How do you passionately support a PLC? How do you maintain the undying devotion that makes you a fan when the club is doing its damnedest to turn you into a customer? One answer is that you simply blank it all out and focus on the team, on what happens on the pitch. But what if the team is a rotating cast of millionaires with no more connection to your world than Tom Cruise…?”

~ Gary Imlach, ‘My Father and Other Working Class Heroes’

LAST weekend, as Sulaiman Al-Fahim was preparing to take one small step for man, one giant leap for Manchester City, Mike Ashley was downing a pint of lager as if it were his last in the taught black and white nylon of Newcastle United. Within days, in the wake of Kevin Keegan’s exit, the self-same Mags who had cheered Ashley’s every gulp from the pubs of Grainger Town were urging each other to boycott the brands and retail outlets which catapulted him to billionaire status.

They should count themselves lucky. As anyone who’s dared to peek inside a Geordie’s wardrobe will tell you, they pack considerable weight in this sector and furthermore, at least the source of Ashley’s wealth is targettable. What are Manchester United fans supposed to do the day Fergie leaves, go and picket Malcolm Glazer’s sausage skin factories?

Perhaps the Premier League could learn a thing or two from Austria, where one glance at the Bundesliga table or just couple of minutes spent reading the adverts on a club’s kit leaves little doubt as to who’s running the show. Witness last season’s clash between FC Superfund and Cashpoint Altach (above).

It’s fairly amusing to think that Liverpool’s jerseys might bear the name of George Gillet’s meat plants or Tom Hicks’ brand of Argentinian pet food. Then again, until last Monday’s stroke of a pen in Dubai’s Emirates Palace Hotel, I shudder to think what message Manchester City’s shirts could’ve carried. In reality, it seems that for a follower of ‘The Greatest League in the World’, ignorance is bliss as far as club ownership’s concerned. As long as Sky’s in town and there are signings to slaver over, who really cares where the money’s coming from?

Perhaps the commercialised landscape of Austrian football’s not so crass after all. Maybe its abundance of brandnames perversely affords Bundesliga clubs the sort of integrity most Premier League sides lack. After all, unlike in this country, Austrian fans are left in no doubt whatsoever that to the clubs they’re a just another revenue stream.

Uppermost in the minds of the new Arabian suitors at ‘Middle Eastlands’ is a document penned by Executive Chairman Garry Cook entitled ‘A New Model for Partnership in Football’. Within its 83 pages, ex-Nike executive Cook foresees a Premier League of 10-14 teams with no promotion or relegation (‘Fans would find a way to get passionate about it,’ he insists) and a re-branded Manchester City becoming ‘The Virgin of Asia’ by branching into the automotive, fashion and telecommunications industries, as well as endorsing a range of energy drinks manufactured by, well, who do you think?

Not keen on how commercial the Premier League’s become? Tough. By Cook’s reckoning it’s actually undervalued: ’10 years behind the US,’ he says. Anyway, it’s none of your business. ‘China and India, 30% of the world population,’ Cook observes, ‘need a league to watch and we want Manchester City to be their club.’

Their club. The message is clear: if you want to support a successful side, you’re going to have to let it go. Garry Cook. Remember that name. You are a football fan, and he is your enemy. This blog’s been three years in the making and the object of much long-distance finger-pointing in these pages is rapidly becoming the reality for the English game.

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HAD Albert Camus been around today, it’s safe to say his life would have taken a very different path. Tuberculosis wouldn’t have put an end to his goalkeeping career, meaning his best-known novel, L’Étranger, would probably have explored the difficulties of adjusting to life after a big money move abroad. Almost certainly, it would have been the wreckage of his luxury motor, and not his publisher’s, from which their bodies would eventually be pulled.

Instead, amongst the many things he leaves behind is as succinct an expression of what makes football tick – real football, not what the likes of Garry Cook and Richard Scudamore talk about – as you’ll find: “All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football”

To lovers of a game now so pervasive that to follow it – to watch, to consume, even to accept it – requires faith bordering on nihilism, Camus’ expressions of life’s absurdities are a breath of fresh air.

He was big on co-operation, solidarity and effort, was our Albert. He advocated persevering in the face of pain, sticking up for your mates and what you believe in, even if to say so’s fucking boring and there’s no point.

To followers of three-times league champions Austria Salzburg, when the morality of their club was compromised by a hostile takeover from Red Bull, their obligations were obvious. Offered no choice but to go it alone to preserve their club’s name and colours, they embody Camus’ assertion that in life, the pursuit of meaning is the meaning.

Back-to-back promotions mean that those who, almost 15 years ago, wore their violet and white colours to a two-legged UEFA Cup Final against Inter Milan, now don them with comparable pride in Austria’s fifth division, the 2. Landesliga.

Just three weeks after celebrating their latest title with a Spanish holiday, coach Miro Bojceski’s new-look line up opened the season in front of the most magnificent support in non-league football with their first draw in almost two years.

Not the anticipated start, but the recruits quickly gelled; Bosnia-Herzegovinian forward Mersudin Jukic scoring the first in a four-goal win at St Georgen, then setting up each goal in the 5-1 defeat of Golling.

Last season’s top-scorer Mario Schleindl then chipped in with a hat-trick in a 7-1 rout of Plainfeld before Jukic got back in on the act. He scored in consecutive 3-1 wins, over Thalgau and Berndorf, before grabbing four in the 5-1 away drubbing of Oberhofen which saw Austria Salzburg share top spot with Kuchl, who were the next visitors to Maxglan.

1,600 turned up for the top-of-the-table clash and to celebrate Austria Salzburg’s 75th birthday in the only way they know. Fittingly, it was another birthday boy, Nico Meyer, who pierced the tension with both strikes in a 2-0 win which earmarked Kuchl as the biggest threat to violet dominance.

So, eight games in and three points clear, the script of Austria Salzburg’s ascent at the first time of asking looks, this time, like it might take us to the final curtain. But this is football – real football – not theatre. When pushed on which he preferred, Albert Camus spoke for us all when he replied: ‘Football, without hesitation.’

See also: Austria Salzburg, Premier League, Red Bull by TBG | No Comments »