Football's leaders have let us down... and it has never been more obvious than now 

• We have let football change too much and let others hijack the game
• We sat back and watched ticket prices rise beyond the reach of many and saw clubs bloated on TV revenue turn our stadiums into corportate havens
• Manchester City fans booing the Champions League music before their game against Sevilla was a realisation that enough was enough
• Arsenal fans applauding Bayern Munich supporters that missed the first five minutes of their game due to a protest showed the power in solidarity 

By Oliver Holt for the Mail on Sunday

Published: 16:30 EST, 24 October 2015 | Updated: 16:32 EST, 24 October 2015

There was a time, long ago now, when we used to go to football for the freedom. The magic was not just in the drama of the game but also in the glorious disorder of it all: the swaying, the surges, the chanting and the tribalism. People who call fans ‘customers’ now would have been horrified by it.

There was a time, long ago now, when football was an escape. For some, going to the match may have been an act of rebellion, a chance to lose yourself in the anonymity of the crowd and behave as you would not have behaved at school or at work. There were rules but not many.

There was an element of danger, too, in the anarchy of the surges and the threat of violence inside and outside the ground. It was a heady, unfettered mix. For rebels without a cause, football was a chance to take a 90-minute drink of anti-establishmentarianism.

Manchester City supporters booed the Champions League anthem before the game against Sevilla

In the years that have passed since those days, the game has been taken away from its roots. We let it happen partly as a response to the Hillsborough disaster because we knew that kind of tragedy could not be allowed to happen again and that changes had to be made.

But we let it change too much. We let others hijack the game for their own ends. We sat back and watched the disenfranchisement of the traditional fans and the exile of the young from our grounds.

We sat back and watched ticket prices rise beyond the reach of many and saw clubs bloated on TV revenue turn our stadiums into havens of the corporate elite. That was why, when Bayern Munich fans made their protest against the £64 tickets for away supporters at the Champions League tie at the Emirates last week, they talked about our game in the past tense. They talked about us as a lost cause. They talked about us as an example of what must not be allowed to happen to them.

‘This kind of a price structure makes a stadium visit impossible for younger and socially disadvantaged fans,’ an FC Bayern Worldwide statement said. ‘It destroys fan culture, which is the basis of football. In England, this development has already taken place.’

And maybe that was why some fool from the ship of fools that is UEFA thought that he and his writhing, discredited organisation could bully Manchester City fans into mute obedience when its pathetic contrivance of an anthem is played before Champions League matches. Maybe he thought that we had no spirit left.

Manchester City and Sevilla players lined up before their Champions League match on Wednesday night

Manchester City fans booing the Champions League music was a realisation that enough was enough

First of all, let’s be clear about that Champions League anthem. Playing it is part of the modern American-led distrust of allowing fans to create an atmosphere before the game by themselves. It is also an absurd, self-reverential, self-congratulatory, superfluous chunk of dishonest bombast.

‘These are the champions,’ the lyrics say. Well, in most cases, no they’re not, actually. At the Etihad on Wednesday night, Manchester City were not our champions and Sevilla were not Spain’s champions. It’s an old gripe but it’s worth restating: the whole premise of the Champions League is founded on a lie.

That City fans should boo it when it is played is something to celebrate. It shows that, despite what that Bayern Munich supporters group believe, there is still some life and some defiance in our fan culture. There is still the will to repel the establishment.

UEFA deserve City’s contempt. They deserve ours, too. Remember that three years ago, UEFA fined City £25,000 because their players were a minute late returning to the field for the second half of a Europa League game against Sporting Lisbon.

Bayern Munich fans boycotted the first five minutes of their match against Arsenal in a ticket price protest

That was £8,000 more than Porto were fined after their supporters racially abused City’s Mario Balotelli during another Europa League game.

There are plenty of other reasons, too: the perception that UEFA’s Financial Fair Play policy was aimed at entrenching the superiority of the established elite at the expense of upwardly mobile clubs like City is one. The memory of 200 CSKA Moscow fans supporting their team against City in a match that was supposed to be played behind closed doors in Russia is another.

Perhaps we can add to it the fact that UEFA, like FIFA, are rapidly becoming a symbol of all that is wrong with football. Led by Michel Platini, who seems unabashed by revelations that he was paid £1.35 million by Sepp Blatter in a mysterious, off-the-books deal, the idea that UEFA should have any kind of moral authority over anyone at the moment is laughable.

Maybe it is because we have sat back for so long and allowed football to be taken away from us that some jumped-up UEFA apparatchik thinks he can bully City and their fans into obedience. Maybe, like those Bayern supporters, he thinks our fan culture only exists in the past tense now.

Thankfully, when UEFA decided to pick on City, they picked on the wrong fans. There has always been a proud iconoclastic tradition at City and it has survived the move from Maine Road to the Etihad, it has survived half-and-half scarves and prawn sandwiches and all the other changes in our football culture.

UEFA president Michel Platini has come under fire after a suspicious payment received from FIFA

Platini and FIFA president Sepp Blatter (right) pictured at the World Cup in Brazil last year

It may be, in fact, that by isolating City fans, UEFA have done us all a favour. The reaction to their dictator’s censorship, their attempt to put a red line through the thoughts of City supporters, suggested that UEFA might have unwittingly stirred something within all of us.

It was a realisation that enough was enough. Enough of having the game ripped away by charlatans and politicians. Enough of being told what not to do. Enough of being told what we should cheer and when we should sing and who we should applaud.

City fans will continue to boo the Champions League anthem. That is obvious. Let’s hope that the custom becomes a feature of our game now and that it is taken up by the supporters of other English clubs, too, by Chelsea fans and Manchester United fans and Arsenal fans.

There is power in solidarity. The way Arsenal supporters applauded the Bayern fans who boycotted the first five minutes of their Champions League tie on Tuesday gave us a glimpse of that. So have movements like Twenty’s Plenty.

Football’s leaders have failed us. That has never been more evident than it is now. Maybe that’s why the boos of City fans sound like a beautiful symphony to some of us. There has been silence for too long.

 It is said that two footballers are ready to come out as gay men. The fact that this is still considered to be worthy of front page news says an awful lot about how far the game still has to travel in its battle against homophobia.

Government to betray the legacy they 'love'

Nothing sums up the hypocrisy of politicians’ attitudes to sport more than the news that UK Anti-Doping is threatened by funding cuts.

Politicians love to pay lip-service to sport when they can piggy-back the popular excitement about an Olympic Games or an Ashes victory.

Politicians love to pay lip-service to sport when they can piggy-back the excitement around big events such as the Olympics, but the government is set to cripple one of the organisations leading battle against dopers

But in the same moment they sell off our school playing fields to property developers.

Now, when sport is engaged in an increasingly sophisticated, increasingly desperate battle against dopers and cheats, the government is set to cripple one of the organisations leading the fight.

So the next time you hear a politician talking about sport and legacy, think of this betrayal.

Comments (44)

Share what you think

• Newest
• Oldest
• Best rated
• Worst rated

 View all

The comments below have been moderated in advance.

 View all

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

Add your comment

Enter your comment

By posting your comment you agree to our house rules.

Submit Comment Clear

Who is this week's top commenter? Find out now