Premier League Nonsense

I have a great deal of respect for Manchester United and their manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. No matter what team you support you can’t help but admire his single mindedness and determination to continually reinvent his first eleven and still win trophies.

Even in the last few seasons when their squad hasn’t been as strong as a decade or so earlier, his teams have relentlessly, inexorably gone on to win games they shouldn’t have; it’s almost as if Sir Alex’s willpower alone has driven the team to success.

I’m also a great admirer of the way he has handled the big names. Recognizing the importance of the cult of personality in the modern game, and its importance in building the Manchester United brand around the world, Ferguson has allowed some players to be almost put upon a pedestal; treated almost differently all the while he thinks they can benefit the team and the club.

Look for example at the likes of David Beckham, Eric Cantona, Roy Keane and Cristiano Ronaldo. Each of them was the focus and image of their team, something the club has subtly encouraged while other players like Gary Neville, Michael Carrick, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs have been kept almost under wraps. The genius of the former would have counted for little without the consistency of the latter.

And who wants Gary Neville’s face on a t shirt anyway?

I’m old enough to remember the day a Denis Law back heel, nearly always prefixed with the adjective ‘cheeky’ for Manchester City sent United down to the old Second Division. That solitary season I followed United’s progress on our black and white TV as the team fought its way back to the top flight and their fans fought with everyone else, leaving a trail of destruction across the country faithfully recorded by the TV news cameras of the day.

Under their manager Tommy Docherty they played an expansive, attacking football. Gordon Hill and Steve Coppell flew down the wings while Stuart Pearson rammed home the goals. In fact, it’s hard to recall a United team that hasn’t deployed wingers effectively, think Olsen, Strachan, Kanchelskis, Sharpe and Giggs.

Even back in the 1970s, a decade after their European Cup triumph and two decades after the Munich disaster there was still an aura around Manchester United. They were no longer the force they once were but their support was still huge; home and away.

It was around that time that I became aware of the phenomena we know now as the Plastic Manc. We do a lot of this in England; say someone is not the real deal. Plastic Paddies paint shamrocks on their faces and get legless on Guiness every St Patrick’s Day without having any link to the emerald isle and during the punk rock scene plastic punks were those who dressed up at weekends but spent all week being ‘respectable.’

In short the plastics are never fully trusted or accepted by the hardcore.

It was the FA Cup Final and Manchester United were playing Southampton. United were back in the top flight while the Saints were down in the Second Division and my school, like many others around the country was wrapped up in Cup Final fever. It was after all about the only game shown live in TV.

The school I went to was perhaps an hour or so from Southampton, equidistant between London and the south coast yet there were very few Southampton fans in our classrooms. Plenty of Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham plus a sprinkling of Leeds and Liverpool. Oh and of course most of us had a soft spot for our local team, Aldershot.

But that Cup Final brought United fans crawling out the woodwork. Play times during the week before the big game we would live out our own Final fantasies on the asphalt surface, we weren’t allowed on the grass for some reason.

Of course we imagined it was United v Southampton but for some reason the United team had more players than their opponents. They had the best players and they also had the most handsome kids in the school on their side which of course attracted all the girls leaving the Southampton side low on talent, high on nerds and totally unloved in the playground hierarchy.

Things grew to a crescendo the day before the final. One lad who I shall call Bill was considered a bit of a trendsetter in our school. He was handsome so the girls loved him but he was also cool so the guys liked him as well. He was wearing adidas t shirts while the rest of us made do with plain white ones that were perhaps one fifth the price.

On the Friday he wore a Manchester United replica shirt. No one had replica shirts in those days, for half the school his cool factor went through the roof and having scored a goal he took his shirt off and swinging it in the air above his head went on a lap of honour followed by his team mates and the swooning girls all singing some awful dirge about glory and reds go marching on while the rest of us could only look on, no doubt feeling left out and all alone in the world.

Come Monday of course and normal service had been resumed in the playground. The usual suspects played football at break time while the cool kids, the handsome kids and the girls had all disappeared. United, you see, had lost.

Things haven’t changed much. Now, I’m on the other side of the world and English football, and with it Manchester United, has never been more popular. Instead of a few kids in the playground though the Plastic Mancs are everywhere. On the trains, the buses, motorbikes, offices. You name it. Go to a hospital and chances are you’ll find an English speaking doctor wanting to talk about David Beckham or Wayne Rooney while prescribing different coloured tablets.

The funny thing is that not one of them follow Manchester United because they’re successful or they have handsome players or because they are glamourous. Oh no. they just happen to support United because an uncle, a friend, a cat bought them a replica shirt. My retort to that comment is that If I buy Wigan Athletic or Swindon Town shirts for their kids they would grow up supporting those teams is usually met with a growl or a grimace or a mixture of the two.

Indeed any kind of engagement with these people is very difficult. Their input rarely extends beyond a playground taunt of ‘we won, you lost, you suck’ perhaps with a rehash of what the media may be talking about at that particular moment.

Last week, United beat my team, Arsenal, and I was forced to ensure a week of people I’d never seen before crawling out from under their rock to grunt their monosyllabic nonsense before disappearing again from whence they came. And now, with United losing at the weekend things have gotten an awful lot quieter.

Of course I have nothing against fans of other football clubs and there are some from this part of the world who do make the trip to Old Trafford, or Anfield or Stamford Bridge when funds allow. United have always attracted a support from beyond the Greater Manchester region; I recall every time I travelled north from Euston railway station trains to Manchester were often crowded with the Cockney Reds, London based fans.

It would be easier though to respect the grunters if they were to perhaps start to follow different teams. Even, heaven forbid, take a pride in and follow their local team. Then perhaps we could engage in conversations about shared experiences and the magic of attending a football match with all the culture surrounding it rather than grunting ‘we won, you lost, you suck’.

# posted by Me @ 6:20 PM