Author Topic: AGAINST MOD£RN FOOTBALL: A Complaint against Premier League Ticket Prices  (Read 115777 times)

Online ronnnie yates

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Re: AGAINST MOD£RN FOOTBALL: A Complaint against Premier League Ticket Prices
« Reply #40 on: September 28, 2010, 05:12:49 pm »
heard an interesting interview today with a pub landlord from southampton on radio5 ,him and several other landlords are not renewing their sky subs , theyve jumped from an average pub size {whatever that is } of 14,000 pa, to 20,000 , fuck me icouldnt believe they were charged 14 grand ,and now the rise to 20,000 , with so many pubs closing in the uk , the smoking ban etc etc ,this will hit sly sports especially with the tory cuts coming too , this is the main problem with footie generally ,SLY SPORTS , hope they get fucked , and the house of cards comes tumbling down ,

Offline Kemlyn 28

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Once people start to stay away and get out of the loop of purchasing tickets then they are almost certainly gone for good. My next door neighbour who used to go every week says he wouldn't have a clue about how to get hold of tickets these days and doesn't even bother trying now. Effectively he's retired himself from attending matches and is now content to pay his Sky Sports subscription instead.


  That will become reality for me in a couple of years I think.I've been cutting down on away games for the past few years,haven't been to a league cup game since the Chelsea final,onjly went to 1 European home game last season,I'm not doing any cup games at all this year.There are many reasons for this,mainly the ownership,but to be honest I reckon I'll find it easier not to go in future and watch it on the telly.I am able to afford the price of the tickets fortunately,but there comes a time when it is just not worth the expense.The more I don't go the less I miss it.
   

Offline Alf

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I went to 45 games during each of the 2006/7 & 2007/8 seasons that fell to 36 for both of the last two. I reckon I'll do half that this season at most.

I think back to last year around Christmas spending 3 hours on a train to get to Portsmouth with not even enough time to have a bevy beforehand in the freezing cold to see us played off the park by a team bottom of the league. On Boxing Day I was going to pop in the Park for a piss before the Wolves game and they wanted a quid to get in there. Or 3 days later going to Villa Park and having to pay £3 to get in the boozer before the game that I wouldn't be seen dead in at any other time. Vending machines at Anfield and rapid retail units. Everybody wants a piece of the cash cow that is the Premier League and there's not enough money to go around.

Offline YayaP

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Reading this board you see a lot of people talking about the moment when the Premier League bubble will burst. I hate to say it, but that moment is simply never going to come. My parents both hail from Merseyside so my entire life I have had the interesting perspective of keeping up with the Premier League/European football as well as being an avid fan of many American sports. Watching both develop, you can see that in today's global market, the United States sets the trends and the rest of the world tends to follow. Unfortunately, this includes sports.

People's grandfathers always tell me stories about when they could go down to the ballpark (baseball stadium) with a cereal box top to get into games. Baseball (and American football as well) used to be sports for the working class, same as football. However, as economics became more and more involved in sports, the game and the atmosphere began to change. The United States underwent the same changes as the UK, only ten to fifteen years earlier. This includes the introduction of all-seater stadia, the rapid inflation of ticket prices, the worldwide marketing of the game, etc. When you go to a game nowadays, the atmosphere is absolute shit. People in suits everywhere, people on their phones, not even watching the games. One quarter of the seating at some stadiums are indoors these days, where corporates can sit around and talk about the recent performance of the stock market. They couldn't give a damn about the score of the game.

