Lefty Arsenal fans like me are accused of hypocrisy – and rightly so

I cheer those protesting the Rwanda scheme will wearing a shirt which advertises the country (Picture: Getty Images)

Like all self-serving, sorry, socially conscious, millennials, I’ve been on a good few protests in my time.

I genuinely believe protest is important and I think it’s good that my generation is pretty active when it comes to getting out and making our voices heard to effect change and to protect the things we care about. 

There are thousands of worthier causes you could march for nowadays – climate change, the civil rights of marginalised groups, geopolitical concerns – but there’s only one issue I’ve protested against twice. 

I went on two marches on consecutive days in 2021 to oppose my football team, Arsenal, joining the proposed European Super League. 

The thing that got me off my arse two days in a row was the idea that my beloved Gunners might join a new league that finds them playing more games abroad and less in North London. 

It’s pathetic, really. But it also follows a trend of morality – of right versus wrong, of prioritising supporters over the ultimate worship of money – becoming an everyday concern for the modern fan. And, in my opinion, that’s no bad thing.

I don’t deny that football fans like me are, with some justification, considered hypocrites, or that it’s increasingly easy to lose sight of our morals as more and more money and nefarious actors flood the game – but that doesn’t mean we should give up. 

The old saying goes that ‘there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism’ and nothing proves that quite like supporting a Premier League football team. 

The temptation to just crumble under the weight of this money is real – but when you have the Gary Linekers of this world being told to ‘stick to football’ (and Gary himself being suspended from his job for tweeting a fairly commonly held view about the Tories), football is now so big, so rich and so influential, that it’s impossible to ignore the effects that the game and indeed the business of football has on the world around it. For better or worse. 

I don’t deny that football fans like me are, with some justification, considered hypocrites (Picture: Jacob Hawley)

I grew up in an era where Arsenal were led by Arsene Wenger (Picture: Jacob Hawley)

Whether that’s the 2022 World Cup in Qatar where openly gay fans were not welcome, to football clubs run by oil states whose leaders may or may not murder journalists, football is a big mucky game.

As an Arsenal fan, I get a fairly easy run of things. Or at least I used to.

A North London club with a steep history of diversity, we have one of the best funded and most eagerly supported women’s teams in the country, maybe even in Europe. 

Rather than being funded by oil barons with dodgy accounts and even dodgier human rights records, we were famously poor for quite a long time due to being managed by a nice old French socialist known as Arsene Wenger that we called the professor. 

So when Manchester City are charged with breaching Premier League regulations (115 times in case you forget) – including for alleged financial irregularity (which City deny) – and Newcastle are run by the famously fair agents of Saudi Arabia, I’ve been able to gloat and virtue signal.

The problem is, as much as I enjoy riding my high horse when it comes to the political side of football, when I attend matches, I ride that high horse to a stadium named Fly Emirates, after Arsenal sold the naming rights to the Gulf State airline.

When I wear my club’s shirt, it now comes with the words Visit Rwanda on the sleeve – even as I cheer on those protesting the government’s Rwanda scheme.

What would poor old professor Wenger think of the club he loved selling its soul in this way? 

Luckily I can find out – by tuning into Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports, where he is paid handsomely to sit beside the disgraced Andy Gray and Richard Keys to work as a pundit.

My once clean Arsenal now feels as dirty as everyone else. 

I ride that high horse to a stadium named Fly Emirates (Picture: Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)

The game is indeed gone. And perhaps any football fan who speaks of morality within the game is some kind of hypocrite, as their club will probably be busy doing something immoral.

But, and call me naïve if you want, I don’t think that’s a reason to give up.

If we all shut up and stop talking, football will go the way of golf and boxing in completely selling its soul and identity to the highest bidder.

The comparison with other sports is what gives me hope. I’m a boxing fan, and that’s a sport that has almost moved entirely to Saudi Arabia, where his excellency Turki Alalshikh (as every broadcaster seems to call him) pays for the biggest names in the sport to have their fights in Riyadh – including this weekend’s clash between Fury and Usyk. 

But in football, while many players have followed the money to Saudi Arabia, and plenty of our major events now take place in far-flung Gulf locations, there are glimmers of hope.

That Super League I protested was ultimately defeated (no need to thank me.)

Even earlier, in 2010, the Premier League’s ‘39th game’ abroad was defeated by similar fan pressure, and, as yet, there are no plans to shift games like the FA Cup Final to Saudi Arabia. 

On an individual level, Jordan Henderson famously left the Saudi Pro League after a few months, even foregoing some of the pay that he went for in the first place, to play for Ajax, throwing in an apology to the LGBT+ community he let down for good measure. 

There isn’t much soul left in football, and there is plenty of reason to throw the ‘hypocrite’ label around  – more often than not, as I know from bitter experience, it can be justified. 

But we have to keep fighting for the morals of our game, before they’re gone forever.

And who knows, maybe I’ll be motivated to go to a third protest?

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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