Funny you have posted this as I've really got bored of football altogether a lot lately and was gonna start a similar thread earlier.
I have a season ticket as have done for years and have missed the last few games for various reasons but not missed it in the slightest. It's not just down to us not winning or being in the lower leagues...i started getting disillusioned with it when we were in the premiership.
I find it very sanitised, the atmosphere either depressingly flat or overly manufactured. Not just at The Valley but everywhere. I have sky sports and rarely find the enthusiasm to watch any games, even the games with " a bit of spice" I usually turn off or lose interest in.
As great as the last day drama was and as pleased for the long suffering man city fans i was it had just been bought. That could have been villa, forest or stockport county lifting that trophy had the billioanaire ego trippers decided to invest in those clubs.
I know it's a lazy cliche but I do think the post Euro 96 mob have taken over. Maybe it's inverted snobbery but I hear the hooray henrys at work (nice people as they are) talking about The Arsenal or whatever big team they have aligned themselves with and feel cheated. Feel like it was my game and the same type of people who looked down on you for being into football a couple of decades ago have now taken over with their £2k season tickets and dinner party chat about the Premiership.
The crowds have seem to have changed at football and I loved the tribalism, partisan crowds and rawness that I experienced as a youngster but it seems sometimes almost quaint nowdays from the shaking hands on the pitch before games to the welcoming of the away supporters and opera singers.
Not saying it should return to bananas being thrown on the pitch or darts being thrown in the stands but it is just feels very pre packaged, diluted and soulless to me nowdays and has done for a few years. It also seems to me to be more geared towards the soap opera and celebrity or this weeks latest scandal which in the bigger scheme of things really means very little. The game and going to it has changed for the better in a lot of ways in many areas which was needed but it feels like it has sold out its soul in the process.
Of course many on here and elsewehere who experience the nastier side of things in the 70s and 80s will probably be glad the way the game has gone and enjoy not having the edginess or the swearing and underlying air of menance and whilst I laugh at the football factory element of things as all a bit silly I think it has gone too far the other way in it's sanitisation.
Not saying we should all be flat cap wearing, gruff dockers but I just find it harder and harder to relate to what I see as the new breed of football fan.
I just think it is a reflection of how society as a whole has gone whether it be football, music, telly whatever....polished, instant, consumerist and overly pc with £ being the main driver but for all it's shiny packaging it contains very little substance.
There was a time in my life when I lived and breathed football. It meant everything to me and was an escape from whatever shit was going on in life.
Just very disillusioned with it all. It's just not the game I fell in love with in the 80s and lived for throughout the 90s.
Funny you mention Stockport County Rodney. They thought they did have a multiple million pound investor who wanted to have his ego massaged. Sadly he conned the club out of it's only asset - the ground - and sent them up sh't creek without a paddle. Perhaps no better example of the problem with modern football you allude to.
Classic quote from Stockport councillor prior to City v United at Wembley F A Cup semi final, 'Stockport will be empty'!
Charlton at least still has some identity to it, even if the Valley can sometimes lack atmosphere. Would love to hear the north upper sing Chrissy Powell's red army for 90 mins!
To be honest the Chris Powell revelation saved my Charlton love. If it wernt for him I don't think I'd be half as interested now. This is probably a common thought, but my god Sir Chris came just at the time of need.
Today's game was painful in this sense. I'm always positive about Charlton but if I see more games like that I will be really put off. Horrible game of football which I hope to erase from my memory.
An interesting thought. At least, I'd expect the 92 clubs together with the (semi-) professional non-league teams to be much reduced in number. I would not be surprised to see a very small "major" league with, perhaps, a "minor" league system. There would probably be no promotion/relegation between the two. Alternatively there could be a Euro league of the elite teams which could just wipe out pretty much everything else. Of course, with the world population increasing by 75 million per year we will all either have starved to death or have been killed in the nuclear aftermath from the China/Russia Food War of 2027. Meaning the whole question of football will be otiose. (Did I mention meteors or perhaps the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma collapsing into the sea and wiping out great swathes of western civilisation?) :-)
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Classic quote from Stockport councillor prior to City v United at Wembley F A Cup semi final, 'Stockport will be empty'!
Charlton at least still has some identity to it, even if the Valley can sometimes lack atmosphere. Would love to hear the north upper sing Chrissy Powell's red army for 90 mins!
This is probably a common thought, but my god Sir Chris came just at the time of need.
Of course, with the world population increasing by 75 million per year we will all either have starved to death or have been killed in the nuclear aftermath from the China/Russia Food War of 2027. Meaning the whole question of football will be otiose. (Did I mention meteors or perhaps the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma collapsing into the sea and wiping out great swathes of western civilisation?) :-)