Let’s get a few things clear about yesterday’s games – most
of them had little to do with sport or recreation. Under capitalism sport
exists to make huge profits – that goes without saying. And it’s the working
classes that pay the most to ensure that sport – and in particular football –
continues to be big business.
We may like to think that we’re buying into our team when we
hand over those notes and get a replica top every season, but of course we’re
not. We see nothing back financially; there is no sense of deep-seated
democracy in this action, more a sense of inevitability that you’ll carry on
doing it, because it’s what you’ve always done, and you think it might – in
some small way – help your club.
There’s certainly very little return emotionally on this
transaction – especially if you’re a fan of the clubs outside the top four or
five of the Premier League who actually have a chance of winning something.
And yet playing and watching sport is so important to us. As
our working lives become more stressful (and that’s if you’re lucky enough to
have a job), then taking part in these collective actions is a vital part of
those smaller and smaller parts of our lives we can call recreation.
There was a very good tweet doing the round yesterday, that
said: “I'm a City fan. I think we bought the title. It's within the rules. If
you don't like it overthrow capitalism.”
Well, if you insist.
Under socialism the profit motive would be taken out of football
forever. Seeing as so few clubs these days actually break even (a state of near
virtual panic a by-product of making rash, expensive decisions to buy success),
then you’d think most chairman would welcome this.
What’s more, the clubs should be democratically run with the
board made up of the players, the club staff and the fans – in short, those
that actually know what it takes to give something to keep the club running.
We don’t live in a socialist paradise, of course – not yet,
anyway. So how can this happen? Fans can run the clubs tomorrow without any
leap of imagination at all. Indeed this already happens with some success on
and off the field at clubs like FC United and Chester FC, and should be a
blueprint for all clubs of any size. It also makes “my” club’s supporters’
trust’s decision to simply give away a load of shares to its despotic chairman
all the more frustrating. A chance well and truly wasted.
There needs to be an end to the passive involvement with
football (and all sports) by spectators. We shouldn’t merely be turning up
every week to watch our team (that’s if you’re not so disillusioned that you
still actually show up), we should be involved in the real, day-to-day running
of our clubs.
At the moment our commitment to our team is manipulated by
whether they’re doing well in the league or not, and we, as fans, have a very
limited influence over the outcome of that. That would surely change if we had
a more active role in how they were run, and what they could provide us. What
we can have right away is a say on the immediate and long-term future of our
clubs, and that should be our right today, straight away.
It seems unfair to deny Manchester City supporters their
moment in the sun, but if they want to change the game they purport to love so
much, they, like every other football fan, should start to take it back from the
corporate thugs who ripped it away from us in the first place.
Up the Mariners.
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