Premier League Nonsense

I’m English and I love my country. I love the green rolling hills and I love the copses alive with birdsong. I love the white horses carved on the sides of gentle slopes and I love the stately homes built by oppressed workers being paid a pittance. I love the museums filled with artifacts and relics stolen from overseas during our colonial epoch.

I live the white cliffs of Dover and I love the streets of London and the distinctive rattleof the tube trains with that gust of wind as they approach a station. I love the music that has produced bands like the Rolling Stone, the Kinks and the Clash.

I love supping a quiet pint or six at some country pub with a real log fire crackling contentedly in the hearth. I love all the nutters who keep steam trains alive and the nutters who travel the length and breadth of the country following their team.

I love all that. But just because I love all that, jst because I’m English doesn’t mean I must get all excited just because Chelsea overcame a 3-1 deficit in the Champions League to be the only remaining English team.

I don’t like Chelsea. Never have, never will. They were the first team to charge one pound to stand and one pound for a programme. They had players like Ron Harris and Mickey Droy. I don’t like the element in their support who blindly follow Rangers and Linfield on sectarian grounds that many I guess don’t understand.

I don’t like their owner and his approach to football. His fondness for hiring and firing, his weakness for mannequin strikers, his short termism that strikes at the very heart of what I believe football to be.

Back in another lifetime I recall being in a pub. The William Cobbett in Farnham if you must know. It was the night of the UEFA Cup Final and Tottenham Hotspur were playing Anderlecht in the final. I was in the pub with my mates, funnily enough standing next to Aldershot manager Len Walker, and the whole bar was cheering for Tottenham.

Now there was people there who followed Chelsea, Arsenal, Queens Park Rangers, West Ham United, Portsmouth etc etc. even the odd Liverpool fan. I didn’t get it. If their team were playing Spurs they would be willing them to lose. In fact more than a few of them had probably been involved in brawls with Spurs fans over the years. Yet there they were cheering them on. Because they were English!

I’d seen us play them three times that season and we won all three. There was no way on this earth I would want them to win the UEFA Cup ‘just ‘cos they’re English.’ I’d grown up loathing them, loathing the chicken on a basketball they call a club crest, loathing their poncey Shelf, Chas n Dave and all that shite. When it came to the penalty shoot out my mates decided it was best if I went outside!

It’s the same when it comes to the national team. I never liked Phil Neal! Nothing personal, I jiust thought he looked ridiculous with that bubble perm he sported. He was part of the best team in Europe but I didn’t care.i had decided I didn’t like him and every week I was willing his Liverpool team to lose. So why the hell, come internationals, should I suddenly start cheering them on? It didn’t make sense then and it makes even less sense today. If a French team is packed with Arsenal players and they are playing England should ii support them because of the Arsenal connection or England ‘cos I’m English?

The answer is neither. International football is supposed to transcend club rivalries but I can’t let it do that. My passion is spent over 90 minutes watching Arsenal play, switching from fear and loathing to joy and elation in seconds. I have nothing left to give to a bunch of players I don’t like who play for teams I wanna see lose every week just because they are wearing the three lions on their chest.

It’s the same with Chelsea in the Champions League. The default assumption of many is because they’re English etc etc. it’s a wrong assumption. Fulham, yes. When Fulham reached the Europa Cup Final the other year I was dead chuffed for them. I didn’t become a Fulham fan for 90 minutes and I didn’t care if they won, drew or lost. It was a nice, romantic story and there’s a lot less of them in football today and Chelsea are one reason for that.

Chelsea may go into the draw for the next round but they most certainly do not carry with them the hopes and best wishes of a nation. Well, not mine at least.

# posted by Me @ 5:16 PM