Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass

Cork City are to be wound up. Shelbourne lost their Premier League license in 2007 after five titles in six titles and in spite of reaching the third round of the UEFA Cup. Derry City suffered the possibility of going out of existence between 2000 and 2004 before finally raising the necessary money. Drogheda United went into examinership in late 2008 and had ten points deducted before the supporters finally managed to pull the club back from the brink. In 2005 Shamrock Rovers entered examinership and were also saved at the last moment by the fans.

And so on, and so forth. True, in some cases the problems have come from the usual property developers, disputes with local councils and incompetent financial management, and granted, the fans have saved some of the clubs – Bohemians is another club to be owned totally by its supporters. However, the fundamental reason behind the precarious position of Irish football clubs is the fact that the majority of Irish soccer fans pour money into the coffers of English clubs and ignore their local teams while they go bust.

I say English clubs quite deliberately. Everyone in Ireland has a soft spot for Glasgow Celtic, but there is a very real historical reason for that support and a very real connection between Ireland and (most of) Glasgow. At the end of the day Celtic is every Irish fan’s second club, whether they are the true fans who follow Irish clubs or the plastic fans who want to get close to England’s ass.

Let’s just pause a moment and consider what we are talking about. Do all French fans follow German teams? Do all Norwegian fans follow Swedish clubs? So why on Earth does the majority of Ireland follow clubs from some foreign neighbour?

Fans here will tell you that it is the result of the high number of Irish people who left to work in England, but as I have said before there are many Scottish people in England and they wouldn’t be seen dead supporting an English club. Others mention the huge Irish population of Liverpool, but there are infinitely more Irishmen or descendants of Irishmen in New York and nobody wants to follow the New York Red Bulls. Some people will talk about the number of Irish players who have crossed the water, but if that was the real reason then the fans would all have been following Reading for the last few seasons. Admittedly a lot of Irish people started following Sunderlandnil recently, but we don’t want them because they are not real fans – they don’t want the football, they just want the glory (!).

This phenomenon used to be confined to Liverpool and maybe Manchester United, but since the explosion of the Premier League you will see Leeds United shirts, Everton and Spurs colours, and Chelsea or Arsenal stickers on cars. I mean, what does Tottenham have to do with Ireland?

To a certain extent though, the fans could be said to be just following their instincts as well as the smell of success. Who wouldn’t abandon unfashionable clubs and jump on the bandwagon of rich men and silverware if somebody promised you eternal glory? It’s like the weak-willed man who is approached by a stunning woman dressed only in expensive perfume. His wife will be forgotten until he gets his trousers back on, and even then he’ll only be thinking up some justification which will involve blaming his wife for his own fall from faithfulness.

The modern television version of top-flight English football is a painted harlot that lures weak-willed foreign fans with expensive perfume with no thought of the damage she does to other women by sleeping with their husbands. The TV companies and the clubs and the governing bodies would argue that they are simply doing business but they don’t seem willing to recognise that with power and money comes a huge responsibility.

I’ll put it another way – it’s like that huge hypermarket that suddenly moves in down the road and puts all the small shops out of business. The hypermarket has every right to be there, and if the entrepreneur has enough money to build it, well fair play, but where will we be without all those small local shops? And what about the people who lose their jobs? Surely a person in the same business should accept that they have a certain responsibility towards fellow shopkeepers, and surely the Premier League and the TV companies should think about weaker leagues in neighbouring countries.

Smaller leagues the world over find themselves in more and more trouble as the global fan base chooses to follow the glittering prize of the Premier League, and as with all other aspects of the modern globalised economy the gap will not be closing any time soon. And there is no doubt that those fans would follow their own teams if they were more successful – remember the reception the Irish fans gave their boys in the Phoenix Park in 2002? – but success cannot be bought if the money is flooding into England.

It’s high time Irish fans started supporting their own home-town clubs instead of fawning over the English, but it’s also high time English football took a look at the effect it has on smaller leagues around the world, if for no other reason because eventually the money will dry up. And then no-one will give a damn about another tiny little nation on the edge of the world.