The Cellar Door is open: 05/08/2005

Ever since I had any interest in sport I have been a manchester united fan. It was Mark Hughes' fault. He scored an impossible goal against Oldham in the FA Cup Semi final in the last minute of extra time to bring man united back to one one and force the game to a replay. Pretty much one of those most intense moments that can happen in soccer, when the will of millions of people seems to push the ball into the goal, just from the desperation of needing it to happen so much. I still get the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up thinking of it. It was the goal that started the United domination of the nineties, because they had won fuck all decent for about 20 years before it. (they went on to win everything.) But it seems to me that there is no point anymore. And I'm not saying this because of the Glazer takeover and all this shit about buying and selling the theatre of dreams. I was a compulsive fan, watching entire matches through the medium of teletext, living in a Utd shirt, measuring my loyalty based on the amount of gear I had. If United won I was elated in the playground, If united lost, I didnt want to show my face at school. Basically, I was in love with football. But I dont blame Glazer for changing me into someone who takes a fleeting look at the score in the newspaper the next day. I dont blame him at all. I blame Chelsea, and Roman Abronovich particularly.

We used to have football teams where a few of the players were actually developed by the team. Soccer players were from the towns that they played in. They loved their club and stuck by them. And of course, nobody really ever minds when the club splashes out 20 million on some amazing striker or other and the team gets better. But this day is over. Now we have football club PLC's, companies, with goal number one being the money made on match day, not the number of scores in a game. Man Utd were definitely at least partly responsible for this trend. But the general theory is that the business side of things should never intermingle with the pitch side of things, what goes on in the boardroom doesnt have any impact on what squad is picked and how a team plays. Business is not football... But this is not the case anymore. We'll take one example, Man Utd buying Tim Howard, their american "goalkeeper". I was actually over in America when they signed this guy, and at the time, there was a huge deal about the NBA and its practices relating to player transfers. here was an outcry because more and more teams were bringing in European players to play basketball, purely to raise the profile of the basketball team in Europe. Instead of the basketball team buying the best player, they went out and got the most marketable player, the player that would do the best for the bank book and not the team. This was widely condemned and this process has been stopped. So in the middle of all this basketball fury, a few weeks before Man Utd signed the Yank keeper, I was in San Francisco, and incredibly surprised to see a large number of Man Utd jerseys all over the place! More shocked again when I found out that Man U were doing a publicity tour of America and playing 4 or 5 games across the US. Then magically they bought an American soccer player not more than a month later! The signing of Tim Howard was a business decision alone. The man was bought to raise United's profile in America, to sell more gear and get more money. As everyone with a passing interest knows, this guy is a shit goalkeeper. (This in itself is barely remarkable considering that very very few American soccer players are worth two shits.) So there we go, not soccer anymore, but a show for money. And now its come full circle. And here's where i get back to bitching about Chelsea football club. Roman showed up, and wanted a new toy. This guy is so rich he makes Malcolm Glazer look like a grant getting student. He bought chelsea as a hobby shop, something to sink a billion pounds or so in for the laugh. He signed an entire new team of players. The cream of europe suddenly flying in to play for one of the most spineless teams of the nineties, widely regarded as a bunch of soft southern Nonses that the rich guys in London supported. For Gods sake, John Major supports Chelsea. So Roman just bought a team, took them over and funded every crazy wage request, every insane transfer that the manager wanted, just bank rolled the club until they were the best. Why the fuck did a bunch of poofs like chelsea deserve to win the equivalent of the soccer lottery? It could have been any team. But now he has bankrolled the new dominant force in English football, and spat in the face of any fan who has seen their team struggle, and inadvertently taken away my love of football, because when business and football started to mix, it just makes the game worse and leaves a bad taste in all of our mouths. So there's a fuck load of clubs that are trying a hell of a lot harder than the likes of Chelsea and Man U, and along come the big guns and just say, fuck football, its the show that bankrolls the dollars, we'll fuck tradition, buy the absolute best cos we can, and fuck every other football team that loses money, goes bankrupt etc. because of what we do. So when one business has some new assets, their competitors need to improve theirs, so now there is nothing but a money culture, and all it ever does is fuck with games, ruin football, and make fans ashamed of their teams. And I know it wasnt all Roman's fault, but his was the final nail. I fucking despise chelsea, to wishing an air disaster on them size proportions. And Roman, why the fuck could you not just have fucking bought a soccer video game and been happy and not bankrolled the final nail in the coffin of my love of the game, you evil Russian shit.

The Cellar Door is open

What the fuck is so fucking interesting about some cunt buying a football club?

Nothingness

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