“Shirty” – The Wonderful Adventures of a Football Shirt

A timeless classic...the shirt too!

It’s amazing how a simple garment can have such power over a person or a group of people. The simple act of someone wearing something can determine the desires and actions of many. The world of fashion has known this for many years of course. However, the world of football has been equally aware of this for many years as well.

Attending a Congleton Town game last week at Booth Street, when “The Bears” or “Da Bears” as I now know them as (it’s amazing how powerful American popular culture is) were playing Alsager Town,  Linda and I noticed that Town’s number 11 had a different shirt on than the rest of his team mates. It took the referee a few minutes to realize this . . . ah, the joys of non-league football. Once Town was in unison kit-wise, they managed to beat their near neighbours 2-1. It was a good game, full of tension and drama. There were some great tense moments: a penalty save, an injury to Congleton’s excellent keeper which resulted in quite a few minutes of injury time and two well-taken goals scored by the home team. That period of injury time saw an onslaught on Town’s goal. A woman sat across from me had to avert her gaze from the play, so tense was the goal mouth action.

“I can’t look” she said. Evidence, if you needed any, that a fan, someone who feels happiness and pain in equal amounts dependent on the actions of eleven men on that pitch, can be a man or a woman.

There may be some women who watch football just to ogle the players. However, those who go understand the game and can be as vociferous as a man. Just ask my wife! The pictures coming out of Turkey of the Fenerbache game attended by women only are further proof that football is the people’s game, not just the stronghold of men. That game was attended by women, if you didn’t know, as a result of crowd trouble resulting in the club saying that no boys or men were allowed to watch as punishment.  You know it would be a good idea if clubs over here did something to promote more women to watch games.  In my opinion, I think that the more people who watch and care for the game the better. Not all women who follow football are W.AG.S. (This stands for “Wives and Girlfriends” for the uninitiated. These ladies do women a disservice in my opinion. They seem to be with their men just for the glamour that they can buy, courtesy of their men’s grossly over inflated wages.)

Give me an F! No trouble fellers, take note

The other moment during the afternoon at Booth Street that caught my attention was the sight of a happy little lad making his way towards the main stand with his Dad in a Barcelona shirt with “Messi 10” on the back. It was a stark reminder of the power television has over the game. In an interview with the BBC here in the North West, the manager of our little football team, some feller called Ferguson (you might have heard of him!) spoke rather elequently and very truthfully on the power TV has in this country.

"When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price," he said, "Television is God at the moment.  It is king.  When you see the fixture lists come out now, they can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on televisioin."

Why did this little lad have a Barcelona shirt on? According to a copy of Four Four Two magazine I have, the aforementioned shirt costs £54.99! That’s well over $100! In this current economic climate, that’s amazing. Of course that shirt will be out of date at the end of this season when new kits come out. I have become a big fan of “old fashioned” football shirts. The Old Fashioned Football Shirt Company (www.toffs.com) is great for fans who want to wear their team’s colours without being slaves to football fashion.

 Where was the boy’s Manchester United shirt, or his Stoke shirt or, God forbid, a Manchester City or a Chelsea shirt?! Why did he want to have a replica shirt of a team that’s about a thousand miles away? I would have expected to have seen something like this if I was back in the United States with Linda. There, the tribal rivalry is still in its infancy, relatively speaking. It is compared to over here. Over there, loyalties are developed through the ever increasing exposure the game has courtesy of the Fox Soccer Channel, ESPN, and GolTV. There are encouraging signs that the loyalty, the desire to wear the shirt of your team of choice in the MLS, is developing in the right way. Check out the crowd at a Seattle Sounders game if you’re undecided as to how well the game is progressing over there.

So, to see a boy with a Barcelona shirt on was surprising to me. Loyalty to a club is something that is passed on from father (or Mother) to son (or daughter) and on through the generations. Organized league football has been in existence in this country for nearly 130 years. I can only assume that the little boy who pestered his Dad for that Barcelona shirt (this season’s version as well – the one with UNICEF demoted to the back of the shirt and replaced with “Qatar Foundation” on the front) with “Messi 10” on the back has been sucked in by the power of television.

The UEFA Champions League has excellent coverage in the United States. We never missed a game over there.  Fox Soccer Channel’s coverage was really good. For the Final, they flew their people over to Wembley especially for the game that was shown live on Fox nationwide. Over here, Sky Sports and ITV do a good job in promoting the best competition in the world. So maybe that little boy was mesmerized by “Little Lionel” as GolTV’s Ray Hudson might have said. You know, one day I hope that boy goes to a game with a Manchester United shirt on (or whoever he supports).  Mind you, let’s hope an English team can one day produce someone as good as Messi! We can only hope!

Enjoy your football wherever you see it, preferably at a live game . . .

Ed