One area that still manages to keep hold of an atmosphere is college sports, because it is supposed to be "not for profit" and for the benefit of the universities. However, you can already see the way economics is beginning to corrupt those sports as well. I go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill which is considered one of the big sports schools in America. The sports still remain a refuge, but the all-seater stadiums are creeping in and students are being afforded less and less tickets every year, because the universities have realized they benefit from selling those tickets to suits, which in turn allows Coke and Yahoo to advertise....all of which is bringing tremendous amounts of cash to the school. As you can see, it's all the same when it comes to sports in the USA....it starts out fun, amateur, etc.....and the minute people begin turning up and the team becomes a success, corporate greed attacks it and bastardizes the entire project. We used to play our games at Carmichael Arena, it's where Michael Jordan learned to play basketball. However, when our basketball team became the talk of the nation, the school decided to move from this small, intimate setting to the massive Dean Smith Center, an all-seater arena which makes students sit in the upper decks, and allows incredibly rich alumni to sit alongside the court. It has absolutely destroyed the atmosphere in the arena. I am a student at the school and half the time I can barely see the fucking players from where I sit.

If the Premier League follows the USA (which by all indications it should) then the game will continue to deteriorate, with no bursting bubble. People are always willing to pay for sporting events no matter how high the ticket prices, and to be perfectly honest, if they stop wanting to pay, the team will simply go under and the league will find a different market (this is why terrible teams in sports have begun simply dropping to the lower leagues, they have no attendance, thus no money - and the Premier League doesn't care about them, they will simply let them drop and wait for a market who is willing to pay to crawl into the first league). What's worse, these problems will be magnified for the Premier League because of what a global phenomenon it represents. Someone mentioned it earlier but there is really always someone willing to take your seat. All you have to do is type premier league tickets on google and look at the prices people pay to go to these matches to realize that. If people from around the world are willing to pay $600 per ticket to watch a game at Anfield, wouldn't you say they would be willing to buy the tickets directly from the club for $60?

The thing that scares me the most about the movement of sports in a more economical direction is how everything is interconnected. Some of the huge gripes people have about Liverpool FC, Anfield, etc directly stem from the changes due to modern football. People complain about the lack of atmosphere at the stadiums, which is because people can't afford to go to matches week in and week out because tickets are so expensive, so some suit takes their ticket and doesn't contribute. People complain about the average age of the typical Premier League fan. Kids can't wait in front of the stadium to get in anymore because (a) tickets are way too expensive and (b) they don't even sell tickets at the office anymore, it's all electronic or over the phone. I posted an idea the other day about trying to get more local kids into the game and the topic was quickly deleted. People want to complain about it but don't want to make changes because they want to keep going to matches and won't take serious action until their family can't afford it without "going under." This goes right along with the ousting of locals from the stadiums across England. How many foreigners do you see on match days now compared to the amount of locals? And like I said earlier, people simply will not complain about it until they absolutely cannot afford it. People complain about the way clubs like Leeds, Portsmouth, West Ham, and even us have been mismanaged and are being destroyed from the inside by greedy owners: this is because rich corporates around the world see big name clubs as a massive money-making opportunity. I hate to sound like a downer but people are simply fighting a losing battle.

It's incredibly sad the way corporate greed has bastardized sports. People on this board make fun of "Yankee" sports all the time, saying there is no atmosphere at the games and people aren't true fans over here. I can personally assure you the passion Americans feel for their teams is on par with the passion you see from fans in the UK. However, you just don't see these people at the games anymore. They're watching it at bars near the stadium. It is absolutely astonishing the number of people who pay for a parking pass at the stadium only to sit outside their car and watch the game on a small TV in the parking lot (tailgating) just so they can clutch to a small piece of the atmosphere. It's really sad but it's only a matter of time before what's happening here happens in England, in fact, it's already started.
"I belong to a special club, I live with special people, this is a privilege, this is pure happiness." -Gerard Houllier

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Offline Xabisfeet

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Been waiting for the bubble to burst for many years.  For me it's the cost of a match ticket that's the killer.  I find it hard to justify £40+ 25 times a season.  I've gradually reduced the number I go to to about half.  Others take up the slack on the league and cup matches.  I started going regularly with my mates when I was 14/15 and it only cost me a couple of quid.  How do the new generation get to the match now?  I believe there is better value out there.  For example I went to Bangor races last weekend.  2 adults, 2 OAPs, 1 child = £30 for all of us.  At Anfield this would cost near £200!  Still, where else am I going to find the buzz of CL semi finals, Cardiff weekends etc?

