He’ll never have been the best Argentinian to have worn the number 10 shirt for Barcelona or Argentina.
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New Labour in blue-jeans hatred of the British people is perfectly palpable. From warm-ale to common-sense. They can’t stand us. And can’t control their contempt.
Fucking hell. Read this! 👇
A long read, but its the truth!
I genuinely think we are watching football loyalty slowly die and I don't know what replaces it.
I've followed Man United home and away for decades. Thousands and thousands of miles, trains, cars, coaches, hotels, stupid kick off times, days off work and an absolutely frightening amount of money.
But forget the money for a minute because you can always earn more money.
You can't get the time back.
Weekends away from your wife and kids, family things you've missed, holidays planned around fixtures, getting home at stupid o'clock then getting up for work a few hours later.
And none of us were forced to do it. We did it because we fucking loved it.
When the fixtures came out you didn't think do I fancy that game?
You thought right, how am I getting there?
That's the difference.
And lately I've noticed more and more people I've known through football for years saying the same thing.
"They can have my ticket."
That's not normal.
These aren't people who started supporting United because they won a trophy last year. These are lads who've been everywhere following them.
And before rival fans jump on with the glory hunter stuff, that doesn't really wash anymore either.
Yes, Manchester United were ridiculously successful. We were spoilt for years and I'll never pretend otherwise.
But we've been mediocre for the best part of 12 years now.
There are kids going to Old Trafford today who've never seen Manchester United win the league. For some of them, United being bang average is basically all they've ever known.
What glory are they hunting?
They're still going.
Their dads and mams are still taking them. They're still buying the shirts, travelling away and growing up supporting United.
So this isn't about demanding we win the league every year.
Football fans can handle losing. Fuck me, we've proved that.
It's everything else.
You can have a Saturday night kick off now where you're £100 for a train, £100 for a hotel, ticket, food, drink and you're basically writing off 24 hours of your life. Sometimes you're fucked for work the next day as well.
And increasingly you sit there thinking...
What am I actually getting back from this?
Not trophies. I don't mean that.
I mean from the relationship with the club.
Because it doesn't feel like a relationship anymore.
It feels like a transaction.
You're a membership number. A ticket account. A customer.
And if after 20, 30, 40 years you finally say fuck this, you can have my ticket, it doesn't really matter.
Someone else will take it.
Probably someone who'll spend more money while they're there.
They'll buy the shirt, go in the Megastore, buy the experience, take the photos and maybe pay hundreds more for something that used to simply be part of going to the football.
Financially that might make perfect sense.
But I think football is playing a very dangerous game.
Because the people you're slowly replacing aren't customers.
They're supporters.
They're the people who went when it was brilliant and went when it was shit.
The people who knew everyone around their seat.
The people whose dad took them and who now take their own kids.
The people who didn't need a "matchday experience" because the fucking match WAS the experience.
And I don't even think this is just Manchester United.
I'm hearing supporters from other clubs saying exactly the same things.
Maybe we're just further down the road than some.
Football is becoming an event.
A day out.
A product.
Something you experience once and stick on Instagram.
And maybe that's just the future. Maybe old fuckers like me need to accept it 😂
But here's the bit I'd worry about if I ran a football club.
People aren't as angry anymore. They're just losing interest.
There's a massive difference.
Angry supporters still care.
They protest. They complain. They sing about the owners. They demand change.
When someone who's arranged their entire life around football for 30 years suddenly says...
"Know what? I can't be arsed going."
W retweeted
One of the top young GK 🧤prospects in the area looking for a new club ⚽️
ASHTON POWNEY, 18
Location: Barnsley (can travel)
Previous clubs: Doncaster City FC, England Schoolboys U18
Looking for step 6+, highlights available
Tel +44 7398281304
✅
Gen X defined:
Ages 45-61
Looks 35-40
Will 100% throw hands
Doesn't care about your feelings
Cusses a lot
Will make you cry with words
Great work ethic
Pragmatic
Zero tolerance for stupidity
Skeptical of authority
Doesn't trust anyone at 1st
Extremely loyal friend
Figures shit out
Most likely your boss
Works hard, plays hard
No fear
Sarcastic as fuck
Still listens to the same music
Knows lyrics to Rock, Rap & Country
Proficient in analog & digital tech
Self reliant
Adaptable to any environment
Just wants to be left alone
One of the mates sent me this today from the 90s and asked if I knew where we were.
I said it should’ve been WeightWatchers.
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Said this before but away supporters who sing, "Is this a library?" or "Your support is fucking shit" never twig that the reason for the silence is because the home fans are not excited about playing a team like you.
It is a massive self own.
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The dumbest thing I did was be a 'good boy' for my entire working life: work hard and pay my taxes. 45 years of being systematically and arbitrarily robbed by criminals, some wearing blue ties, some wearing red, and even some sporting a splash of yellow.
