English premier football league

It's back again! The English football season is cranking up again. A nation is rubbing the summer sleep of cricket and England's biennial failure to achieve anything in the alternating World Cup and European Championship.

Almost every English man and an increasing number of English women will follow a football club. “Who do you support?” is still a typical bar conversation opener and ice-breaker. Being a football supporter no longer requires regular attendance at football matches. The largest stadium in the FA Carling Premiership, Manchester United's Old Trafford "Theatre of Dreams" can seat just over 60 000. At the most successful clubs demand for tickets to the game far exceeds supply. Since Rupert Murdoch saw live top level football as the Trojan horse that would establish his Sky satellite broadcasting company in the UK market football supporters have increasingly been armchair supporters. The traditional Saturday afternoon ritual of trooping to the ground to stand, swaying and singing, on the terraces of your local club has been joined by the Sunday afternoon and Monday Night ritual of turning on the TV or making your way to the local pub to join the throng of long distance fans worshipping their idols on the screen in the corner.

To take the interaction between the Premiership and the First division as an example. The champions and the runners up are promoted automatically to the promised land of the Premiership, from which the three bottom teams are relegated. The third promotion place is contested between the teams finishing third, fourth, fifth and sixth in the Playoffs. The third team plays the sixth team and the fourth and fifth teams play each other in home and away ties, the winners of these two ties meet at Wembley, the national stadium, in a one off final. The other divisions operate the same system with slight variations in the numbers granted automatic promotion. Only one team is relegated from the Third division, cast off into the wasteland of the semi-professional "non-league" world to be replaced by the champions of the Nationwide Conference. At the top of the tree the Champion's of the Premiership win the lucrative right to compete in the European Champion's League. The name is now redundant. The richest and most powerful leagues now enter several teams: the Champions of Scotland for example are only entitled to enter at the last qualifying stage, the same level at which the third place team in the English Premiership enter. The Champion's League guarantees access to massive television revenues, revenues that the most powerful clubs are increasingly reluctant to risk losing through the inconvenience of losing a competitive sporting fixture.

The spectre of a super league of these clubs has long hung over UEFA, the governing body of European football. Football Clubs are not franchises of a central sporting business they are profit making businesses in their own right, stock market listing is becoming commonplace amongst the larger clubs, their relationship with the governing body is essentially a voluntary one and it seems increasingly likely that the European elite are prepared to break this bond and set up on their own.

This idea is not popular with most fans, who enjoy European football but for whom the domestic game provides far more of what they want out of following their club. Historically you followed your local football club as a means of expressing your pride in your town and region. The traditional blue collar audience saw the team as an extension of themselves, local boys who managed to escape the factory through their skill with the ball. For many years players' wages were capped by the football league and the team would be an extension of the local community, largely born in the area and often living in the communities that provided most of the support. They had escaped the drudgery of the factory by virtue of their skill and enlivened the lives of those who they left behind with that skill and the glory it might bring to the City or Town they represented.

Football fans prize loyalty above all, they turn up and watch their team come what may and the greatest insult a player can give to the supporters is not to give his all for the team. So while fans worship a skilful player who can bring beauty to the beautiful game they often vote as their player of the year the more aggressive player who visibly risks life and limb for the cause.

The only other field in which such uncritical unquestioning loyalty is prized is the military and fans often portray themselves as an army, usually a barmy army, in the songs they sing. Unfortunately the military analogy extends to fighting. There is football hooliganism in every country where the game is played, it is merely a function of the passion that fans feel for their club, but the English were long considered rulers of the field partly because the English national side was the only international team to attract a sizeable and organised hooligan following ready to put aside their club loyalties to reassert English superiority. Despite the best efforts of the football authorities to present a clean image of the game hooliganism is far from dead although the scenes of mass fighting on the terraces that so often disfigured television coverage of football in the 1980's have become a thing of the past because of the introduction of all seater stadiums and the ongoing gentrification of football crowds.