Offline JohnnoWhite

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I've gradually reduced the number I go to to about half.  Others take up the slack on the league and cup matches.  I started going regularly with my mates when I was 14/15 and it only cost me a couple of quid.  

Saturday was THE football day - at 3pm an' all - none of this shite 5.30 kick-off bollux.
It was our ritual, our passion and our opportunity to live our dream through our lads wearing the shirts on the park.

'Course the game was ours back then and it was just a sport too - not a ferking part of the entertainment business...... leeching bastards.
There is nothing wrong with striving to win, so long as you don't set the prize above the game. There can be no dishonour in defeat nor any conceit in victory. What matters above all is that the team plays in the right spirit, with skill, courage, fair play,no favour and the result accepted without bitterness. Sir Matt Busby CBE KCSG 1909-1994

Offline Xabisfeet

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Saturday was THE football day - at 3pm an' all - none of this shite 5.30 kick-off bollux.
It was our ritual, our passion and our opportunity to live our dream through our lads wearing the shirts on the park.

'Course the game was ours back then and it was just a sport too - not a ferking part of the entertainment business...... leeching bastards.
I feel privilaged to have grown up on the Kop and sorry for those who won't experience this rites of passage.  In many ways going the match is better now.  In many other ways it is a pale imitation.

Offline Dr Cornwallis

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We were lucky, it remains to be seen what modern football will do to the likes of Spurs, Sunderland and even Everton, all trying to play catch-up.

Offline politico

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Excellent article -sacking OT in 2005 is the best thing to happen for me.

Sometimes it takes a really bad thing to happen to make people wake up.

Non-league football surrounded by 2,000 passionate like minded fans beats an Old Trafford infested by jester hat wearing tourists any day. Still some good lads left at OT -but most watch it in the pub- a crying shame imho.

FCUM-our club -our rules -you guys could build from scratch too-just takes determination-AFC WIMBLEDON were our inspiration.

Offline reddav72

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Excellent article -sacking OT in 2005 is the best thing to happen for me.

Sometimes it takes a really bad thing to happen to make people wake up.

Non-league football surrounded by 2,000 passionate like minded fans beats an Old Trafford infested by jester hat wearing tourists any day. Still some good lads left at OT -but most watch it in the pub- a crying shame imho.

FCUM-our club -our rules -you guys could build from scratch too-just takes determination-AFC WIMBLEDON were our inspiration.

i know quite a few lads who followed you lot home and away and are now fcum.
afc loverpool started a couple of years ago and are doing quite well.
the bubble will burst 1 day and i dont think it will be to long off, watch motd and see how many empty seats there are.
were to soft tho, derby away for me 2 years ago was £40 the same seat for a blackburn fan the week after was £20, whose to blaim? derby? or liverpool for letting them rip us off?
part of the noise!!
i was once told 'why dont you go out and meet somebody' i said 'i dont want to meet somebody. I want to meet everybody'!!

Offline Aitken Drum

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DuncMcD: "why not release a certain % of tickets each game at a cheaper price? Be specifically for kids or schools perhaps. Or maybe bring the prices down for everyone across the board?"

Approach the new ownership about that. In Boston, the Red Sox have a section with a corporate sponsor (Dunkin' Donuts) set aside for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Boston. I think it's lost cost, perhaps no cost to the kids.  It's not a big section--50 or 100 seats--so I'm sure demand exceeds supply.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2010, 09:38:57 pm by Aitken Drum »
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.--Damon Runyon

Offline Aitken Drum

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Will the "Fair Play rules" have any effect on ticket prices? I would think Fair Play rules would keep salaries down to some extent. The big expense for any club must be skyrocketing player salaries.  In baseball 60 years ago I could buy a ticket for 75 cents and a good player's salary was under $10,000, only triple what an average worker made. Nowadays an average baseball player can make a million dollars or more a season, 25 or 30 times an average salary. Granted tv generates a lot of money but that just pushes the salaries higher. It's not an easy problem.   
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.--Damon Runyon

Offline surfer. Fuck you generator.

