- Sep 9, 2014
- 4,251
- 11,118
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12448117/the-premier-experience
Very long article that I could not place in here, but I've quoted some of my favorite or thought-provoking parts. I liked the way it was graphically presented, and there were many videos throughout the article that I haven't watched yet. I just thought it would be an interesting article to discuss because I know I'm not the only American here on a UK website...and some of the quotes were interesting.
Very long article that I could not place in here, but I've quoted some of my favorite or thought-provoking parts. I liked the way it was graphically presented, and there were many videos throughout the article that I haven't watched yet. I just thought it would be an interesting article to discuss because I know I'm not the only American here on a UK website...and some of the quotes were interesting.
I visited the wasteland that once was the old Victoria Ground, where Stoke played for 119 years, and talked to fans everywhere about the continuing replacement of century-old stadiums.
"The Victoria Ground was my second home. I drive past it now and think what fantastic memories I had there. ... I think if you asked the average Stoke fan, 90-95 percent will say it makes them sad.''
RIVALRIES
LONDON -- A Tottenham fan noticed me taking notes in the cramped concession area at White Hart Lane and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was an American journalist with ESPN writing about the Premier League experience.
"You're using a red pen,'' he said, pointing down toward my hand. Actually, the only red bits were the cap and a hotel chain logo along the side, but apparently that was sufficient to arouse his suspicions that I bore dangerous allegiance to despised Arsenal. I assured him the pen marked no Arsenal loyalties whatsoever and that I had merely taken it from my hotel room. He accepted this explanation.
Still, his comment stuck with me. How heated is a rivalry where even the color of your pen is considered an issue?
......
Tottenham, meanwhile, hates Arsenal (I bought a shirt that read, "Keep Calm and Hate Arsenal''). And neither side would ever consider changing allegiances.
"No, you don't do that. No! Noooo!!!!'' said Katrina Law, co-chair of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust. "You can change your religion. You can change your sex. You can change your partners. But you can't change your football team. They've got you for life. We're like no other brand of customer. We're so loyal. That's it. They've got us.
"It's really tribal. It's our national sport and we're really passionate about it. We're very territorial. In a weird way, if I know someone is a Spurs fan but I've never met them before, instantly they've got brownie points in my book. They start at plus-10. And they have to be a real idiot for me not to like them. But if someone says, 'You know, Jim is an Arsenal fan,' he starts at minus-10 and then he has to work his way up. It's so ridiculous.''
So it surprised me when Tottenham fan Sarah Gallen told me her boyfriend roots for Arsenal. She said they get along very well apart from days when the two teams play each other. "It's absolute hell.''
Asked to choose between the Spurs or her boyfriend, Gallen said she would pick Tottenham. "I've been in a relationship with this club longer than I've known him.''
Told about this relationship, Arsenal fan Robbie Lyle asked why she would be dating an Arsenal fan, then quickly added, "Because she knows we're quality.''
Lyle is the creator and director of ArsenalfanTV.com, a very popular website devoted to Arsenal and their fans. "There are a lot of teams I hate,'' he said. "I hate Chelsea. I hate Manchester United. But Tottenham is our main rival. They're only just up the road from here so we're rivals in every sense of the word.
“YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR RELIGION. YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR SEX. YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR PARTNERS. BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE YOUR FOOTBALL TEAM.”
- KATRINA LAW, CO-CHAIR OF TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR SUPPORTERS' TRUST
"To be a proper Arsenal fan, you have to hate Tottenham, and to be a proper Tottenham fan, you have to hate to Arsenal.''
Hey, imagine "Star Wars'' without Darth Vader and stormtroopers.
Here's another thing. While there are a wide array of colors in American sports teams (I grew up a Minnesota Vikings fan because I liked their purple helmets), most of the Premier League club colors I saw were either red or blue (or had red and blue trim). And as this superb ESPN commercial shows, the rivalries sometimes are between Reds (Liverpool, Manchester United) and Blues (Everton and Manchester City).
"There is nothing red in my house. I don't ever wear anything red. It's a disgusting, disgusting color,'' said Tottenham fan Alex Richings, (whose team wears white with blue trim). "I got married two Sundays ago and my wife wanted red bridesmaids dresses and the engagement was almost off. Luckily, she saw sense.''
Then again, everyone finds it within them to hate Manchester United.
I made my way to Old Trafford as part of a Stoke City fan convoy... Whenever United pulled off a great save or nice shot, it seemed to me that the home fans next to the Stoke section were just as excited -- perhaps more so -- to turn and taunt us as they were to shout encouragement to their own players. And I got that impression at other stadiums, as well. Away fans always do their damnedest to out-chant, out-sing, out-shout and out-passion the home fans.
"The people who go away, feel it more, want it more,'' a Stoke fan told me on the charter bus. "We're going into their area and we want to prove that we're still the best, one of the loudest compared to them. We want to shut them up, put them in their place.''
