Week 24: Artificially Created Fans Are No Laughing Matter
The Premier League is back in full swing, the EFL play-offs have started and there are restarts in football leagues across the world. Signs that things are, ever so slowly, beginning to get back to some kind of normal? Whatever that means these days.
Viewing-wise, I resisted the Bundesliga matches altogether when they began playing again. I simply wasn’t THAT desperate but when the EPL matches started last week, I thought I’d give them a go. It was football after all, and even without fans, it couldn’t be that much different could it?
As a fan of a lower league club, I’ve seen and heard my fair share of mostly empty and very quiet stadiums over the years. So I felt well prepared. I overestimated just quite how much.
It was not only very different but it was substandard.
One step up from a glorified training match played in full kit, the various designs, flags or cardboard cut outs in the seats tried hard to mask the fact that something was missing but like the slightly stilted commentary, it wasn’t totally convincing. The piped-in sound also attempted to disguise the obvious missing link but there’s no getting away from it; football and fans go together like a horse and carriage.
The audience reaction has been mixed, although what I’ve seen tends to be more negative than positive. While some were just glad to have the game back in any form, the majority of fans interviewed – some by The Guardian, for example – mainly said ‘it just wasn’t the same’ and that no matter how hard they tried to accept it, there was something off about it all.
Not everyone agrees. ‘Saying football is nothing without fans is an insult to players on park pitches’ was one scribe’s view that I read this week but instantly forgot the name of. That’s just such a lazy way of trying to appeal to all those players who play football recreationally. But all of them also know that he’s missing the point entirely.
It’s not an insult. There’s a huge difference; the millions of people playing on park pitches on Sunday mornings are participants in the game. They are playing for the joy of it, for their personal pleasure as well as being part of a team, but they aren’t playing as a form of entertainment for others.
And the few hardy souls who are there watching aren’t paying anything from £20-£120 for the pleasure.
When that’s the case, it changes the dynamic. Entertainment is a key part of the mix, in the same way it is if someone goes to the theatre or to see a stand-up comedian. They may be a fan of theatrical plays, or a particular show or comedian, but if the lines are fluffed or the jokes rubbish, there will be consequences.
A football manager might say they don’t care about playing attractive football just as long as they win, but how many managers who think that way actually remain in their job for long? And, perhaps, more to the point, how many remain in favour with the club’s fans? Remember the ‘harder to beat, and even harder to watch’ jibes that I mentioned a few weeks ago in this column when Sven Goran Eriksson took over at Gothenburg?
Even the serial winners like Ferguson, Klopp and Guardiola (Pep’s view is also that it isn’t football without fans) acknowledge the dynamic that exists between those on the pitch and those on the terraces or in the stands. The richest clubs might be able to survive without ticket revenue (one study once showed that most PL clubs could make admission free – as if – and still be very profitable) but they know that there is still no sense to alienating or taking match-attending fans for granted.
At every level, there is an unmistakable ‘you can’t have one without the other’ when it comes to professional football and fans. So when those fans aren’t there, while it doesn’t necessarily mean football is nothing, I think it’s fair to say it’s a mere shadow of its former self.
While financial pressures dictated the resumption of the Premier League and Championship seasons, the reverse financial pressures meant that the lower leagues voted to stop now and leave only the play-offs to contest so that promotion issues could be decided. The clubs knew that it wasn’t financially viable to continue playing matches without fans in attendance but I think there was a sub-conscious secondary concern – for clubs outside the promotion frame in particular – and that was ‘what’s the point?’
Who, after all, are they doing it for in the first place? None and I mean none, of these clubs would exist without fans coming every other week and paying money. When a player scores, he goes to the fans. They live and breathe the clubs, and the players know it. There isn’t some massive broadcast payment or parachute payment that will make them irrelevant; the fans are literally paying the player’s wages.
So, unless something revolutionary is going to come along and change the landscape completely, the best we can hope for is a return to fans in stadiums as soon as practically possible. But even then, there is another potential pitfall. The football fan is a very particular breed with very particular habits, and trying to stop them being that way is as dangerous as not having them there at all.
Dutch clubs, for example, can begin readmitting fans from 1 September – which is a welcome advancement – but the authorities have ruled that there must be 1.5m between fans and there can be no singing, shouting or cheering.
It’s like letting people go back to watch a stand-up comedian but not allow them to laugh.
And that’s the real point here. The reason football and fans coexist so effectively is because of the synergy of the two; the fans feed off the football, the players and managers feed of the fans.
Like the comedian, the show can still go on, but if every wise-crack, anecdote and profanity is met with stony silence, it becomes as painful to listen to as some of the misplaced crowd noises that find their way onto the live match soundtrack. But a comedian wouldn’t put up with that. They’d see the pointlessness of going forward under those restrictions and either ensure they were changed or the show cancelled.
Fans wouldn’t put up with it either. They’d either break the rules and laugh, or in football’s case ignore them and sing, cheer and shout as much as they wanted. The club then faces a tricky dilemma. Do they eject the fan(s), do they admonish them publicly, do they identify them and charge them later? Do they just let it go?
Neither matchday stewards nor the clubs will want to get caught on the wrong end of that argument. Any hopes that fans will ‘do the right thing’ or use ‘common sense’ are futile. Look at how quickly social distancing guidelines were thrown aside (by all sides) at BLM protests. Crowds make their own rules.
They have to be careful. It’s a tightrope that every league and club is going to have to tread in the coming weeks and months as it tries to find the balance between getting fans back inside and keeping them onside.
Some necessary changes will be good and probably should have been implemented long ago. Cashless payment options, pre-ordering refreshments, delivery to seats, the increased use of apps are all innovations that were in place – but not widely used – across some stadiums before the coronavirus came along. Their increased use and value will be welcomed by nearly all fans and by clubs too. The possibilities to enhance the interactions with fans are enormous.
But the possibilities to piss people off will also be widespread and easy to do. Telling fans off for standing too close to their mates, having mile-long queues at half-time or sticking a thermometer up a supporter’s arse as they enter the turnstiles will quickly make things go south.
The EFL’s rather neat slogan at the moment is ‘when we play, stay away’ to dissuade fans of either club from congregating outside stadiums while games are in progress behind closed doors. But clubs have to also ensure that supporters don’t take that stance anyway in the long-term, even after any restrictions are fully lifted.
Whatever the ‘new normal’ is, football needs to hope it can get back to something that looks like the old normal again very soon. For everyone’s sake.
Because professional football is nothing without fans.
But football fans are nothing if not creatures of habit.
Losing fans is never going to be easier than it will become in the next few months.
And that really is no joke.
words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist