The Premier League corporate opera pales next to football's old passion plays The death of Howard Kendall made many of us pine for a less sanitised version of football . please log in to view this image Howard Kendall's methods would be frowned upon today - but they belonged to an age when football was less sanitised Photo: Bob Thomas/Getty Images Some of the anecdotes we love so much about Howard Kendall or Brian Clough would have them sacked in this Premier League era faster than you could speed-dial Abu Dhabi. Crates of ale at the training ground? Gone. Rude to the chairman? Get him out of here. Kendall’s death at the weekend released a wave of sorrow for a great footballer, manager and personality. Behind the fondness for the man himself, though, you could sense another flicker of nostalgia for a time when the idols of the English game were recognisable as products of their culture, rather than remote figures in a corporate opera. please log in to view this image Howard Kendall took Everton to new heights It may just be people of a certain generation, of course, who are hoovering up films and books about Bobby Moore, Brian Clough, Don Revie’s Leeds and the great Liverpool sides of the 1970s and 1980s. It could just be the footballing mid-life crisis. More likely, though, is that older fans are scouring football’s broader story for what might be called authenticity, in a time before the Premier League turned us all into customers or consumers. A personal digression. In the 1970s my parents ran a pub in North Wales for a time and I would alternate at weekends between coach rides to Everton and Liverpool. This was a time when a parent would not worry about an 11-year-old taking the bus to a metropolis with his friends. For 40p admission (or at least that figure rings a bell), the entertainment on offer was the Liverpool teams of Kevin Keegan and Steve Heighway or the Everton sides of Bob Latchford and Andy King. please log in to view this image Kevin Keegan leads out Liverpool Even now, watching the monolith of Manchester City play the monolith of Chelsea, those trips to Merseyside in the 1970s are my touchstone for what football is: community institutions, with teams who are extensions of the crowd. Except that this world has vanished. With a few last exceptions (Ryan Giggs at Manchester United or Steven Gerrard at Liverpol), players and managers are now primarily employees in a vast and lucrative international labour market. They come, they go. However hard clubs work to build ‘warmth’ and ‘connections’ between teams and supporters, there is obvious alienation, which is partly why social media seethes with so much cruelty. Well, that and the fact that some people are evidently not as nice as they like to pretend. Each club has its Republican Guard who will defend their team no matter what. But a much larger group these days will turn on the players at the slightest invitation (as the players will on a manager). There is not the same unconditional love. Harry Redknapp pointed out on Monday that Kendall would never miss an Everton game in retirement. It is no insult to Louis van Gaal or Jurgen Klopp to say that we will not be seeing them at Manchester United or Liverpool 10 years after they have escaped the crazy cabaret. please log in to view this image Herr today, gone tomorrow? The football business is now fluid, transitory, and unrecognisable from the Clough and Kendall eras. And much of football is infinitely better. Kendall’s marvellous League and European Cup Winners’ Cup side of 1984-85 conquered the summit in the year of Heysel. The fight for justice over Hillsborough is still not resolved. Who would swap today’s snooker table pitches and neon arenas for the quagmires and concrete bowls of the 1970s and 1980s? Yet football is not just a game of perfect turf and ample leg-room. Its cornerstone is allegiance: that sense that players, fans and managers share a purpose. Before football was 1. Commodified and 2.Turned into a branch of science, Clough could buy his team ‘chip baps’ for lunch and Kendall could use crates of lager to lubricate a Monday morning inquest into a Saturday afternoon defeat. Nowadays the social activities of a Kendall or Clough would be classified straight away as alcoholism and prompt a conference call between chief executive and absentee owner. please log in to view this image Howard Kendall's methods would raise an eyebrow today This is not to argue for a return to problem drinking. But what comes across in the new Nottingham Forest film, I Believe in Miracles, and in obituaries of Kendall is how much fun was had, and how earnest and intense it all is now. So many of us will go on revisiting the age, say, from 1966 to 1995 (when Blackburn became the last non-giant to win the English title) without apology. Yes, for 20 years now the league has been shared by Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City. No Everton, no Nottingham Forest, no Derby County, no Liverpool even. The news that English football existed before the Premier League is assumed to come as a shock to younger fans. That may be patronising. Either way they are urged to join us old saddos in harking back to a time before fans felt like extras in a vast investment drama. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...ales-next-to-footballs-old-passion-plays.html
It's pretty accurate is that. We've a growing percentage of fans that never experienced those days at all, or only dipped their toe for the odd game until we came to the KC so only have second hand experience, but they seem to be confused as to why there doesn't seem to be as much fun as there seemed to be back then.
We also have a number of fans who watch Bayern Munich and Barca on the TV then turn up at the KC and start moaning when we dont play the same slick football. Unrealistic
I do not think that we can go back to the old days, which is a pity. Football at any reasonably high level, distances itself from the fans. Players are protected from the support and this creates a gap. Footballers and football supporters do not mix as they once did and that is societies loss. Now corporate pressures are ever present, I said some time ago that the KC had gone from being the home of Hull City, The Tigers, to a place that I go to watch football being played (well sometimes). We have become customers and the community spirit has gone. We only know players from what we see on the pitch and little tit bits here and there. I would like to try to change that, but I just do not see it happening any time soon.
I have been a critic of the OSC, and the 'meet the player' events, but maybe an expansion of that could play a small part in redressing the gulf between players and fans?
The old days were fine, many of us reminisce over Chillo and Waggy and other eras but time does not stand still, I still look forward and enjoy going to City as much as I did as a lad sixty odd years ago.
We are trying, our next meet the player event is on 10/11/2015 at the KC and there will be four players present. But is it enough? The gap is too wide and getting wider everyday. To some extent I understand why, but it does annoy me. From around 16 until I reached 50, I was involved in local club sports, my extended family have and are involved in local football in Hull. The difference is starting to be seen in grass roots clubs. We all used to play a game and go back to the clubhouse for "tea" and a good drink. Being part of the club meant being involved socially as well. This all started to change, players would play the game, get changed and go home. We would have events and it was always the committee and their families that turned up and the players hardly bothered. With clubs like ours, there is a corporate culture and this leads to the distance between supporters and players. Getting off the team bus, with headphones on and going straight into the stadium, has become the norm. Brian Clough had the right idea, stop the coach and make the players walk to the ground, like the supporters do. Soak up the spirit of the day. If I had my way, I would have the team bus park at the Airco, get the players to walk through the Arena Bar and through the park to the players entrance. After the first couple of times the novelty would wear off and supporters will not get too excited, but they would feel at one with each other.
I think the visits to OSC branches have been stopped. Players will only be appearing at the KC in the future.
"I think"? There are changes being made to player events, it isn't the end of the world PLT, its just a change and we have to accept that the club at this moment in time want us to hold HCOSC events at the KC. We can look at it in a negative or positive way, I chose to see the positives and build on them. I expect that over time we will lose some benefits, but gain others. Who knows, eh?
Do you sponsor a player, like PLT and the ST do? Maybe you could get them to go to a meeting that way?
Spot on that piece, sums up the difference between when football was the working mans game and the 2015 version of sanitised, TV lead, over priced, mercenary filled, game for multi millionaire teenagers. Meh R.I.P HK
Spot on Dutch ^^^^^^ this. Howard Kendall was a genius of his time / era. Brought Gary Lineker from Leicester to Everton before Gary moved onto Barcelona. One of my favourite Howard Kendall stories is........ One time after Everton had lost 2 games on the bounce he took the squad to a Chinese restaurant for a night out. No drama or extra training, just food and a few pints. Guess what............. Yes Everton won the next game. Simple, effective method of that time. Top Man Manager. R.I.P. Howard.