As the club represented a working class community it was natural that the fan should define their loyalty as much by those they hated as by those who joined them on the terraces. The Derby - against the nearest rival team - match is the most likely to bring crowd trouble (now usually outside, and even far distant from the game.) Some cities have two teams, there are several in London. In these cases each team's following will often have a traditional character. The most famous example of this is in Scottish football where Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic have been the clubs of the city's Protestant and Catholic communities respectively. The hatred and bigotry stirred by the "Old firm" games between these clubs is legendary and about far more than football. In London the Tottenham Hotspur club from a working class area of North London has traditionally been the capital's Jewish club. Millwall represented a deprived area of South London associated with the docks and river workers and have long had the reputation of having the most fearsome fans in the capital. West Ham represented the similarly deprived East End (in the North) and fixtures between the two clubs (now rare as West Ham have prospered and are two divisions above Millwall) were traditionally associated with trouble. Such rivalries are not always local and may even have their routes in football. Leeds United a team from the North East of the country have a virulent hatred of West London's Chelsea which dates back to the late 1960's and early 70's when Chelsea twice defeated Leeds in FA cup fixtures by what Leeds fans see as unfair means. It should be noted that Leeds fans have a virulent hatred of many teams, all are eclipsed by the loathing directed at Manchester United who are referred to simply as "the scum."

These rivalries are often expressed in song. The end of the terraces has diluted the choral power of the crowd and it is a shame that these often witty chants, usually set to the tune of a popular song, are vanishing from the top echelon of the game. Millwall revelled in their tough reputation with their signature tune "no-one likes us, we don't care." North London's Arsenal who were known for a miserly defence and grinding out narrow wins joyfully chanted "one nil to the Arsenal" to the tune of Go West by the Pet Shop Boys. Now Arsenal are managed by a French man, Arsene Wenger, and play some of the most exciting, attacking football in the Premiership their fans can now return the "boring boring Arsenal" chants as their exciting overseas strikers add a fifth goal. Stoke City fans sing the chorus of Delilah by Tom Jones, no one is really sure why. Bristol Rovers fans sing Goodnight Irene as their club song. West Ham United sing I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles and the fading dreams of the song are reflected in the character of the club once nicknamed "The Academy" for its skilful players but who have failed to achieve any lasting success. West Country clubs rejoice in their rural origin with "I can't read and I can't write but it don't really matter 'cos I come from the West Country and I can drive a tractor."

The most famous club song belongs to Liverpool FC, and to some extent has been adopted by all fans as a sort of anthem to the old values of football. In a 1989 FA cup semi final at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death on the terraces and on live TV. This tragic disaster had far reaching effects on the game. In its aftermath the government commissioned a report that lead to the introduction of all seater grounds. The unpalatable truth was that fans had been effectively treated like animals, herded into steel enclosures by Police forces keen to see them into and off their patches as quickly as possible in order to avoid any trouble. The legal proceedings continue as the families of those that died seek compensation and try to find out who was responsible for the disaster. The Liverpool song is "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel, made famous by Merseybeat stars of the early 1960's Gerry and the Pacemakers. As a city Liverpool has suffered a huge amount of economic depravation through the death of the industries that had been its life blood and attacks from the right wing Thatcher government on a traditionally left wing city. The success of their football team (their are two teams in Liverpool, the other is called Everton) as well as a tradition of producing successful musical and comic talent was a source of pride to an embattled city.

So for another season the Football grounds of the FA Carling Premiership will be full and the best game in the history of the world can be worshipped after the summer recess. The future does not look bright for those who prize the traditions of the game. European Union employment legislation threatens the system of transfer fees that has been the main mechanism for the movement of money around the game. The elite few are ever more powerful and those lower down the leagues struggle for survival. Football however, as it always has done, merely reflects the larger economic truths of society. Albert Camus was not only an existentialist author, he was also an accomplished footballer, playing at international level as a goal keeper. He is famously quoted as saying that all he learnt about life he learned from football. That is the beauty of the game, in the opinion of most of the world above all other games, however it may prove to be a tragedy for the sport if clubs are prepared to chase profit at any cost. Most fans are already rather disillusioned by the actions of the larger clubs and any business that alienates its core consumers has no future.