I hope this world cup was worth it

I have as much an issue with overseas fans as I do tarquins from the Home Counties supporting United.

It’s not about nationality it’s about plastics, plastics who money skews the balance of the game, whos eyeballs move fixtures and ultimately who’ve contributed to the gentrification of the game


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Read it how you want mush but my point is what it is. The game is worse for plastics, doesn’t matter if they’re overseas or merino wools from Salisbury, individually I know a load of sound lads that have moved from other countries to Southampton and go to games - one of them is one of my oldest friends - I have no issue with that in the slightest because they’re supporting their local side and for all extents and purposes are sotonians now.

If you can’t see how money damages the game and how that is the fault of people it’s been marketed to outside then that’s your issue not mine, and calling people a xenophobe cause your feelings got hurt isn’t going to change that, especially when you almost certainly know it’s true


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I did think that might be read that way but it’s also the truth.

The equivalent metaphor would be a person moved to an area with a large Native American population got to know many, felt an affiliation and accepted and supported their causes. That person is sound and gets no abuse.

But the person who turns up on a reservation, wearing a headdress and talking about how “we have struggled” because they always preferred the native Americans in westerns gets abuse.

It ain’t nationality, it’s cultural appropriation, and you don’t have to be foreign to be a plastic you can be a tarquin or meff.

God knows there’s enough student plastics from our own shores who just as much of a cancer


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Nah not the youth the plastics. And yeah it is, our culture, my culture, English working class culture is massively linked to football.

The terraces gave us our fashion, our music, fanzines our voice, that’s something I want to protect because it’s hugely important.

You’re just being sensitive because you don’t like being called out. That’s fine don’t mind, hell I don’t care, but that’s your issue not mine.


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What false criticism was made? The deaths of the journalists are valid because they’re deaths associated to a World Cup already drenched in blood.

I had the same issues with Russia to be honest.

And as our chats in the CE section show I’ve got a lot of time for you, you seem a decent bloke, but you must also understand the points made about the damage plastics do to the game.

It’s not rocket since to see if you pump money to the richest league in the world and to the richest clubs in the league you f*ck it for everyone else


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I do blame the corporations too. The blame is never as simple as one group. I despise sky, I don’t subscribe to them, I don’t subscribe to BT, I have Amazon because I had Amazon before but wouldn’t subscribe to it for football alone.

And both overseas and local plastics think they enrich the game without realising what damage they do.

I get why, honestly I do, if you haven’t lived english working class culture you probably don’t even take it seriously, and some don’t even think it exists, and that makes things worse not better


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Always good to have a nice bit of classism as a response to criticism


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I think football the sport is a minor part of terrace culture. I think what’s happened is that since sky and the tories (and later new labour) that English working class culture has been actively removed.

I think the game has been actively gentrified, with little to no criticism, that the people it represented priced out, removed and vilified.

Like any culture it’s deep, complicated and varied, and like any culture it needs defending.

The sport is global, and that’s a good thing, the sport cuts across class, and that’s a good thing, but it shouldn’t be done at the expense of our culture.

The classism you show is that you think it’s ok to disregard the importance of football, and specially terrace culture, in English working class culture.

It belittles those of us for whom it’s significant, in the same way the tories and press painted us as “animals” in the past.


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Terrace culture doesn’t mean standing, it means the culture born on the terraces. It’s your mates ribbing you for the wrong trainers, or a jacket from a brand that’s dead. It’s humour and outsider culture, it’s one upmanship and being different, unique and creative.

Tonight Terry hall died, he’s the epitome of that culture, concrete jungle starts with a football chant.

Music, football, fashion, writing and comedy were all parts of it.

It was Co-opted by business to market the game, gentrified to make it sound nicer, and homogenised to make it more palatable.

The tickets went up partly to price us out, and partly because they could, demand from the rich here and tourists meant they didn’t need us (or want us).

They used people like you to finance their theft of the game, then came at us and called us racist or xenophobes for trying to protect it.

It’s the same way the middle classes go after Eddie Dempsey when he’s had it in the streets with actual racists like Charlie.

To make my last point of the night, and one I’ve made many times, I have no issue at all with overseas fans liking premier league football.

My issue is with them putting money into teams that f*ck the rest of us. Come as a tourist. Enjoy a game. But put your money in your local team.

Don’t support an English side support your team.

That’s how we get the game back


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