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That is a thought-provoking post chaislip.

Offline YayaP

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DuncMcD: "why not release a certain % of tickets each game at a cheaper price? Be specifically for kids or schools perhaps. Or maybe bring the prices down for everyone across the board?"

Approach the new ownership about that. In Boston, the Red Sox have a section with a corporate sponsor (Dunkin' Donuts) set aside for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Boston. I think it's lost cost, perhaps no cost to the kids.  It's not a big section--50 or 100 seats--so I'm sure demand exceeds supply.

I posted a thread offering up this suggestion a few weeks ago, but it was deleted pretty quickly. However, I did make the mistake of suggesting putting in the kop which surely put some people off. It would be a great idea to implement at Anfield (maybe not on the kop though). Local kids deserve a chance to go see the games, learn the culture, be part of the tradition. I'm not even talking about young kids in particular either, kids from 10-18 should get the exposure.
"I belong to a special club, I live with special people, this is a privilege, this is pure happiness." -Gerard Houllier

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Offline Aitken Drum

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I don't know how this compares to Anfield.  Today the Red Sox announced ticket prices for 2011 at Fenway.  Most prices went up a few dollars. Fenway seats 37,500. 63% (23,500 seats) of seats at Fenway will be under $55 (£35) with the cheapest being the bleacher seats at $12. (£7.50)  Bleachers are like terraces, but with benches for seating.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.--Damon Runyon

Offline THELEFTBACK

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The Mail has an interesting article today having a pop at the number of seats that need to be sold to pay for a players weekly wage.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1325247/Manchester-United-fans-cash-Wayne-Rooney-paid-7407.html

Frankly the numbers are now way beyond obscene.It,sadly,looks like prices are only going to increase.
Sad times.

Offline JohnnoWhite

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The Mail has an interesting article today having a pop at the number of seats that need to be sold to pay for a players weekly wage.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1325247/Manchester-United-fans-cash-Wayne-Rooney-paid-7407.html

Frankly the numbers are now way beyond obscene.It,sadly,looks like prices are only going to increase.
Sad times.

No - your comment carries too little gravitas for me. It's not just sad times mate - it's far more like desperately depressing times for the future and for heart and soul of the game. Cannot be sustained imo.
« Last Edit: November 6, 2010, 07:08:22 am by Johnnowhite »
There is nothing wrong with striving to win, so long as you don't set the prize above the game. There can be no dishonour in defeat nor any conceit in victory. What matters above all is that the team plays in the right spirit, with skill, courage, fair play,no favour and the result accepted without bitterness. Sir Matt Busby CBE KCSG 1909-1994

Offline jayred19

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the price is stupid but we still pay it
they say are days are numbered

Offline jaymc

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the price is stupid but we still pay it

I've stopped paying it mate, went to napoli the other night because it was half the price of a league game, couldm't be arsed with the chelsea game because of the price and other stuff. There will eventually be a breaking point.

Offline caspertheghost

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What kind of work gets you the nickname Casper the ghost?

Offline Exiled109er

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Looks to me like there's an opportunity to get a message across here....  then again it might be marketing bullshit.





From: The Premier League
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Subject: Join the Premier League Fan Panel and have your say


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Offline cmh86

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I went to Prenton Park because I fancied a Saturday game the week before the Premier League kicked off. £17 was the cheapest adult ticket.

Same ridiculous it is
"Anyone who doesn't learn from Ian Rush needs shooting." Robbie Fowler

Offline Slick_Beef

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Same ridiculous it is

£17! I used to go and see Tranmere a lot with me dad when Aldo was in charge because we couldnt afford to go to anfield much. It was 3 quid for under 16s and 8 quid for an adult. They were in the first division then too. Can't believe they are charging that much now, that is pathetic.

