More militant protestors have taken the campaign to the terraces. Season ticket holders were beaten by stewards and forcibly removed from the ground during a match with Burnley for unfurling a Love United Hate Glazer banner. The home crowd responded by chanting anti-Glazer songs throughout the rest of the game. Fans have also started wearing green and gold on the terraces, a nod to United’s original colours and working class roots when they formed as Newton Heath in 1878 as the works team of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot in North Manchester.
There is upsurge of unrest amongst ordinary supporters, increasingly angered by the way multi-millionaire club owners are using the loyalty of fans and the brand name of major league clubs to create massive debts and fuel their personal fortunes.
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Comments
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question
27.01.2010 16:02
sorry, thought i had to say that as being a regionalist (a football fan) is detriment to the struggle to free ourselves form the "system", the same system that rams competition and sport, which are versions of warfare, down our necks.
no thanks, i couldn't care less if man u went under. i wouldn't give a shit.
in fact, i hope it does and the people in manchester TAKE OVER MANCHESTER, not just a fucking business like a football team. which is all football is now anyway, so fuck em.
take over the whole city!!
the cisco kid
Cisco
27.01.2010 17:10
Er, lot's of people happen to like football, who often are working class, It's a good thing that the fans are doing this, and also I think you should maybe read up a bit on football, and it's crossover with radical movements, you can start with St. Pauli F.C.
Also Taking over Mnachester, would involve taking over the Football Club, as well as the work places, Places of learning etc. unless you just hope to run out of your house shouting "charge!" and then everyone takes over Manchester, I am not as hippy as you when in comes to competative sports, I like to play them with and against my freinds, it's called fun, not war. Table tennis is my favorite. "let's all play some fun non-competative sport like hackysack, or hoolahooping" - give over! I want my game of Pool, Poker, or table tennis, or I will die of Boredom!
fly poster
@ flyposter
27.01.2010 20:21
The Cisko Kid did not say s/he opposed competition in sport, among friends playing together. I imagine the opposition is more based on the arbitrary "regionalism" that support for a so-called local club entails. And the fact that sport as it currently is -- an integral part of the spectacle of society, reducing the spectator to just that: a passive spectator rather than a participant; and a huge machine for making profit for dirty business interests -- is an essential part of the whole capitalist system.
I love sport, and playing it on a competitive basis too. But I agree with 'the cisko kid' that it's hardly material for indymedia when it's sport on a multinational, profit making level.
@nne
Massonic Sports
27.01.2010 22:02
Champions Lodge
and maybe, cisco kid, that is why..
28.01.2010 10:58
D02
Fair play!
28.01.2010 11:56
The fight for control over our football clubs goes hand in hand for our fight for control over all aspects of our daily lives. Football was once our domain but it's increasingly been taken over by the wealthy who've excluded us from our clubs in their pursuit of riches and influence.
In 1968 footballers and fans in France called for the sacking of club owners and the reappropriation of football clubs by the footballers and fans so that the clubs would be run in their interests. It's high time that fans took back what is theirs.
See you boys in the final!
Villa Anti-fascist
WTF??
28.01.2010 13:55
LOL WUT???
Wow, there are some absolute nutjobs here at times... get a grip Cisco Kid.
pk
pedants...
28.01.2010 16:51
football fan
never been to a footie match, but I thought they were mostly middle class now?
28.01.2010 17:58
Certainly my experience at work has been that it's the relatively well-off middle managers who go on about football the most. It certainly seems to be quite expensive buying tickets and travelling all round the country supporting.
Not to knock watching football if people enjoy it, but it always seemed to me to be a bit... passive to just be looking at 22 blokes running round in shorts doing all the work. Ah well, whatever turns you on.
I think football is like sex: I'd much rather be doing it than watching it.
anon
@ D02
29.01.2010 10:04
i dont have to like football because a few working class folks started playing for fun at the weekends and then turned in to man u, the face of corporate whoring in the modern sports world.
fuck you.
its not about disagreeing with me or i with you, its about me telling you to fuck yourself.
some guy just burnt himself to death outside a fucking fur shop, whether he had mental health issues or not, im more concerned with actions and situations like that, than a fucking football team-come corporate whore like man u.
football, if i must tell you, came from the peasantry, the poor played it when it was called hand ball although it often led to rioting and public order "offences" so it was banned by royal decree....then it came back in varying forms until it bastardized itself in to the corporate shame that it is to day.
so, id advise you to not lecture me on the history of football or the working class connection to it. ive been there and done it, as it were.
and still, there is a difference between not giving a shit about workers histories and giving a shit about a massive, publicly floated company worth hundreds of millions that has done fuck all for the working man and woman except take their wages off of them and "brainwash" then in to being more active in supporting a sport, rather than the politics that divides us all and conquers us.
sport is a distraction from being revolutionary and creating a free and just world.
are my views really in such a minority?
well, i dont want to impress people with my analysis, i couldn;t care less if they are not anarchists, because as sad as this may sound, i only want to live with fellow libertarians and anarchists.
so that means millions upon millions of people out there wont share my politics and thats fine.
but supporting the workers doesn't mean i have to support man u, for fucks sake, they got themselves in to this mess by chasing the money and the glory.
so like i said before, fuck em. and the horse they rode in on............
and DO2, not for any other reason that i just dont like your posts or comments, because they seem contrived and only for the sake of it, fuck you too!!
the cisco kid
@nne
29.01.2010 11:07
"The Cisko Kid did not say s/he opposed competition in sport, among friends playing together. I imagine the opposition is more based on the arbitrary "regionalism" that support for a so-called local club entails. And the fact that sport as it currently is -- an integral part of the spectacle of society, reducing the spectator to just that: a passive spectator rather than a participant; and a huge machine for making profit for dirty business interests -- is an essential part of the whole capitalist system."
Regionalism! take a look at the demographics of Manchester United fans, they are worldwide. You are correct about the spectacle of sport, however you are also correct when you make the statement above: "And the fact that sport as it currently is -- an integral part of the spectacle of society..." True, so is the media, both need to be taken over!
I am glad the fans are railing against the owners, it's not the first time, when Glazier took over loads of supporters left, and formed there own Ultra (
Fly Poster
MAN U?
29.01.2010 12:01
fergie betaboutit
@cisco
29.01.2010 23:48
qoute " well, i dont want to impress people with my analysis, i couldn;t care less if they are not anarchists, because as sad as this may sound, i only want to live with fellow libertarians and anarchists.
so that means millions upon millions of people out there wont share my politics and thats fine."
No it's not fine! It's elitist, dismissive and defeatist and frankly nonsense as it is not possible to live a free life while others are unfree.
btw you are also pretty abusive mate .. some anarchist eh! and yes it is sad because simple anarchist politics offers a solution to all peoples as it gives them back control of their lives.
Somehow, in the activist scene, anarchism has become twisted into telling people how to live their lives .. fail
D02
I used to follow football ......
31.01.2010 19:20
I remember the violence on the telly and the first £100,000 transfer.
And I haven't bothered with it since then.
The amounts of money involved now are obscene and the violence is still there - albeit away from the grounds.
There's nothing wrong with someone (even an anarchist) following a team as long as no money changes hands.
As soon as someone gives money in exchange for whatever, they are supporting the system taking the money.
Don't do it!
anon