Opinion: F*** the European 6 – football needs to be a bit more like Luton

I highly doubt it was captured on iFollow, but after the one-goal evisceration of Watford the excited reaction from Luton chief executive Gary Sweet encapsulated everything that made you love Association Football in the first place. 

As he floated about the cloud nine that was the Kenilworth Road directors’ box, exuberantly congratulating staff, colleagues and even former player Kirk ‘Basher’ Stephens, he had the air of a kid whose Christmases had all come at once. 

It was only a fleeting moment caught out of the corner of my eye as I gleefully typed my player ratings with a partisan flurry of 10 out of 10s next to every single Hatter’s name (bar Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu who got a magnificent 11), but his elation for a long overdue result was quite touching.

I might have forgotten it, had football’s greed not gobbled up everyone’s attention from Sunday evening onwards. A “despicable violation,” Sweet has since called it.

The contrast could not have been more stark between the Roy of the Rovers end to 28 long years without a derby day victory on home soil – this time supplied by substitute James Collins’ first touch spot-kick – and the cold, dead eyes behind capitalism’s ultimate football end game, the European Stupefying League. A glorified pre-season friendly league.

I’ve no idea if Sweet was at the Kenny in 1993 when Kerry Dixon bagged the last winner against the Hornets, but allow me this narrative whimsy in assuming he was. On Saturday, I can only guess that the spring in his step was rocket-boosted by that wait and more than a decade of which was fighting – along with the 2020 consortium – to save the club and get them back to beating Watford.

In his post-match press conference, manager Nathan Jones dedicated the victory – which was an absolute gubbing by anyone’s standards, regardless off the slender scoreline – to Sweet and the board. Fully deserved, I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s a million miles from the sentiments being felt for his peers in Liverpool, Manchester and parts of London.

The European Super League scandal is sickening, but sadly not surprising. For fans from those cities and match-going supporters alike, the explicit message is that they are just not important, but that’s been staring most football fans in the face for a long time, let’s be honest. Never mind a season of empty stadia, they developed this disdain from changing kick-off times to suit a television audience, with absolutely no regard for how travelling away fans could or should get there and back. 

So six English clubs – and, by the way, only Liverpool and Manchester United have the right to even class themselves as European elite in that contemptible company – have made the heartless deduction that, on a spreadsheet at least, armchair supporters from the Middle East, Asia and the Americas, are far more valuable than anyone who grew up going to the games.  

Clearly, this unprecedented injustice needs to be fought by every football fan in this country, Spain and Italy. It’s a strange day when I back our current government after their record of rampant cronyism, but it’s good to hear they’ll look at all avenues to stop this power grab. Likewise the less than angelic bodies of UEFA and FIFA.

But, do you know what, I also think fuck ’em! If the cloth-eared oligarchs and vultures are really determined to force through the European Zombie League then those six clubs need to be sent packing from every domestic competition, like yesterday. Kick them out.

The opposing idea that English football will suffer, or worse, die, due to their absence, is utter bollocks. Nonsense that comes from the same propaganda machine that tries to convince you that the Premier League is the best in the world, like that’s even a thing. Who supports a league? Weirdos drunk on snake oil and Kool-Aid.

The argument is that there won’t be the same financial incentives or sponsorship for a top-flight league where the likes of Leicester City and West Ham United are the biggest draws. Well, so what? To Foxes and Irons fans it’s a big deal and the rest is just 30 years of the Premier League gaslighting you into thinking every game is vital and every game’s a blockbuster. It’s not. If it’s not your team, bin off so-called ‘Super Sunday’, do something else.

Even if TV cash dries up, and the game ceases to be run solely by what’s best for broadcasting companies, football will not die. For the sport to truly be the beautiful game, it should not be fortified behind a TV subscription paywall anyway. Tear it down. In fact, cancel your Sky Sports and BT Sport subscriptions now and buy a season ticket for your local club. Football is for the people, not fat cat profits. 

If this new/old approach keeps the cabal of contemptuous, self-absorbed disaster capitalists from the stadia gates, it might just force clubs into an operational model based on – shock, horror – living within their means.  

Clubs that currently cannot manage their finances will have simply just have to learn. Football and wages will need to be more egalitarian, maybe even capped, but that’s a good thing. Still football will not die. 

This will be bracing for some clubs, but it won’t be a shock for Luton, who have already looked the grim reaper in the eye, poked two fingers firmly in the sockets and set about cutting their cloth accordingly.

I’m aware I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but Luton fans are, without hyperbole, genuinely unique because they’ve been to the depths of despair and bought the t-shirt. Incidentally, one that no other club since has been forced to wear.

But town’s continued progression and development is at the expense, quite literally, of higher-spending Bristol City, Blackburn, Nottingham Forest, Birmingham, Derby and Sheffield Wednesday, who make up just some of the teams that are currently below little old Luton in the Championship table.

The Hatters won’t break the bank to reach the promised land, but they can still reach the summit. So what if six of the Premier League’s teams won’t be there? Fuck ’em! Beat whoever is available. A win’s a win.

We’ve been conned into thinking the lifeblood of football is becoming cannon-fodder for Manchester City’s multi-millionaires (just ask Watford about their big day out) in return for more and more pots of cash. It’s not. 

Football is about your passion, your attendance, your diehard support, your history, your heritage, your sense of community and family, your songs, your happiness and even your tears. Whether in the Conference, the Championship or the Champions League, you still love your club and that’s all that matters.

To expel gargantuan levels of greed from the game and opt for a factory reset could be a good thing, especially if it comes with an affordable ticket price and a 3pm kick-off as standard.  

What is there to lose? Most fans already cope without being dazzled by Ballon d’Or contestants every week. For the most part, it’s about enduring the crushing lows of not turning up against Stoke, versus the exalted highs of Kal Naismith-based flicking and heading local derby shithousery. Mainly it’s the myriad of mediocre bits in-between. 

If @andrewrobertso5 did this it would never be off the tele.#Naismith 🐐 #LTFC #COYH pic.twitter.com/S5EejDryr9

— 𝔸𝕟𝕕𝕪 𝔹𝕦𝕣𝕘𝕖𝕤𝕤 (@MegsAreBetter) April 18, 2021

Without those how can you possibly hope to revel in a club battling back from the brink of existence, to face-off against their fiercest rivals after 15 years and play off the park a bunch of pampered Premier League pretenders? Very few things compare to that. Very few.

Luton Town Football Club did not die 13 years ago and, as the song goes, never will, so bring on a restructure, because the Hatters have planned ahead. In fact, bring on an English revolution of prudent management, by custodians that care about the community in which their club is the beating heart. 

Bring on more clubs that reject betting companies’ filthy lucre, because of the kids. 

Bring on clubs that provide school meals in the depths of a devastating pandemic. 

Bring on clubs offering 40 per cent credit on season ticket prices to help some supporters in ‘economically challenging times’. 

Bring on clubs choosing local sponsors when more lucrative lolly is available. 

Bring on clubs refusing to acknowledge the full stolen moniker of franchise outfits in neighbouring counties.

Bring on clubs embedding themselves in the centre of their community, regenerating it for the benefit of everyone and at the cost of no-one. 

And in a world of football chief executives, rotten to the core, bring on more that understand what football is really about – smashing the moneyed, but trophy-less neighbours, from down the road.

Bring on clubs being more like Luton.