Abstract
The decisive changes of the past twenty-five years in English football have been brought about by a combination of developments. After three horrible stadium catastrophes in the 1980s, the Taylor Report suggested measures which paved the way for an increased regulation of the spaces of football. A number of reasons furthered their implication, for example the (tele)visual representation of the World Cup 1990 in Italy, which painted a tempting alternative to the state of English football, or the neoliberal opening of television markets which fuelled the establishment of the Premier League in 1992. This chapter discusses the context of these interconnected developments, especially the drastically accelerated commercialisation of the game and its impact on football fandom.
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Notes
- 1.
The 96th victim, having fallen into a coma in April 1989, died in 1993 when his life support machines were turned off.
- 2.
It is a sad irony that Bradford’s promotion to a higher division meant that this was the last match before Valley Parade would fall under the jurisdiction of the ‘Green Guide’ with stricter requirements in terms of stadium safety: “Metal girders for a new roof already lay outside the ground waiting to be fitted in the summer” (Caton 2012: 8).
- 3.
Notwithstanding the multiplicity of factors that contributed to the catastrophe, interpretations that try to clear English supporters of any blame have to be seen as dangerously inadequate, yet are still in circulation. See John Reid’s reading of the incident: “The Liverpool fans were penned into a dangerously overcrowded section of terracing and, in an attempt to gain more space, they broke down a flimsy barrier. Unfortunately they clashed with Juventus fans who were in the next section. During this clash an unsafe wall collapsed, with fatal consequences” (2009: 11).
- 4.
Although the involvement of Liverpool F.C. and its fans in both Heysel and Hillsborough is certainly a coincidence (enabled, of course, by the club’s frequent appearances in high-profile matches), this fit a dominant discourse: Northern England, first and foremost Liverpool, was suffering worst from economic recession (Belchem 2007: 227–228), and Liverpudlians, especially working-class football supporters, were expected to behave accordingly, i.e. anti-socially.
- 5.
The club based at Hillsborough.
- 6.
Hamilton charts and analyses the public infatuation with and later condemnation of Gascoigne, with Italia ’90 as the short-lived climax of the midfielder’s career. The reference to John Milton (‘Agonistes’) hints at a fallen hero “more sinned against than sinning” (Hamilton 1993: back cover).
- 7.
An annual opera festival in East Sussex.
- 8.
- 9.
The acronym here stands for ‘Affordable Football Club’.
- 10.
An example which shows the limitations of fan-ownership are Ebbsfleet United, purchased by fans via the internet portal myfootballclub.com. There, fans experimented with complete democracy from 2008 until 2013, voting on everything from transfer deals to team selection and tactics (Ruddock et al. 2010: 324), soon realising that flat hierarchies, as practised in Wimbledon or Manchester, work better than no hierarchies at all.
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Piskurek, C. (2018). The Recent History of English Football. In: Fictional Representations of English Football and Fan Cultures. Football Research in an Enlarged Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76762-8_2
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