Love the game, hate the business.

Napoli fans were warned by UEFA yesterday about their conduct in last night’s match against Chelsea, regarding flares, here is the outcome…

 What were UEFA honestly expecting? Napoli sell flares outside the ground, so there is little hope that none will be set off during the game.

Following up to yesterday’s post regarding how much damage Sky Sports and other channels such as ESPN have done, FWFIN is sure you’re wondering, how can football will survive without television? We understand that it has progressed a hell of a lot, but there was football for more than a hundred years before the level of television coverage was introduced in the early 90s. Stadiums would be packed to the rafters, there would be no such thing as dwindling attendances like there is today; so what is the difference? Price is the answer. Clearly you have to make room for some inflation as with everything, but paying around £50 if not more at some Premiership grounds is nothing less than daylight robbery. A few decades ago it wouldn’t be more than a few quid and the experience would be ten times the experience as well. Which is why FWFIN will look into the ticket pricing structure of clubs and try and get them significantly reduced, one way or another and boycotts will be organised around the country.

Some football clubs are very well run, others, are not; it’s as simple as that. Some chairmen and chief executives make a mockery of the clubs supporters and it’s not right, with the fans, football is nothing and some clubs hierarchy need to switch on and realise that. The majority of clubs will argue that they do have offers in place, but even then, you have to question the motive behind them, because it’s just another way of squeezing money out of the supporter. FWFIN can see from a different perspective that at times it can be quite difficult to run a football club, but at other times, the simple decisions are just over complicated to an horrendous degree.   

Change is on the horizon, we need to take a leaf out of Germany’s book and see how the Bundesliga is run, because that is what we, in England, should be aiming for. Safe standing is incorporated, the experience for the supporters is incredible compared to what it is over here. Germany realises that football without fans is nothing, it’s about time we did.

FWFIN.

Modern football is a disease.

Long gone have the days where you could sing on terraces, even when you could stand up in seated areas and support your team without any interruption from stewards. Nowadays you’re lucky if you can sneeze and not be threatened to be thrown out the ground. Enough is enough though, if we stand as one in the stands, support our beloved team as one, as FWFIN have said previously they won’t chuck us all out, because then there would be no noise coming from the terraces, it’d just be a soulless ground, the only sound coming from the players communicating on the pitch.

The thing is though, if you go back thirty years to 1982, do you think that if you told the people that watched football in those days that all stadiums would be seated and the rules would’ve got a million times stricter, they would have believed you? Of course they wouldn’t; now do you think it’s that unrealistic that modern football grounds will try and get rid of your average working class fan with ever increasing ticket prices? What will the next thirty years hold, because just that is maybe what will happen and we will do everything in our power to make sure that is not true at all. Supporters deserve the right to be able to watch their team on a Saturday and not have to worry about doing something wrong; it should be a relaxed atmosphere, not one where you’re always looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re not in anyone’s bad books.  

Well, we say that supporters should be able to watch their team on a Saturday, however, the chances of it actually being played on a Saturday is becoming too much of a rarity these days. This is another thing that will be looked into, because it’s not fair to make supporters travel hundreds of miles for a Sunday afternoon kick off, just for the sake of television. Sky Sports and ESPN should take a long look in the mirror with some the decisions that have made over recent years, with no thought whatsoever for the supporter. Take last night for example, Carlisle played away at Brentford, which is a ten hour round trip; ten hours is gruelling enough on a Saturday, but on a Monday? It’s inhumane, it’s actually borderline farcical.

Sky Sports has to be stopped, ESPN has to be stopped, and the gulf in football has to be stopped, to mention just a few. People say that it can’t be stopped, but believe us, it can. Whether it takes years, decades or more, FWFIN will not rest until the aforementioned has been sorted once and for all! Always remember that:

Football without fans is nothing.