looked best to me. This ‘monkey-see, monkey-like, monkey-follow’ approach is one I suspect many others have adopted (whether or not they admit it) and this logic, or lack thereof, is, in an increasingly fickle footballing world, one guaranteed constant.
In today’s cosmopolitan society, being a lifelong resident of any one place is becoming increasingly uncommon, and while there always will be those who are able to call one place home their entire life, and therefore have the option of a simple decision as to what team to follow, others with slightly more nomadic residency patterns will not be so lucky.
It has since been suggested, once or twice, that I should ditch the Red Devils and support my local team, ‘cos that’s wot real fans do’. Well I was born in Hackney, so presumably West Ham would be the obvious option. But I only lived in London for a year before moving to Senegal, West Africa, and at 12 months old, I didn’t really feel like a die-hard Hammer (though I was forever blowing bubbles).
After six years in Dakar, however, my passion for football had definitely blossomed. So presumably I should devote my allegiance to ASC Diaraf? But while season tickets are probably easier to come by than at Old Trafford, getting to away games is a bit of a ball-ache, and The Football League Show’s coverage from the Stade de Diaraf is notoriously poor. And at that age, I was content just to play football, spending what TV time I was allowed in front of Wacky Races and Captain Caveman.
It wasn’t until I moved back to the UK and deepest Oxfordshire that I was exposed the phenomenon that is the Premier League. For someone who has spent their boyhood playing barefoot on arid scrubland and whose only experience of watching football as a five-year old casual viewer of USA ’94, the transition to ten games a week, long balls to the big man up front, derby, and pies and Bovril at half-time was quite a culture shock. Now I had found footballing Mecca, a country in which I could watch matches weekly and play daily, I needed a team.
A lack of parental guidance in this critical decision inevitably led to my peers being the decisive factor, and no one wanted to follow Chipping Norton Town F.C. We wanted someone on Match of the Day (the only place to watch decent football in the Cotswolds), with stars whose faces shone from Panini shinies. In 1996 there was only one option: David Beckham & co., and once the decision had been made, that was it, monkey-see, monkey-like, monkey-follow.
Football fans are masochists: we like to suffer because the more we lose, the better it feels when we win. The worse the club perform on the pitch, the better their fans are considered to be because they put up with more and therefore are more acutely aware of both sides of the emotional spectrum, enduring relegation battles, financial uncertainty and their best players leaving for pastures new when bigger clubs come calling; but also the odd Cup run, derby day victory and title top-ten finish.
Every club has its ups and downs and I’d be the first to admit that Man United fans have probably had the easiest ride in English football over the last twenty years. This doesn’t mean however, we’ve all enjoyed it in equal measure. Those who frequented Old Trafford whilst the Liverpool teams of the Eighties were at their peak are undoubted more entitled to enjoy their team’s success than someone who’s never been to Manchester and associate the name Busby with furniture.
But does coming from Salford or Stretford automatically qualify you as a ‘real fan’? And does the credibility barometer subsequently decrease the further away from the North West you live or have lived at any one time? What trumps what, longevity of personal support or one’s family legacy? Is it better to have randomly picked a team and supported them for twenty odd years; or have followed your local team because season tickets have always been available through the family?
It does my head that people feel the later point is even worth arguing. Why should their elders’ sympathies afford them an unassailable moral high ground? ‘Well my dad supports them so I had no choice…’ ECT. Bollocks. You managed to rebel against everything else your parents told you between the twelfth and nineteenth years of your life, I’m sure you could have summoned the strength of character to defy them on this as well.
It’s the easy way out. British terraces have always been a place where parents and children bond but I asked why you support your team, and ‘because I way told to’ or ‘because my family do’ isn’t really good enough. ‘Because I grew up going to the games’ or ‘because I have great childhood memories of watching [team x] play’, fair play, you’ve had some input into the decision; but don’t lay into other people for who they support and justify your allegiances by saying you were told to do so by your family.
Worse still than those who feel that continuing family tradition trumps the seven-year old logic of pick a team you like and sticking with them, are the fence sitters: those that don’t claim any side as their own but are perfectly happy to tell you what’s wrong with yours. If you just follow football and don’t take sides, that’s fine, no problem; but don’t throw mud at me from your lofty perch, safe in the knowledge I can’t aim any back.
Understand that rationality often takes a backseat when it comes discussions about football, and your point may be both perfectly sensible and logically constructed but that doesn’t necessarily make it valid. Subjective and slanderous comments that can’t be answered in relation to a team of one’s own shouldn’t have to be answered at all. You’re not properly committed to the process and therefore and no right to be involved in it. If the stakes haven’t been matched, you can't play the hand.
Of course there are those who follow any number of teams intermittently depending on which one is winning, but equally there are also fans who support smaller teams simply because they think it will gain them respect among their peers an allow them easy digs at other fans. I chose United because they were winning when I first started watching the Premiership, but I’ve continued to support them when they weren’t.
I’m not from Manchester but I am from England, and when you look at their youth system’s contribution to the national side you have to say that there have been times when the national side has been more or less a United team-sheet. Compare that with the brief stint I had following Hearts when Vladimir Romanov took over, and you’ll see that a ‘local’ team is often entirely international in both its players and backroom staff (for example, Romanov sold the Jambo’s Scottish and replaced it with a cosmopolitan line-up with very few British players or staff). The question needs to be asked, if you follow your local team simply because of regional pride, then what are you doing cheering their foreign players?
I can’t believe that it’s just where the side are from that influenced your decision. Surely there was some aspect of ‘these guys player better football than that lot so I’m gonna follow them’ (because another guaranteed constant in the fickle work of football is that everyone has a ‘local’ rival)?
If you’ve spent enough of your life in one place to feel that a team is really ‘your’ local side, I’m happy and slightly envious of you. You may have harder time watching them on the pitch, but when it comes to talking about football you’ve got by far the easier ride. No justifications needed, you get to have a right old moan and no one can say owt against you. But just because I follow a successful team from a city I’ve never lived in and have no family connections with, doesn’t mean I’m a glory-hunter, doesn’t mean I know nothing about the pain and anguish fans are so keen to wear on their Climacool sleeves, and doesn’t mean I’m a dickhead.
I was a bit late to the supporters’ party, had to make an uninformed choice and have suffered and continue to suffer the consequences (as well as reap the multitude of rewards) of choosing Manchester United. Nothing you say about my choice is going to stop me following them and I would hope the same thing goes for you if you’ve got a team. And if you don’t, stop being such a pussy and get involved! Put your balls on the line and your colours on a mast!
Oscar Wilde wrote, “the cynic knows the price of everything and value of nothing”. Call us what you will, but no football fan should ever be accused of being cynical, because no matter how badly our teams play, how near they came to winning or how close they were to scrapping by; every real fan knows a bright day awaits, and when it comes it will be all the sweeter for past anguishes. That’s what keeps us talking to each other, despite our superficial differences: there’s not really any way you can fully understand or relate to the beautiful game without following a team, no matter who they are.
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