Offline Mutton Geoff

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Every time I see a mercenary kissing the clubs badge I want to vomit!

Loyalty is a thing of the past except for the odd rarity like Carra and Gerrard. Todays players are loyal to their wallets and their agents nobody else, they feed the fans what they think we want to hear!
A world were Liars and Hypocrites are accepted and rewarded and honest people are derided!
Who voted in this lying corrupt bastard anyway

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Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.

Offline Spongebob Redpants

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And I agree with those sentiments - they've hi-jacked our game and changed it into something I don't recognise anymore. It's finished for me and many tens of thousands of former die-hards too.

I've been saying for a few years now that it's the last season I go , but always change my mind at the last and renew for anorther season .

Thinking along the same lines again , so I'll see how I feel in August .

Just not the same buzz anymore with game in general.


Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then, when you do criticise him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes.

Online ronnnie yates

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by the time we play birmingham on the 23rd april , we will of had 4 games on a saturday at 3pm  :no, its a f ucking joke , 4 games out of a possible 38 , ill be dropping a letter to the prem league and lfc to see if i get a reply , money has destroyed the game ,

Offline ThomasCampbell

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By the way West hams tickets start from just £1 for kids and £10 for adults.

Offline anfieldtours

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Even in the lower leagues now the pricing has got silly. And it's all down to sky sports and bleeding Alan Sugar. I saw he had the cheek to make a program on the finances of the prem a few moths ago, despite it being his fault. I think it said utd spend something like 90% of their income on wages (not got the best memory please correct me if someone knows better)

Offline TSC

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Said last Summer that last season would be the last time I renew the ST.  But want to at least see a full season of Kenny in charge, so renewed again this term.  Will reassess next Summer.  Basically thought the big driver re prices is basically players wages.  What can clubs do if they want to compete for the best players?  Only thing that may work would be a salary cap, but unworkable in reality.  Even if it was implemented Europe wide crafty bastards would get around it through something like image rights payments or some such bollax.

Sad state of affairs today means that even fairly average to poor players in the prem are millionaires.  Obviously not sad for the players.

Offline JohnnoWhite

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"Sad state of affairs today means that even fairly average to poor players in the prem are millionaires.  Obviously not sad for the players."


It'll be a sad day for the sustainability of football once the penny eventually drops that far too many of these half-baked, half-useful clowns have been taking the piss out of all real supporters of the game.
There is nothing wrong with striving to win, so long as you don't set the prize above the game. There can be no dishonour in defeat nor any conceit in victory. What matters above all is that the team plays in the right spirit, with skill, courage, fair play,no favour and the result accepted without bitterness. Sir Matt Busby CBE KCSG 1909-1994

Offline Mutton Geoff

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somebody came out with a comment over the weekend, the lower the league the more honest actions of the footballer on the pitch!
A world were Liars and Hypocrites are accepted and rewarded and honest people are derided!
Who voted in this lying corrupt bastard anyway

Offline frank23

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Great article, I can see hes point completly but i dont see anything but prices creeping up every year until the new ground is
built or there is a cap on players wages, Man city are another problem with there crazy wages and transfer fees, if liverpool want to win trophies they will still have to buy expensive players and pay huge wages and with liverpools matchday revenue way below that of other teams in the PL i cant see a price freeze or reduction anytime soon.  If people dont renew their season tickets the people next in the waiting list will.  Its hard on the pocket for the fans lucky enough to be giong to watch their team home and away.   
« Last Edit: August 16, 2011, 04:18:14 pm by frank23 »
Frank 23

Online ronnnie yates

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lets hope the pompey landlady gets things started , so we can reclaim the game , ;),i live in hope ,

Offline Spongebob Redpants

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lets hope the pompey landlady gets things started , so we can reclaim the game , ;),i live in hope ,

Don't we all mate !
Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then, when you do criticise him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes.

Offline Red_Mist

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This post might be a bit long and rambling, so bear with me.