I now struggle to pay my bills in retirement and I am still being fleeced via tax by the same clowns.
Meanwhile, these crooks choose to send cash abroad, squander it on insane initiatives such as 'net zero' and DEI, pay themselves tidy expenses, fund wars, and welcome with open arms anyone illegally entering the country, people they are happy to spend billions of pounds on whilst simultaneously making those of us who paid a fair whack into the system, struggle.
People often ask me why I don't vote any more ... and I think it should be fairly obvious. None of these 'senior politicians', across all parties, have any interest in the wellbeing of the common man or woman. They are only interested in their own self-promotion and pressing ahead with whatever harebrained agendas they support whilst in power.
It's only the window dressing that changes ... what awaits in the shop is always the same bullshit that shafts the good, honest folk of this country.
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In December, a woman at my son's school asked if I would help "lay wreaths," and I said yes, because I pictured a craft fair.
I want to be honest about how wrong I was.
I told my son we were going to make decorations.
He brought a glue stick.
He is eight. He was very proud of the glue stick, and I did not have the heart to stop him, mostly because I did not yet know myself.
On the appointed morning we stood at the veterans' cemetery at eight a.m., in sleet, with what I estimated as four thousand people and what my son estimated as "a million." The truth was somewhere between us. I am bad at counting crowds.
A man with a microphone explained the rule. You take a wreath. You find a headstone. You place it. And before you walk away, you say the name on the stone out loud.
That is the whole rule. Say the name.
I asked the woman next to me why, and she said, "A man dies twice. Once when his heart stops. Once when nobody says his name anymore."
I have been to funerals in two countries, and I have never heard grief explained so efficiently.
So we walked the rows in the sleet, and we placed wreaths, and we said names. I said the name of a private who died in 1944 at the age of eighteen.
I said the name of a nurse. My son, carrying his useless glue stick in his coat pocket like a sidearm, said six names, carefully, the way he reads out loud in class, and at the fourth one his voice did something, and he pretended it had not.
Around us the cemetery sounded like low rain. Thousands of names, spoken once each, into cold air, gone the moment they were said.
In my country we carve the names of the dead into stone, so that they endure. Here, once a year, they are spoken aloud, and vanish. I asked an old woman which way was better.
She was placing a wreath on a stone that had her own last name on it. I did not ask whose stone it was. I still do not know, and I think about it.
She said, "Stone is for the dead, honey. The saying is for the living."
On the drive home my son asked if we could come back next year.
We will come back every year.
Here is what I did not expect. I have started saying the names on war memorials when I pass them.
Quietly, so no one hears.
My son does it too now. He believes it is a custom of our family, something we brought with us from Japan.
I have decided to let him believe that.
Japanese are fucking ace people.
I went to Tokyo in 1999 to watch United and never met one I didn’t like.
Now, two of my favourite people on here are Japanese; the brilliant ambassador and this lad.
At a sports bar in Ohio, my friend offered me an "Atomic" chicken wing.
"You handle heat?"
A samurai does not decline a challenge on foreign soil.
"I welcome the spice," I said.
I took one bite.
My soul left my body. My eyesight blurred. My throat felt like it had been sliced with a heated blade.
I wiped my lips with a napkin, forced a calm smile, and said, "A refreshing kick."
My friend blinked. "Dude... that's Carolina Reaper. You didn't even sweat."
He called the bartender. The bartender called the cook.
"He ate the Atomic with a straight face! He’s a demon!"
The manager brought out a bright yellow t-shirt that said "ATOMIC SURVIVOR" and draped it over my shoulders.
I sat there, unable to move a single muscle, my stomach burning to ash while 50 strangers chanted my name.
I have never been prouder.
I have never needed an ambulance more.
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This your family’s luxury compound in Uganda??
If you have a second home in New York City worth more than $5M, check your mailbox when you’re back in the five boroughs — because you've got mail.
Today, we sent notification letters to property owners, letting them know that our new pied-à-terre tax is coming soon.
The best city in the world deserves the best parks, libraries, and schools in the world. That's only possible when we all pay our fair share.
I remember a mate getting his lad one. He was encouraging his lad to have ‘Ince 8’ and we were telling the boy to demand ‘Kanchelskis 14’.
There was someone trying to have Schmeichel and the shop had to get a programme to spell it. We were telling them it’s ‘Schnorkal’!
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Honestly, this whole Manchester United season ticket fiasco should have mainstream media shouting from the rooftops. It’s a disgrace on so many levels and should be called out as such by the numerous ex-United talking heads that populate football media in this country.
This little boy is now 6 and has just had his season ticket banned because as his mum i log in to his account. I can't even tell him because it will break his heart! If they checked my insta all season they would see he rarely missed a game! @TelegraphDucker @AndyMitten @ManUtd