On Sunday, March 21, a year and a week after Liverpool’s supporters crowed long and loud over Rafael Benitez’s side’s storming of Old Trafford, Sir Alex Ferguson will have his chance for vengeance in front of a baying Stretford End. No doubt it will be a clash cast in the long tradition of this fixture: a pitched battle played out in an atmosphere brimming with poison.
Few rivalries in the world are as intense as Manchester United and Liverpool. The derbies in Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Athens, Rome, Glasgow and Belgrade, as well as Real Madrid and Barcelona, but to separate them is to rank gradations of spite. Manchester United and Liverpool hate each other. Both take almost as much pleasure in seeing the other lose as they do in watching their team win.
Perhaps it is so intense because the two sides have so much in common. They are the two most successful teams in English football, with the richest histories and the most fans. And now both find themselves ridden with doubts over what the future may hold. English football’s two greatest, grandest instituions are laden with debt, the property of owners whose primary concern is the balance sheet, not the trophy cabinet.
There is little point outlining the issues facing the Liverpool of Tom Hicks and George Gillett and United under the Glazer family. Both sets of supporters are all too well aware of the precarious financial situation they find themselves in, thanks in no small part to the unstinting work of their respective fans’ groups. Liverpool have Spirit of Shankly, of course, planners of countless marches and demonstrations and United IMUSA and MUST, initiators of the green-and-gold protests which grow in fervour by the week. Their methods are not flawless, but their intentions are honourable. Both aim to perpetuate the idea that football is not business. It is more than that.
And yet, in isolation, they find themselves on the fringes. SoS leaflets and flyers are binned by disinterested fans, IMUSA’s banners removed by over-zealous stewards. It is here where both may find strength in unity. By putting aside their mutual loathing at Old Trafford in six weeks’ time, both sets of fans could highlight just how worrying the plight of their clubs is.
The very idea of working with their eternal rivals has been laughed off by all concerned. Such narrow-mindedness is a shame. A joint march is clearly a bad idea. But shared chants, or mutually turning their backs on the game, or the swapping of banners less so. It would not detract from their support for their team, or their joy in seeing their on-pitch rivals beaten, but it would serve as a powerful depiction of the battle both are waging against a common enemy: the corporatisation of football, the mortgaging of institutions which are more heart and soul than profit and loss. Such things should supercede local hostility.
Few rivalries in the world are as intense as Manchester United and Liverpool. The derbies in Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Athens, Rome, Glasgow and Belgrade, as well as Real Madrid and Barcelona, but to separate them is to rank gradations of spite. Manchester United and Liverpool hate each other. Both take almost as much pleasure in seeing the other lose as they do in watching their team win.
Perhaps it is so intense because the two sides have so much in common. They are the two most successful teams in English football, with the richest histories and the most fans. And now both find themselves ridden with doubts over what the future may hold. English football’s two greatest, grandest instituions are laden with debt, the property of owners whose primary concern is the balance sheet, not the trophy cabinet.
There is little point outlining the issues facing the Liverpool of Tom Hicks and George Gillett and United under the Glazer family. Both sets of supporters are all too well aware of the precarious financial situation they find themselves in, thanks in no small part to the unstinting work of their respective fans’ groups. Liverpool have Spirit of Shankly, of course, planners of countless marches and demonstrations and United IMUSA and MUST, initiators of the green-and-gold protests which grow in fervour by the week. Their methods are not flawless, but their intentions are honourable. Both aim to perpetuate the idea that football is not business. It is more than that.
And yet, in isolation, they find themselves on the fringes. SoS leaflets and flyers are binned by disinterested fans, IMUSA’s banners removed by over-zealous stewards. It is here where both may find strength in unity. By putting aside their mutual loathing at Old Trafford in six weeks’ time, both sets of fans could highlight just how worrying the plight of their clubs is.
The very idea of working with their eternal rivals has been laughed off by all concerned. Such narrow-mindedness is a shame. A joint march is clearly a bad idea. But shared chants, or mutually turning their backs on the game, or the swapping of banners less so. It would not detract from their support for their team, or their joy in seeing their on-pitch rivals beaten, but it would serve as a powerful depiction of the battle both are waging against a common enemy: the corporatisation of football, the mortgaging of institutions which are more heart and soul than profit and loss. Such things should supercede local hostility.
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