I was reminded of this thread when I went to watch some very un-modern football on Saturday, and got to thinking about WHY we go to watch football in the first place. The location was La Cruz (The Cross), home of Union Club Ceares, a Spanish side based in Gijón that plays in the Tercera Division.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Spanish system, there’s La Liga, La Segunda, La Segunda ‘B’ (with four national leagues or groups) and the Tercera (with 18 regional leagues or groups). So the Spaniards share our post-Premier League love for confusing logic when it comes to naming their leagues. UC Ceares are in the Tercera (3rd) Division which, despite the name, is the 4th tier of the Spanish League system. But as the pyramid spreads out a lot quicker and wider than in England, Ceares are only three promotions away from playing Real Madrid and Barcelona, despite being roughly the Spanish equivalent of Prescot Cables.

So why was I there? And what was it like?

A few years ago we moved to Gijón, a large port city in Asturias on the north coast of Spain, and a place I’ve come to love. It’s a place of strong traditions and stark contrasts. Surrounded by rolling green hills that wouldn’t look out of place in Wales, it also has some pockets of heavy industry that are like Teesside...on steroids. Working class and socialist to the core, it’s where the Asturian coal that is mined in the mountains is brought down and loaded onto cargo ships.

The city was one of the last to fall during the Civil War and the powerful Trade Unions defied Franco until a final savage bombardment from warships parked in the bay killed around 2,000 people and brought the city under the control of the new regime. Events like that inevitably leave their mark on a place; the Trade Unions are as strong as ever and the numerous fiestas and carnivals (that symbolise the opposition to those years of dictatorship, during which they were banned) are celebrated with boundless enthusiasm. These intensely proud people are Gijonese or Asturian first and Spanish a distant second.

If some aspects of this remind you of another port city in the north-west of England, it won’t come as a surprise to learn that there are many followers of Liverpool FC in Gijón; although I’m not naive enough to believe that much of this isn’t down to Rafa and our mini-Spanish Revolution of a few years ago as opposed to some shared ideology.  Whatever the reason, I found myself watching a lot of football (Liverpool on the TV and Sporting Gijón at their ground ‘El Molinon’) with a new group of Spanish mates.

Last year, this group of mates decided that modern football was becoming too sterile and too expensive and that the players were overpaid and...well...just a bunch of “hijos de puta” basically. You still get a great atmosphere generated at El Molinon, but seeing the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo rolling around on the floor turned their collective stomachs. They stopped going to the big games and sold their season tickets for these matches to help fund the rest of the games and some away days. They wanted something different that went back to the grassroots of the game. So when an opportunity arose out of the blue to actually run a football club, they jumped at the chance and one of them, Alberto, was duly sworn in as ‘El Presidente’ of Union Club Ceares, the team that plays in his local barrio.

Fast forward a year and they are having the time of their lives. As President of the club, Alberto was able to appoint whoever he liked into the main positions within the club, but it really works as a kind of collective where everyone chips in, be it selling tickets in the ticket office, pouring beers in the bar, playing the half time music, or sweeping up after the match and washing the kit. The half time and pre/post-match music incidentally is brilliant – The Buzzcocks, The Undertones, The Clash etc, really doesn’t feel like Spain at all, but this is the music they like and it’s their club now, so they play it (to the confusion of a few of the old timers). The President doesn’t get away with avoiding the work either. Whilst having a pre-match beer with him recently, he suddenly jumped up and said he had to go – he’d remembered the white lines on the pitch needed painting!

It’s all a bit chaotic and amateurish then, but all the better for it in my mind. A season ticket costs 40 Euros which is ridiculously cheap given that the standard of football isn’t too bad. It’s one Euro for a beer, with no restrictions on drinking it in the ground, so a season of football doesn’t dent the pocket too much, although the liver takes a good beating.