I also bought a silly Spurs chicken head cap at the Tottenham game. When I asked a fan whether I should wear it to the Arsenal game three days later, he shrugged and said, "It depends on how good your doctor is.''
CHANTS
LONDON -- The match between Tottenham and Everton is about to begin at White Hart Lane and the home fans are tuning up for their support. "Oh, when the Spurs ... go marching in,'' they sing, "Oh, when the Spurs go marching in! I wanna be in that number, when the Spurs go marching in!''
Mind you, they are not singing this in the stands. Rather they are singing this in the cramped bathroom while we are standing four to five deep in line.
Premier League fans love their chants and songs.
...
Tottenham fans joyously sang a particularly catchy little ditty at least a half-dozen times during their match and several times more in the pub after the game. Fortunately, one supporter helpfully recited them to me slowly enough that I could write them down:
"When I was a little boy,
My mother bought be a little toy.
An Arsenal fan on a little string.
And she told me:
'Kick his f---in' head in!
F---in' head in! F---in' head in!
Kick his f---in' head in!"
That's the second thing about the chants and songs. Some run afoul of ESPN/Disney standards. Some are chanted and sung by multiple teams. As I wrote about stadiums, away fans love to chant "Is this a li-brar-ree? Is this a li-brar-ree?" to mock the relative quiet of home fans. Tottenham supporters are just one of many who sing "When the (Fill in the Club Name) Go Marching In." They and others also sing to "Glory, Glory (Name of Club)" to the melody of "Glory, Glory Hallelujah!" Another is to single out an opposing player for either an insulting chant (if he's on another team) or sing his praise (if he's on the home team), sometimes to the tune of "Volare."
STADIUMS
STOKE, England -- Stoke City played at the Victoria Ground for 119 years, competing there from Queen Victoria's reign into Tony Blair's term as prime minister. And then in 1997, they moved into the all-seater Britannia Stadium about a mile away at the edge of a motorway...
Virtually nothing is left of the old grounds. Several Stoke fans referred to the area as a wasteland, and for good reason. A shopping cart, beer cans, a fading plastic chair and wine bottles are scattered among the weeds. About the only remaining sign of the stadium's footprint are two broken and rusting support beams. I could not find a single plaque or marker noting that this was Stoke City's home for nearly 120 years.
"It's a shame that there is nothing really marked,'' said Dave Barker, who twice has camped out in a tent on the Old Victoria Ground. "It's one of the oldest football clubs in the world. Why can't we have recognition of what is ancient?
"This was the heart and soul of the town. Every Saturday, it was chock-full. The businesses were thriving. People would go in to the businesses before and after the match. The old Victorian pub and hotel -- that was thriving. It was where everyone used to meet. It was unreal. But now it's closed up and for sale."
"It destroyed the town itself. The life and soul has disappeared from it," Barker continued. "I'm distraught."
I never saw a match at the old Vic. I never saw a game from there on TV. Never saw a photo or any reference to it. Simply put, until my Premier Experience tour, I had never heard of it. Nevertheless, as I stand here looking at the vacant land and imagining the fans who gathered here so often for longer than Fenway Park or Wrigley Field have stood -- for roughly half the history of the United States -- I feel nothing but sadness.
...
"That's the thing about having a stadium and keeping a stadium. There are a lot of football club that are changing stadiums these days, but as soon as you lose that, you lose your home, you lose your history, you lose your traditions."
The infamous Hillsborough tragedy, where 96 fans were killed and more than 700 others were injured at the Liverpool-Nottingham Forest FA Cup semifinal in 1989, changed everything in English football. After Hillsborough, the Taylor Report investigation forced teams in the new Premier League to eliminate standing terraces for safety reasons and go to all-seater stadiums (which always have been the norm in America).
This has been a good move overall, but it has had some disappointing aspects for fans.
Stadiums are much safer. Parents feel more comfortable bringing their children to games. You can sit down (what a concept!). Restrooms are marginally better. (Emphasis on marginally.)
The negative, according to older fans, is that all-seaters have radically changed the match atmosphere. Supporters are much quieter, less energized. Rather than standing and jumping, motivated by all their fellow fans, they now sit on their hands and watch silently. I heard away fans chanting, "Is this a library! Is this a library!" at almost every stadium, because the home fans have become quieter and the atmosphere more corporate. They are referred to as the "prawn sandwich brigade," though I'm not sure anyone actually eats such a thing.
"Did you bring a pillow?" Arsenal fan Deniz Unsal asked me before a match at the Emirates.
Rising ticket prices have changed things, as well, though there are groups pushing for a lowering of prices (yeah, good luck with that). Liverpool fan Martin Gander used to bring an orange crate to Anfield so he could stand on it in the back of the children's section and see the games better. He recalls tickets priced at 10 pence (less than $3 today when accounting for inflation) for a European Cup final. When I bought a ticket for Tottenham, the price was $87.
"Unfortunately, it's priced out a lot of local fans," Gander said. "It's wrong."
...
