When Saturday Lunchtime Comes

It’s clearly written by one of our American cousins, what with references to ‘plays’ and the use of the word ‘colors’, as opposed to colours. But it’s still very good. In my case, it confirms what I already know about myself and other armchair football fans: I am not a real football fan at all. While I am still keenly interested in what goes on at the only club I have ever supported regularly, Bristol Rovers, much of the emotional attachment I had has dissipated. Nothing has replaced it.

My first love will always be Feyenoord, the pride of Rotterdam. The first team I ever saw ‘live’ when my uncle took me to De Kuip well over half a century ago. When I attended a game in person in 2023, after a very long absence, I was all but overwhelmed by memories I thought had faded away. I didn’t just want Feyenoord to beat Go Ahead Eagles: I was wholly invested. This was my club, my team, except that it wasn’t really. I hardly ever go to games. No fan doesn’t go to games.

Liverpool is the team I follow these days, but again not as a fan. Not only do I never attend games, I have no desire to attend any. Something that isn’t true about my love of Feyenoord. If I could afford to fly to the Netherlands on a regular basis, I’d do it. I can’t explain why I get excited about a team I palpably don’t support, other than through buying overpriced merchandise, but I do. And I get disappointed when they lose. They difference, though, appears that the euphoria and disappointments don’t linger with Liverpool, as they did when I went to watch Bristol Rovers. One thing that the Rovers gave me that Liverpool don’t is a sense of connection, of being part of the club. Even a club that despite its overseas ownership model has a heart, I could never be a part of Liverpool and I would honestly question whether any of the top clubs in the world, never mind just in England, still have a beating heart. Money has done that.

I grew up in an era when footballers were, generally speaking, relatable to my life. While they earned more than I did – and frankly it would have been difficult to earn less, given the salary package of a lowly civil servant – they still lived in normal houses, like you and me, and some even drove unflashy cars. You could talk to them, too, and even pose for photos. This still happens at lower level clubs like Bristol Rovers, but even here players earn vast sums; one I know of, not an exceptional superstar, trousers around £370,000 a year. A fortune in my eyes. The superstars of the game earn that in a week.

I heard a story about the contract negotiations between Liverpool and their world class full back Trent Alexander Arnold, where it was said that the parties were about £70,000 apart. My highest ever annual salary was slightly more than a third of that amount, yet we are told that this is a weekly amount. We are led to believe by “sources’ that unless the football club pays the player an additional £70,000 a week, he will walk away. That’s nearly £3.7 million a year. I do not blame the player and his agents for demanding such obscene sums if the clubs are prepared to pay it, but is it just me who thinks this is madness?

There is a great book about the state of modern football called Can We Have Our Football Back? by John Nicholson. Everyone who cares about the game should have a copy. Anyway, he makes what to me is a very valid point. £70,000 per annum is a very tidy annual salary indeed. Yet few lower league players own that “little” these days. Football is totally out of kilter with the way the rest of us live our lives.

According to The Sun (and I don’t link to The Sun for obvious reasons), your average League Two (Fourth Division) player is on £2000 a week. It is not, adds the scandal sheet, unusual for a National League (non league) star player to earn as much as £2500 a week. Your average Championship (Second Division) player is on circa £10,000 a week but, so the paper alleges, Leeds United have at least four players on over £50,000 a week. No wonder it costs a small fortune, and indeed a large fortune at some clubs, to be an active supporter. No one is calling for players to take the bus to the game, as I know many footballers did in the 1950s, but the economic distance between your average punter and your average player is a chasm these days. The whole thing is bonkers. So, who is to blame?

Well, it’s me and you. It’s me, buying merch from the likes of Liverpool but mainly Feyenoord and it’s me paying extortionate subscriptions to Sky and TNT. It’s you, paying extortionately priced tickets, overpriced concessions and accepting that your club is owned by people who, by and large, have no interest in the club, beyond what they can make out of it and allowing the supporter, who should really be the lifeblood of the club, no say in it at all. If we accept some or all of these things, it’s all down to us.

I rather doubt that anything is going to change. Supporters have meekly accepted TV deals that screw around with kick off times in exchange for TV money, as they have accepted everything else. Frankly, who can blame them? The power at most football clubs is closely guarded at the top and none of it trickles down to the proletariat. We give up. We support “the shirt”, even if it is really owned by someone else. We can no more change football club policy than we can government policy. Probably less so. Situation hopeless. See you in the pub at 12.00 noon on Saturday, unless it’s a 12,30 kick off.

I am not a fan anymore and I don’t want to be. I miss the friendship and camaraderie in the pub and on the terraces, but nothing else. Despite there being more football than ever on Pay TV, I watch less of it than ever. I watch Liverpool whenever they’re on, but not Feyenoord, the team I’d really want to watch because they are behind yet another paywall and I’m just not going there. I’m more likely to get rid of the lot rather than take out yet another subscription. I’ll do things that fans do, like buy and wear the merch, but that’s for practical reasons just as much as supporting the club. If I am going to buy a nice coat, I might as well get one with Feyenoord written on it.

Generally speaking, I am not as enthusiastic or passionate about “my” teams anymore. I am certainly not going to schedule my days in order to avoid missing games – and I did that for a very long time. Football has changed in many ways, some good, some bad, but I have changed, too. I’m not a fan these days and certainly not a supporter in the accepted sense, as so accurately defined by AI (above).

When it comes to Marx, I am normally more Groucho than Karl, but I feel the latter got it right with this quote: “Everything flows, everything changes; there is nothing absolutely stagnant, nothing unchangeable in the processes of actuality.” That’s a fair summation of my attitude to football, too. It’s changing, all the time, and the more it changes, the less I care. And for someone who is no longer a fan, quite right, too.