On Saturday then, I was feeling good as I strolled up to La Cruz to watch UC Ceares take on CD Cudillero.  I passed the recently installed sign over the entrance to the ground “Esto Ye La Cruz” - “This Is The Cross”, a little tongue-in-cheek joke based on the famous sign over our tunnel and designed to frighten the opposition (although like at Anfield these days, it doesn’t seem to work!) I knew that the match would be almost (but not quite) of secondary importance to the business of drinking beer and sharing a few laughs and I couldn’t help but think this is how football should always be.

I realise for many Liverpool fans, that’s the way things still are. I read an innocuous but (for me) great little post on this website recently, by john_mac I think it was, that went something like (paraphrasing) “a great day out, brekkie, a few pints, a few laughs, great win for the reds, a few more cans, then home” that made me feel a bit homesick and long to be actively following the Reds again. That’s what football's all about and it still exists (as long as your pockets are deep enough).

In the event, the Ceares match on Saturday was great and a late winner for the struggling home side was celebrated wildly by the 500 supporters packed into this tiny ground (they used to get about 150 last season, but an advertising campaign in the city’s bars coupled with the attractive ST prices has more than tripled that). I’ll still be missing some Ceares games when they clash with Liverpool on the telly, but my live football watching is sorted for the coming season. I'll never be a 'fan' in the same way I support Liverpool, but with each game the emotional involvement in the result increases; and when that is added to the all round experience, I'm happy.

Maybe the likes of Marine and Prescot will reap the rewards of an over-priced Prem; they might be already for all i know. But if they're anything like Ceares, they'll understand the value of community and realise that top flight football is gradually losing that link; a message that is underlined by the huge piece of professionally done graffiti that’s been painted, in English, on the outside wall of the stadium in letters five feet tall – “AGAINST MODERN FOOTBALL”  :)

Offline JohnnoWhite

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A bloody good read that was Red lad!  Good luck to Union Club Ceares and all their pissed-off - and maybe pissed-up - fans.
There is nothing wrong with striving to win, so long as you don't set the prize above the game. There can be no dishonour in defeat nor any conceit in victory. What matters above all is that the team plays in the right spirit, with skill, courage, fair play,no favour and the result accepted without bitterness. Sir Matt Busby CBE KCSG 1909-1994

Offline Red_Mist

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Cheers Johnno. They're definately the latter, right bunch of pissheads, great set of lads though.

They must be going through similar to some of your fans when they set up FCUM. Can't get much better than running your own club.

Offline JohnnoWhite

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I think the FCUM experiment went OK for the first couple of years but I've not kept any special tabs on how many of the originals remain true followers now.

I do remember dicussing with one of the original faithful 3 or so years ago now that whilst it's great to be able to sit down in the club bar after the game with the lads who've been out performing on the park (and it really is great because they're the same as you - just ordinary working class lads that you can connect to) . But as the side improves over time and develops/signs better quality players then that higher quality always commands higher pay. Higher pay leads to higher prices ...leads to disaffection over time .....leads to separation of the "new breed" of player from the fans - and there you have the nub of the issue.

The journey to where the Premiership is right now has begun - ALL OVER AGAIN. 
« Last Edit: November 17, 2011, 11:08:13 am by Johnnowhite »
There is nothing wrong with striving to win, so long as you don't set the prize above the game. There can be no dishonour in defeat nor any conceit in victory. What matters above all is that the team plays in the right spirit, with skill, courage, fair play,no favour and the result accepted without bitterness. Sir Matt Busby CBE KCSG 1909-1994

Offline Red_Mist

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Yeah, I can see how that could happen, especially with the success that FC initially had and rapid progress up the leagues. I've got a mate who was there from the start as well but I haven't seen him for a while to ask what it's like these days.

I don't think Ceares need to worry too much about that spiral just yet. Promotion up to the segunda B is tough (lots of play offs), plus they started the season with a 7-1 defeat and have struggled since, although they've at least got a couple of wins under the belt now. I asked the club President if he was worried about relegation & he said they'd been up and down since they were formed in 1946, so no he wasn't bothered. His main concern was that not all the grounds in the league below had bars!