"I started going to Spurs games in the late '70s, and most people [at the matches] were my age. And most people now are still my age at matches," said journalist and Tottenham fan Martin Cloake, who wrote "Taking Our Ball Back: English Football's Culture Wars." "So, it's my generation that grew up with the informal kind of culture. To be honest, we got fairly streetwise with the things that went on, as well, and now we're the people who can afford the season tickets and have the credit cards and have got the organization ability to call up in advance."
If Cloake was a 14-year-old now, he says, and had to choose between the price and hassle of going to a match or playing games on his computer, he might choose the computer. Or perhaps his parents would take him, as opposed to the 1970s and 1980s, when attending matches was a dodgy thing.
"I wouldn't have been bringing my two kids back then. No, no way, because it wasn't a family sport then," Bryan Bunch told me, with his family in tow to an Aston Villa game. "It was more about men coming and having a drink, having some pints. Now it's more of a family game. The kids will tell you it's really enjoyable."
One question is whether the atmosphere at the old stadiums really was that much better or whether it is just aging supporters pining for their youth -- when, as is the case with almost all of us, they were more energized.
"There are a lot of fans who still have a nostalgia for the old stadium," Robbie Lyle told me outside Emirates Stadium, which replaced the old Highbury stadium. "And I still remember a lot of good times at the old stadium. But this stadium is incredible. I mean, for a big guy like me, I'm comfortable in my seat.
"I think we had to progress from there. I used to sit in the North Bank at Highbury, and if you sat near the top toward the back of the stand, you could hardly see the pitch at the upper end. This is just a massive improvement on that stadium. And for me personally, I'm glad we moved. We just need to get some more trophies to make it into a more incredible place. We need to create some memories here. That's the only problem at the moment: The memories haven't been that great."
West Ham has been playing at the Boleyn Ground/Upton Park for 111 years. In two years, though, the club will become the latest to say goodbye to its old grounds by moving into Olympic Stadium, about three miles away.
Fans are mixed on the move. On the one hand, they don't want to leave a stadium that has been their home for more than a century (imagine Red Sox fans leaving Fenway or Cubs fans leaving Wrigley). Nor do they look forward to the almost certain increase in ticket prices that comes with such moves. On the other hand, they hope the increased revenue from a larger stadium with additional (and more expensive) seating will help the club sign better players and improve its record. Plus, there will be much-improved restrooms.
Compared to the wave of retro-ballparks in America, I found the interior of Premier League stadiums to be rather drab and confining. The concourses were generally small and cramped. Unlike so many baseball stadiums, such as Seattle's Safeco Field, you could not view the match from anywhere in the concourses, either. It is more about sitting in your seat and taking in the match than wandering the grounds and taking in the architecture (and concessions).
....
And a crucial and refreshing aspect is that many Premier stadiums still are very much a real and vibrant part of the neighborhood, just like Wrigley Field. Step off the Tube, walk down a street filled with housing, chimney-topped roofs, shops and the occasional church and, boom, there you find a stadium that not only adds life and character to the community, it is a major part of it.
But will changing stadiums improve the team? It would raise revenue and allow teams to sign higher-salaried players, but there are still the same number of teams in the league. This is sport: No matter the average revenue, some teams still have to lose.
"Sometimes, the team suffers when you move to new surroundings," Leach said. "There is a settling in period. We saw that with Arsenal. They left Highbury, a great traditional football ground, and they moved to the Emirates. And in nine years, they've won one trophy. Before that, Arsenal was winning trophies every other season. So, the settling in period for them as been difficult.
"Emirates is a nice stadium, it's a big stadium; but at this moment in time, it's a young, unsuccessful stadium. And that's what people see when they go. There's no history. Highbury doesn't exist anymore."
Leach pointed toward the ground and showed where the club planted a time capsule on the 100th anniversary of Old Trafford. "It will be opened in another 100 years," Leach said. "And there will be another one planted then. We'll be here 200 years. Three hundred years. We'll never leave."
Which is not to say Old Trafford has not been upgraded over the years. The original tunnel through which players once entered the pitch remains, but is no longer used as a team entrance. For me, Fenway Park's modernizations have much more of a distinct, old-time feel. Or perhaps that's simply because I don't know what Old Trafford was like in 1930. (For me, Anfield had more of that feel. And interestingly, Liverpool FC is owned by Fenway Sports Group.)
I visited eight teams on my Premier League tour, and by far my favorite was Villa Park in Birmingham, where Aston Villa has been playing for 119 years. The stadium has rich character, beginning with stained glass windows, something usually reserved for churches and cathedrals. But that's what our stadiums should be, cathedrals rather than corporate headquarters.
When I asked a passing Aston Villa fan what he would think if the club ever left Villa Park, he simply shook his head and says that will never happen.
"That's your heritage. That's your life," he said. "It's tradition. It's your family. If people grieve in a chapel, if they grieve in a church there's always another chapel or church somewhere they can go."
Changing stadiums, however, he said is impossible.
If only he were correct.
Pick a team to hate (I wound up choosing Arsenal, only because the Tottenham supporters were so friendly).
