Identity crisis

Unusually, I’ve watched Barcelona twice this week. First in their comprehensive mauling of Arsenal in the Champions League quarter-final and then in their comfortable 2-0 win over Real Madrid at the Bernabeu yesterday. How I envy real Barca fans being able to watch what is surely currently the best team in the world featuring the current best player in the world in Lionell Messi week-in week-out instead of the shite we, Liverpool fans have had to put up with this season (and in many previous seasons).

It got me to thinking, why can’t a supporter change his team? What is it that binds us to a particular team or ‘franchise’ as is now the more accurate description.

Why am I a Liverpool fan, cursed to have been miserable for most of the last season?

The immediate answer is I became a Liverpool fan because my Dad was beyond him introducing me to the game I was seduced by the brilliance of Robbie Fowler and Steve McManaman at the start of the Evans era. Fowler in particular was the first footballer I truly adored and became truly fanatical over. At that time, Liverpool were unquestionably the most successfully British team of all time and despite a sabbatical under the inept leadership of Graeme Souness we believed we were heading back to the top. While ahead of us, the Mancs were within our sights and never too far out of reach to be hauled back.

Liverpool was a team with history surrounding with romance. Older fans would regale us with tales of legendary players from years gone by. We would learn of the times when with Stevie Heighway on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing.

Nowadays the dreams have been replaced by fears. We fear we may never again get back on our perch and realistically we can see no signs of that happening any time soon. Our remaining dream is of the day the bastard Americans piss off and pray that the next regime will be far better for us (but fear they won’t be) – ultimately that hardly feels worth singing about.

The values that Bill Shankly instilled in the club that made my father so love the man and the club are gone. We watch pampered millionaires incapable of genuine empathy for the working class fan. If they don’t play, they want to move to a club that will play them. If they don’t challenge for the top prizes, they want to move to a club that will do. In their minds, it is the club’s responsibility to provide for them a team good enough to win honours with them in the side and not, as the fans see it, their responsibility to earn their places in the side by playing well enough to lead the club to honours.

Whereas Bill Shankly once made Liverpool truly the people’s club long before David Moyes uttered the phrase about the Blueshite, Liverpool is now run by two immoral Americans whose sole concern is obtaining as much of the people’s money as possible and giving nothing in return.

What’s worse, the game itself has evolved into something ugly and unpleasant. Whereas football was once a contest fought out between 22 men on a patch of grass and success was earned through graft, good football and good management, now success is dictated by money. Not money earned progressively through years of success on the field and good management off it but money loaned from banks or gifted by billionaire sugar daddies who treat football as little more than a toy.

Someone asked me recently about England’s chances of winning the World Cup and I told him I genuinely hope England don’t win the World Cup. Could you imagine Sir Rio Ferdinand and Sir Wayne Rooney? What about Ashley Cole OBE or John Terry OBE? Honoured for services to sport despite being deplorable twats both on and especially off the pitch. These are not moral men. These are not role models for anyone. They are men blessed with an extraordinary talent which they have ruthlessly exploited to earn more money than most people could ever dream of. The vast majority of the fans and fanatics whose dreams they carry earn less in a year than these guys pick up every couple of days.

This is the exact opposite of the socialism in which Bill Shankly believed.

What is a club? Is it a name? A badge? A Stadium? I would say that people stay with their teams out of a sense of duty not reciprocated by the players and staff within those teams. Players change, badges change, stadiums change, even the names of teams can change, but the fans hold the true identities of clubs.

This season I have felt at odds with a significant number of Liverpool fans. I guess ultimately I am saying I no longer recognise the identity of my own football club. Does the Liverbird stand for anything anymore? And if not, what is the point? Why fuel the greed of a couple of pricks when all it does is make you miserable?