Liverpool, Leeds United and West Brom fans, daytrippers and injustice - Daniel Chapman

Daniel Chapman has co-edited Leeds United fanzine and podcast The Square Ball since 2011, taking it through this season’s 30th anniversary, and seven nominations for the Football Supporters’ Federation Fanzine of the Year award, winning twice. He’s the author of a new history book about the club, ‘100 Years of Leeds United, 1919-2019’, and is on Twitter as MoscowhiteTSB.
LOCKED OUT - Elland Road, if its use is deemed safe, will be empty of fans when Leeds United return to action. Pic: Getty.LOCKED OUT - Elland Road, if its use is deemed safe, will be empty of fans when Leeds United return to action. Pic: Getty.
LOCKED OUT - Elland Road, if its use is deemed safe, will be empty of fans when Leeds United return to action. Pic: Getty.

English football has a plan. We have dates for the Premier League and Championship to resume. We have dates for them to end. We have kick-off times and broadcasting schedules. We also have 2,000 new cases of Covid-19 every day, but dwelling on that would only harsh the buzz of a sunny government briefing.

What we don’t have yet are venues. Merseyside Police seemed bemused to find out that the trusting relationships they’ve built with local fans aren’t enough to guarantee games behind closed doors at Anfield. The temptation of gathering outside the famous Kop to, well, to look at the outside of the famous Kop, and maybe sing at it, is being deemed more than the average Liverpool fan can resist. For the good of themselves and others, the Premier League may yet move their home games to neutral venues far, far away. I wish them well in their search for a town without Liverpool fans.

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It might be easy for us to chuckle and shrug about the scousers’ enforced neutrality, until someone points out Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion are on a list for the same treatment. It’s always easy to ignore injustice if its victims are wearing a different coloured shirt, but it’s harder to walk on by what’s happening on Anfield Road when a police cordon is blocking your route to Elland Road.

All these plans and arrangements need time and attention, and presumably the effort going into preventing football fans from coming together to experience the phenomenal delights available on the Lowfields is distracting the authorities from thwarting the entirely unforeseeable desire daytrippers have found for beaches, parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.

This weekend’s coastline echoed with the rustle of sunbathers protecting their faces from the sun with the daily papers, sweating through the ink of headlines bemoaning all the football hooligans who can’t be trusted to stay home and behave themselves. It’s always easy to ignore injustice if its victims aren’t carrying a bucket and spade.

While great effort is going into keeping fans away from matches, equal effort is going into pretending they are there when they’re not.

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Broadcasters who have sunk billions into the sport, and harassed and pushed to show it again, have taken a look at Germany’s ghost games and realised the spectacle they’re spending so much to show is a bit boring without the crowds. The mission now is replacing them, by any means necessary, before somebody gets a glimpse of the Premier League emperor’s bare behind.

Crowd noise, either in-stadium or on TV; CGI crowds, cardboard cutouts, inanimate lifesize dolls, supporters of MK Dons; anything and everything is being grabbed out of the ‘Let’s Pretend’ box to take the place of real football fans.

It already sounds dystopian before you realise that our real experience will not be the inspiration. If they answered honestly, broadcasters would admit the appeal of hearing crowd noise through the TV is directly linked to the volume and rudeness of the profanity being shouted, that the reason ‘limbs’ celebration videos go viral is the visible risk that some limbs will stay behind beneath the bucket seats. It would be folly to say that in public, though.

Instead they’ll get their ‘inspo’ from a mood board combining Mexican waves from Soccer Dog 2: European Cup, that pop video Reading FC’s co-owner did, and the Sheffield Wednesday band. Three cheers for a jolly good goal!

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All of which ought to be an argument for recognising the vital part match-going supporters have in making the Premier League and Championship appealing to global audiences; that the superstars being paid hundreds of thousands every week are not the real reason people are tuning in.

If football’s business model will rebalance in a post-coronavirus world, clubs ought to shift the salaries they’re paying out of broadcast income from the players, who can be replaced, to the supporters, who can’t. Keep an eye out for television contracts being renegotiated downwards if games continue behind closed doors.

But also keep an eye out in case when cookie-cutter crowds are tried, they’re liked. Why should TV companies be cutting the crowd volume all the time and apologising for obscenities, yelled by people who can’t even be trusted not to stand around outside football games when it’s an urgent matter of national health?

Ask the average person if pre-recorded crowds singing to a script isn’t a better idea, and they’ll be all for barricading them footie hooligans indoors.

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Then leave them to defend their two-metre patch of beach, pulling down their facemask and tutting through the smoke of their disposable barbecue, because they don’t need football fans spoiling things for everybody else.