Why football fans must take a stand to save their clubs

By Brian Reade

Published 06:03 13/02/10

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The next time this column appears there may only be 19 teams left in the Premier League.

If it happens it will lead to grief in Portsmouth and shock among the wider football fraternity. Meanwhile, from a head-shaking distance, outsiders will demand to know how patrons of a multi-billion pound industry which was blatantly living beyond its means, could not see it coming.

The wider world has become sick of football pleading to be viewed as a special case because clubs are supposedly at the heart of our communities. So was Woolworths.

None of the other companies who sat alongside Portsmouth's lawyers in the High Court on Wednesday, facing winding-up orders, believed themselves to be above the taxation system. But Portsmouth, like every other football club which has hit the skids, did.

And in the past the heart-tugging has worked. Which is why the Inland Revenue has lost £30million from clubs going into administration and failing to pay their taxes. But now the taxman has had enough. He's skint too. And he wants his cash.

So that's why football is no longer a special case, and playing the "vital to the well-being of a community" card has become redundant Once football's rulers allowed any shyster to take over clubs and "leverage" the loyalty of their fans to make a quick buck, the game lost all credibility.

The Premier League was set up by wealthy businessmen to make themselves even richer. Its first priority is flogging its product to the highest bidders, its lowest one is regulating who runs the clubs. Its laughably-entitled Fit and Proper Persons Test is so lax it would allow Gary Glitter to run a home for vulnerable teenage girls so long as he agreed not to rock their boat.

Football once had values but they've been tossed to the whims of the free market and Portsmouth are merely the first big club to find out where the free market takes you when you're an insolvent business which owes the taxpayer £12million. 

I'm reaching the conclusion that if fans want special treatment they have to show why they're special. If they want their club back they're going to have to grab it themselves.

Take Liverpool and Manchester United who are being brazenly bled dry by foreign sharks. Their fans have it within their grasp to send out a message which would resonate across the world and shake football to its core, when they meet on March 21st at Old Trafford.

That day just happens to be 30th anniversary of Jimmy Carter announcing an American boycott of the Moscow Olympics because of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

If the feeling of disgust among the fans is as strong as it appears why not boycott Americans over their unwanted intervention in two of the world's most famous clubs?  Imagine if the bulk of the fans didn't turn up and instead went on separate marches from their grounds into Liverpool and Manchester city centres?

Imagine the power of the image of a near-empty Old Trafford to the billions watching worldwide. Imagine the shame of America and the panic among Premier League bosses at the damage to their brand.

Imagine the fear among the Glazer, Hicks and Gillett families, when it dawned on them that these suckers who they believed were as easy to mug as frail pensioners had the power to bankrupt them.

Maybe that Pompey fan with the big bell and tattoos can lead one of the marches as a warning of what can happen if you don't take a stand. 

Let's face it, by then he might not have a team of his own to support.

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With Fabio Capello saying he'll only take strikers to the World Cup who are playing for their team and scoring, has Kevin Phillips moved ahead of Michael Owen in the pecking order?

The Birmingham striker came back from injury and hit two to win a crucial derby, while Manchester United have called in Mame Biram Diouf from loan, and signed this new scoring sensation Own Goal, making Owen their fifth choice striker.

Granted Phillips has little chance, but Owen's got less chance of playing in South Africa than the Black and White Minstrels have of playing Soweto.

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