Matthew Bazell
It must be great to be a Borussia Dortmund or Bayern Munich supporter right now. Tickets are cheap; you can drink beer on a noisy and partisan terrace; you have 51% ownership of your club, and your team has just battered a spoilt Spanish giant to get to the Champions League Final.
A few years ago I took part in a BBC radio discussion about rip-off ticket prices in English football. One of my main point-raisers was the gap between what we now pay in England compared with what German fans do. The price difference is indisputable in the German’s favour, but what defenders of the Premier League always tried to get away with was the argument that German teams could not attract the best players and were weaker in the Champions League. On this radio show, the journalist who was counter-arguing my points used that very argument. With two German teams in the 2013 Champions League Final, and with no English team beyond the last 16, I’d like to know what meaningful case there now is to justify the gap in admission prices between the Premier League and the Bundesliga?
In any case, the standard of football comparison is not one that many of us accepted. Even if we were watching the best teams in Europe, it was meaningless because so many people got priced out of a stadium which had also become soulless and devoid of atmosphere. Even with the best team in the land, what’s the point in paying so much, just to be in a quiet stadium full of passionless spectators? For example, Old Trafford, which currently homes England’s best football team, has become an unremarkable and soulless experience.
I recall taking part in another BBC radio debate, on the theme of bringing back terracing. Once again, I highlighted the German example and how they’re proving to the world that standing is safe. Once off air, I listened to the remainder of the show and remember one of the hosts smugly saying “I don’t think we want to copy the Germans in what we do, we’re not that desperate.”
Going from the data I’ve gathered, English football fans beg to differ from that ignorant statement. That data is no more advanced than talking to fans up and down the country, but the message is clear: hardly anyone speaks in favour of this sanitised modern football culture in England. When supporters talk to me on the subject of the game losing its soul, German football regularly gets brought up as the benchmark of where we want to be. So the conclusion is that if the German model is proving a great example, then we should look to copy it and yes, we are that desperate
My book Theatre of Silence got translated into German (under a different title) because, according to the publisher from Hamburg, their football has lost its soul. Really?!! Well I don’t have much sympathy for their plight, and that’s a bit like an Englishman in America whinging about the NHS to a sick person who has no medical insurance.
