Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room PSV Eindhoven

Football clubs these days are like the restaurant you used to like.
The same named restaurant which, since then, changed owners 15 times (including the cuisine) and has nothing to do with what you liked from the old restaurant.

Oh btw, this has nothing to do with me living in Feijenoord on 5 minutes distance of the stadium

Good point Fons. Several years ago I wrote this little list of things that had changed about football since I was a kid. This refers to British football but it applies, with sligh variations, everywhere. Here it is:

Remember when...

Your club was a club, not a PLC.

The only place you could sit was 'the stand'.

Every member of your team had a name you could pronounce.

The fans changed ends at half time as well as the teams.

The national team captain wasn't an international, multi-millionaire celebrity.

'The woodwork' was made of wood.

Posh kids had 'Powerpoint' boots, everybody else had 'Gola'.

There were no names on the backs of shirts and only the club badge on the front.

Anyone on the field with a number higher than 11 on his back had come on as a sub.

The 'physio' was called the trainer and all he had in his bag was a wet sponge.

Straddling the corner flag to celebrate a goal would result in splinters in your b******s.

Half-time entertainment was a Top Of The Pops album played through the tannoy while you drank your Bovril.

Arsenal were boring.

Manchester United fans lived in Manchester.

Ô¿Ô

*applauds wildly and waves rattle (all in grainy out- of synch- black and white)
GOAL Stringy Bob magnificently hits the back of the net à la James McFadden against France or even for EFC against Charlton
Possibly the best post I've ever read on here !(even if its got nothing to do with Big Den )

I knew it, it's a global thing.

We don't recognize our own footballclub anymore.
It's like Fons and Stringy wrote; where's the core of what we used to like?
I read an article about it a few months ago. Business changed it all; clubs don't invest anymore in young players who live round the corner. Now they want big NAMES, or players who have proved themselves (often foreigners, no offence).
So there's less and less identification left for the fans.

The board of PSV Eindhoven (finally ...) recognized this. They ordered that, from now on, it's forbidden to ever change the shirts they play in. Even in detail.
It's a start ...

Cheers mate. I will keep that in mind if I'm ever in Eindhoven. I would rather have a Dutch or Belgian beer in a traditional Dutch bar rather than an Oirish pub though.

Okay Andy,

a belgium trappist beer (Westmalle, Rochefort) it will be ...

Football used to be a very local thing, until they started going professional.
Then "stars" from the neighboring town were imported, followed by neighboring countries and ending in neighboring continents.
Any club can easily be swapped with another club these days, one reason I never understood these hardcore football fans really.
One season you have 11 players here, the next season they play elsewhere.
Which leaves the club as a empty shell, filled up new every season...
Does that justify being a fan of ?

Hiya Lody,

Oh it made me feel very happy!

"But why is it you don't fancy Feyenoord?"

Because, for Tottenham it was the start of everything going wrong. Bill Nicholson - our greatest manager ever-resigned in the autumn of 1974, "sickened by the salaries commanded by journeymen players and repelled by the hooliganism that had turned Tottenham's second-leg defeat by Feyenoord in the Uefa Cup final into the "Rotterdam Riot" in May; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8nZuW9EM7w 1970s ugly and a sour note to end on in the greatest English Football book ever written - The Glory Game by Hunter Davies.

After that, the name Feyenoord meant ugly violent football for quite a while at Spurs. And occasionally over the years we've run into them and sometimes again, it's got sadly ugly - the stigma of '74 sadly still remains.

It has to be added, that, in fairness to Feyenoord - they did offer an olive branch of sorts by asking us to play in a friendly back in 2008.

Anyway - it's all history now! This is what the future looks like...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU_KNv-EO-4

Okay Gazza,

now I understand!

So you're content with 'Raffa' then?

Heh!

I'm VERY content with Raffa (or as Ivan and I call him; 'The Fat Waiter' ...) he's SO sh*t, world domination would be easy!!!!