Further to the recent blog on the total futility of fans walking – after – having bought tickets, as most recently demonstrated by Liverpool fans, an interesting take on the whole mess comes from Germany.
Dortmund supporter Marc Quambusch, spokesman for the campaign group Kein Zwanni (No to 20 euros), said leading English grounds have become little more than tourist destinations and branded Liverpool’s decision to introduce a £77 match ticket next season as “ridiculous”.
Dortmund fans’ innovative protest at Stuttgart’s Mercedes-Benz Arena saw the DFB-Pokal clash briefly halted when away fans, who had boycotted the first 20 minutes of the match, enter the stadium to throw numerous tennis balls on to the pitch in protest over the hosts’ ticket prices.
The tennis balls served a dual purpose.
Quambusch explained there is a saying in German – ‘great tennis’ – to describe something very good.
“This was an ironic way to say your ticket prices are very good. Also we want to say we don’t want to have a tennis audience in football stadiums. Nothing against tennis – great sport – but we don’t want a tennis atmosphere in football stadiums.”
Quambusch believes that the atmosphere at Premier League grounds has been destroyed by astronomical ticket prices.
“We are not talking about a once in a lifetime concert because Michael Jackson has come back to Earth, we are talking about an average football match,” Quambusch told Press Association Sport.
Quambusch believes the cost of following football in England has already rendered the atmosphere at top-flight clubs, once the envy of German fans, “dead”.
“When you look at England – and I love English football and I have many friends in England – but when you watch English football and the quietness in the stadium, you should say, ‘OK, that’s not what we want in Germany’.
“I’ve been to different matches, Arsenal, Nottingham, Liverpool also… In years gone by we in Germany looked to English football and said, ‘Oh that’s great, that’s what we want, this is the biggest atmosphere in Europe’, and now it’s completely dead to be honest.
“When you look in English stadiums especially, so many tourists from abroad are flying to Manchester, to London and going to Arsenal or United matches and haven’t any connection to the club they support. They’re just customers.
“But as a football club you also need fans, you need people who say, ‘OK, now my club is ruined or we have been relegated, but I love this club’.
“You can’t run a business only with tourists. The English Premier League isn’t an English Premier League, you could also say it’s just an international Premier League, because there are not so many English players on the pitch, not so many English fans in the stadium. They could play it in China.”
Quambusch wants the actions of the Liverpool fans to inspire similar protests at other clubs in England.
“We are not talking about watching football for £2 for the best seat in the stadium, but we’re talking about a fair price” he said. “The problem is that so many fans think, ‘We have to pay the players fairly’, and we are talking about £400,000 a week. Maybe that’s fair, maybe it’s a little bit more than fair.”
A quarter of the tickets for away fans for the quarter-final, which Dortmund won 3-1, were priced at more than 70 euros (£54), with almost 40 per cent costing more than 60 euros (£46).
The Bundesliga is renowned among fans in England as an inexpensive place to watch football, with many making day trips from England to Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion or Hertha Berlin’s Olympiastadion, but Quambusch says the idea tickets are cheap is not altogether correct.
“It’s right when it comes to standing tickets,” he said. “It used to be cheap also for the seats – it isn’t any more.
“And when fans, especially from Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund, are travelling away we get charged a completely different rate that’s really high.”
What we gain from this perspective might just help Premier League fans wake up to what is an increasingly depressing situation.
White Hart Lane isn’t the only stadium in the division with an atmosphere problem.
Empty seats are even quieter than fans who are too busy asking themselves if their journey was really necessary.
The recent Manchester City vs. Leicester City game (which was a top of the table clash) was littered with empty seats.
Of course there are all manner of hopeless suggestions doing the rounds.
There’s the pointless £20 is plenty campaign, which embarrassingly focuses on a minority of supporters.
And there’s the safe standing idea.
This wouldn’t be hair-brained had it not been for Hillsborough, I’d be fascinated to know which Premier League side wants be the first one to trial something with such a black connotation to it; that will see that club not only lose money on ticket revenue and simultaneously cost them more money on top in respect of stewarding and policing.
The core problem is that the Premier League clubs have allowed themselves to held hostage by a generation of mediocre footballers.
Example A: Saido Berahino is a mediocre player at a second rate club. The mere thought of him being to earn £50,000 pwk was enough for him to actually derail his own career.
Yet West Brom are still fussing about him, trying to pick up the pieces.
Example B: Daniel Sturridge is a better than mediocre player, but the truth is, he’e been entirely out of his depth since Luis Suarez left Liverpool.
He’s either spent months deliberately feigning injury or has spent months asking his mirror ‘who’s the fairest of them all’.
There are far too many other examples, in far too many other teams (including Tottenham Hotspur of course) of players taking self indulgence to an entirely new level/depth.
The core, the root of all evil here is the money.
Hardly a newsflash, but certainly a truth.
Sunderland’s Adam Johnson has just admitted to a charge of sexual activity with a child.
Just think about that for a moment.
“Sexual activity with a child?”
“Yep, that was me.”
A really effective way of encouraging bad men to flourish is to take their moral compass from them and stamp on it repeatedly.
A more common method is to get a religion to encourage men to view women as a reproductive chattel.
An equally effective trick is to drown men in with unimaginable wealth.
The whole set up needs deflating.
The only plausible solution to heal football is a UK wide wage cap which is enforced so robustly that some club owners actually jack it in entirely and sell up to people who want to own football clubs, opposed to a money printing franchise.
You do not achieve any change by making the supporters assume the burden. It will never work.
Crowds at Premier League matches have become rather a lot like the crowds that watch tennis. If anything. tennis crowds are frequently asked to keep the noise down.
The occasional ‘grass roots’ initiative (which is in fact is always just another sponsorship vehicle) isn’t cutting it.
The tens of millions sloshing about in the Premier League football clubs …drives out of the main gates in limited edition supercars.
English football needs nothing less than fumigation – and the supporters are not fit to instigate that change by holding up bedsheets.
