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. 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 Legacy Fans 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.
