Created by the poor, stolen by the rich. All those workers all over the country in the 19th and early
20th century that paid their pennies in order to set up a football club which was the centre
of their communities, now stolen by the super rich who have no concept of the struggles that went to
set up those clubs. When I first heard about the European Super League I was very angry.
six english clubs along with others from around Europe were setting themselves up into a cartel
to play exhibition matches against each other, with no relegation and no promotion, which would make a
huge amount of money for the corporates that are involved in it would kill off the league system in
all those countries that are involved and would not put more money into grassroots sport and
football where it should be i was very angry i was very disappointed that arsenal my local club had
decided to join in this and then you think back to the origins of our football clubs all of them
were founded by working-class communities in arsenal's case it was workers at the woolwich
arsenal i wonder how many of the american money that now owns arsenal are aware of the reasons
why arsenal play in red and white they couldn't afford to buy shirts nottingham forest was then
quite well established and quite well known club forest in red shirts are first
they played in red and white they had a lot of spare shirts so they sent them to arsenal
arsenal stayed playing in red and white ever since every other club has a similar kind of history
and then gradually money moved into football and eventually the premier league was founded
and so we have this fantastic gulf between the premier league and the rest of it we had now if
this had gone ahead had a gulf between the premier league and the european super league but what it's
shown is that people do understand when they see big money trying to take over a working class game
and the opposition to it is incredible that's why the greedy six as we must call them have withdrawn
but i think it's only temporary i think it's the time to push for real democracy in sport
real democracy and football none of the german clubs joined they're all at least fifty percent
fan owned i think we need to look at the reasons for that and go back to the manifesto that i was
proud to put before the public in 2019 which included the election of a fan director on
the boards of all clubs and a subvention on all premier league clubs to put more money
into grassroots football because football is about young people kicking the ball around understanding
skill understanding fitness understanding team work nobody wins a football match on their own
it's team work that does it so with all the anger there is and it's huge against these
plans i think something good has come out of it and that is a demand for something different in
our sporting community this killing of the super league idea is a huge victory but it
mustn't stop there i think a genie has got out of the bottle a genie of hope of a democratic future
in sport and when we've won that one i think the lessons about democracy in society democracy at
work the overwhelming power of the tax dodgers and tax fiddlers to damage our economy i think
there's a big political lesson here as well what this victory in football has shown is that united
rapidly people can win an interim victory because we've stopped the european super league but we
still have the problems of the big money running fifa and the big money running the premier league
and so this has at one level been an argument between the super rich and the rich it's also
got to be an argument between the rich and the people support double down news on patreon
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