Is anybody else feeling completely disillusioned with the way football is at the moment?
If I'm honest, it isn't going to stop me watching it, or being a fan - but I think the money involved is just totally unacceptable. Especially when you consider what is happening in the real-world that we all live in (mortgages/rent shooting up, people can't afford food or heating, people living on the street).
The money footballers receive has been daft for a long time. £10,000 a week, then turned into £100,000 a week, which has then turned into £200,000 - £300,000 a week becoming the norm for a top players salary (this is before their contracts with Nike/Adidas etc). But now (though he is unlikely to go there) Mbappe has been offered £1.9m A DAY, to go and play in Saudi Arabia! £58m a month! It is just not right, and they shouldn't be allowed to even offer it. If the Saudi's have that sort of money available to just give away, why aren't they doing something good with it in the world!? Instead of giving it a footballer. All they are paying for is his name and image - at £1.9m a day, where is the incentive for him to actually play well?
Transfer fees don't bother me too much (though they are ridiculous too) but at least they stay in the football system for a while and the money gets passed down to the lower leagues eventually. But, I guess it still ends up in the players pockets in the end!
I went to watch Manchester Giants Basketball last year, and couldn't believe how good the players were after the game. Kids were allowed onto the court to have their photo taken with the players - who were more than happy to hang around and do so. In football, the players are ushered off by Security and you have to hang around for 1-2 hours after a game if you wanted to see them, and even then there is a barrier and security - and the best you can do is wave at them.
I even had to unfollow all the City players on Instagram over the last few weeks as I couldn't bear to look at the photos and videos they posted of them hiring luxury yachts for a week, or staying in huge Villas without a care in the world for how much it actually costs - whilst I'm sat at home getting anxious about my mortgage going up a few hundred quid a month.
I know I'm ranting - and I completely appreciate that for them to earn this amount of money they also have to train and work very hard, and accept being scrutinised by thousands of people every week, and have very little privacy when they step out of their house etc. But, I still don't think this warrants the amount of money they receive.
I'm also probably jealous, and obviously wouldn't turn it down if it was offered to me - but I would certainly give away/do some good with a large part of it, because lets be honest, who really needs that much money per week? I'd give my right bollock to get £100k a year!
It’s not that I’m disillusioned (yet) - and to anyone saying ‘we’ve just won the treble’, this clearly isn’t about City being good at the moment, it’s about football in general - but I’m worried about where the sport is going.
The average family in Britain is struggling to afford simple things like school uniforms for their kids and even food. And I really feel for those who are being shafted with mortgage increases, some are having to lose their homes because they can’t afford those increases.
Yet all football clubs want to do is squeeze as much money out of us as they can. Football clubs do not give one shit about any of us or what anyone is going through economically. They’re spending £100m on players, paying them £350k/wk and want more money from fans in every possible way. The sport needs to calm the fuck down.
There are fans at all clubs who’ve been going for decades and been the lifeblood of our clubs before these owners and boardroom members around now were even born. These owners and boardroom members need to be regularly reminded that they are simply temporary shareholders and temporary employees of football clubs that belong to the locals and the city they represent. Football clubs are part of the culture of these people and their cities. As much as some random Septic or Seoulite might enjoy watching our football clubs, they are not part of that culture.
Long after these owners and board members have left our football clubs and are just names in the history books, our clubs will [hopefully!] still belong to the locals and the city they represent and their culture.
But they don’t care. They labelled us ‘Legacy Fans’ for fuck’s sake. They might as well have called us ‘Previous Era Dickheads’, what a punch in the bollocks that label was!
Top football clubs earn enough money to allow fans to attend for free. I’m not saying that’s what they should do, but they don’t need our money, they could easily earn the few million they get from ticketing from elsewhere… for example, Düsseldorf organised sponsorship of their fans so they can attend for free. Loads of ideas could be brought forward so that long-standing and loyal, local core support of football clubs - traditionally working class and low income people - who live and breathe their clubs, aren’t just caste aside to get all those nobodies who’ll pay more coming from around the world to replace us.
And this isn’t about just City, it’s all clubs.
But specifically at City, seeing the amount of twats showing no emotion to any of our goals against Real Madrid for the CL semi was pathetic (although a few did get excited when Kroos hit the bar); while I had mates and family with either more loyalty points than me and family members who’d been going decades longer than I have, who missed out on tickets.
Look at City jumping at the chance to join the European Super League. Look at City increasing the price of tickets for 11 out of the last 13 seasons. Look at the price of matchday tickets for children at City. Worst of all, look at City’s response after what fans experienced in Istanbul!
City are just the same as everyone else - they don’t care about their core supporters. But City won’t be as good as we are now forever, the PL won’t be as big as it is now forever, and there will come a day when the boardroom sits down in a meeting and there will be a realisation and a conversation consisting of, ‘oh dear, we really should have looked after our Previous Era Dickheads better back in the 2020s, we need them back now, how will we go about that?’.
But all clubs are the same. Can the average Cockney family afford tickets for Arsenal and Spurs? And the clubs don’t give a shit about them. All they care about is money and how they can maximise profits. Who they discard along the way is neither here nor there for them.
