Nothing against Jamie Webster himself - or how well he has done - but I just wish there could be more bite to the songs.
Football is the opiate of the people, and in many ways it helps to keep the people in their place. It is also a very powerful force and could be used for political good if better directed. The COVID lockdowns showed us the power, and bandwidth, of football - why not use that to say something bigger?
Football was meant to change after the fans turned on the breakaway Euro league. United fans stormed the pitch, then months later they're gleefully buying up Ronaldo shirts. Newcastle are now oil owned, and there seems to be no question. City are back to sponsoring themselves, after the FFP bottled their decision (fearing court proceedings that City could have drawn out for years).
Protecting their self-interest, sports journalists will only ever skim the surface of such issues, but a crowd can sing (and placard) whatever it likes, and I think they should. The Crystal Palace banner was brilliant, and the fact that the police considered prosecuting shows how near the bone it came. The 'earn it' t-shirts placed in the Liverpool changing room (after the idea of the breakaway league emerged) were powerful too, the irony being that Klopp's boys had most definitely earned their achievements - they had not bought or cheated, but developed and nurtured (from a modest net spend). They were the wrong target: false class consciousness.
Those t-shirts would have been best placed in the City dressing room, because City's financial power is unprecedented, and - in breaking rules supposed to hold them in check - amounts to cheating. City and Pep should face the 'earn' it question every week: 'earn it not buy it' would be an apt slogan.
We need to make these points from the terrace (where we are free to): we need to sing, loud and proud, so that no one misses the point, and have our voices stretch out beyond the narrow confines of football.
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