Why Football Fans Are Driven By Hate

Last week, Manchester City played Stoke City twice in a few days, in the FA Cup final and in the league. Everyone got on pretty well. City decided not to parade the FA Cup before or after the league game in respect to Stoke fans, we clapped their fans away and Delilah was played over the loudspeaker.All very nice, and message boards for both clubs contained many a thread praising the opposition fans, and mentioning a new-found respect after the carnage of our double relegation in 1998 when trouble after the final game (Manchester City won it 5-2, to no avail) was widespread.This new found respect and praise didn’t sit very well with some fans though. It just wasn’t football to be praising opposition fans, or to be getting on with them this much. Afterall, part of being a football supporter is to hate most other fans, and most of all, other clubs.It’s easy to hate. Obviously I am required by law as a City fan to hate everything about Manchester United. Older City fans hate Everton because of the commonplace violence in away games in the 80s.  And they always beat us. A (perceived) bad reputation of fans makes plenty of other teams easy to hate. Spurs and Arsenal fans are arrogant, Blackpool were fine until their manager’s tiresome press conferences and toadying up to Alex Ferguson (along with many other sycophants in the managerial game) began to hit home.Liverpool fans think their club is more important than anyone else’s, Newcastle fans think their fans are better.  I don’t like QPR now Warnock is their manager. Or West Ham now Gold and Sullivan are weaving their magic as owners. I hated Crystal Palace while Jordan was chairman.[ad_pod id=’unruly-2′ align=’right’]Don’t take all the above as my opinion – mere hyperbole to show how easy it is to take against clubs, as if it is almost frowned upon to like other clubs. Any little thing you can seize upon- one arrogant letter from an Arsenal fan on a website is enough for you to tar all Arsenal fans with the same brush.It’s a similar theme at matches. Ninety minutes of winding each other up and sneering (or more) outside. This seems to be a habit restricted to British clubs though – perhaps familiarity breeds contempt, but it’s a lot harder to really detest a foreign team. Though I am tempted to start hating Barcelona because everyone fawns over them so much. And because of Busquets of course.I hate Ipswich because their fans sneered when we got relegated once. I hate Luton because they relegated us in 1983 and David Pleat ran across the pitch. And because of those portakabins down the side of the pitch. God I hated them. I hate Portsmouth because they have a drummer and lots of bell ringing.And that’s the thing with irrational dislikes – football clubs are massive entities, with a large coaching and managerial staff, a large pool of players, a set of fans that can number millions and a proud history stretching back over a century, but it only takes one individual or one tiny detail at a club for me to take a dislike to them. Thus, whichever club Harry Redknapp is attached to I am duty-bound to hate. This is because of the spurious reasons of him having so many friends in the media he seems untouchable, and because he likes to talk about players in the press that he thinks are ‘triffic, perfectly illustrated when he unsettled Eyal Berkovic away from Manchester City many years ago. Time has not healed the wounds.Why do we take so easily to hating other teams? It doesn’t happen in other sports. Football is of course tribal, more now than it has ever been, and we mark our territory and stand our ground. We see everything through blinkers, and excuse our own team and fans whilst pouncing on the actions of others.  We can’t sit with opposition fans or we will kill each other. We can’t debate without prejudice, we can’t accept the opposition fans were louder, the opposition team were better, or that the penalty they got was a fair decision. And some rivalries are more deep-seated of course – splits caused by religious differences, historical rivalries between cities, but often nothing more than a fiery game three seasons previous.This is football, and part of what we love about it. It’s fine for me to hate Plymouth Argyle, because no one should play in green (ok, that’s pushing it a bit) . But my most irrational hatred of all concerns a tannoy system. A certain championship side, who shall remain nameless, once scored against City, and the PA system erupted to the sound of Tina Turner and “Simply The Best”.Surely a just reason to hate a whole club? I think so.