ENGLISH TEAMS
MANCHESTER UNITED
Manchester United is an international leisure, clothing and merchandising conglomerate, worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and with interests in every major country around the world. As a sideline, it also runs a football team.
All you need to know about this football team is summed up in the statement that there are only three clubs whose names contain a swear word – Arsenal, Scunthorpe and F***ing Man United. The team completely dominated English football during the 1990s, and even though other sides have come to challenge that dominance in recent years, Man U (as they are known) are still widely disliked by other fans. This is in large part due to the lofty attitude displayed by their long-time Scottish manager Sir Alex Ferguson, now retired. The Man United management is often accused of being paranoid. This is unfair. Paranoia is the state of falsely perceiving that everyone hates you. Man U are perfectly correct in their perception that everyone hates them.
If, as an advanced bluffer, you wish to argue against the prevailing ‘United Are Evil’ thesis, there are a couple of facts to which you could refer:
There are only three clubs whose names contain a swear word – Arsenal, Scunthorpe and F***ing Man United.
The alternative is simply to hate them like everyone else. It’s easier.
MANCHESTER CITY
This is the team supported by everyone who lives in Manchester. As opposed to Manchester United, which is the team supported by everyone who lives in Surrey. For years City played Watson to United’s Holmes (in fact, even that’s not right – Holmes and Watson liked each other), but the injection in 2008 of massive funding by new owners the Abu Dhabi United Group (run by a member of that country’s Royal family) changed the picture completely. Since then, Man City (as they are known) have qualified for the Champions League and won the FA Cup (2011) and Premier League (2012). Their fans’ celebrations have been only slightly dimmed by the fact that the organisation responsible for all this success has the word ‘United’ in its name.
All this is a long way from the dark days of the mid-1990s, when City even slipped down to the third tier of English football. The club was in such a mess that at one point they had 42 players on the books. Manager Alan Ball said that as they ran towards him on his first day in charge he felt like Michael Caine in Zulu.
CHELSEA
A successful team, runs the old footballing cliché, requires a ‘blend of youth and experience’. Chelsea’s capture of the 2005, 2006 and 2010 Premier League titles, the 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012 FA Cups, the 2012 Champions League and the 2013 Europa League proved that, as with Manchester City, nowadays it’s a blend of a hundred million pounds and another hundred million pounds. The Blues’ purchase by Russian oil zillionaire Roman Abramovich has given the team its new nickname: ‘Chelski’. The club was already famous for buying expensive overseas players. It has now imported so many that it is rumoured to have its own customs channel at Heathrow airport.
(Make sure to mention that this trend is the opposite of that which occurred during the 1980s, when many of the best English footballers went to play on the Continent. By and large these moves turned out to be failures. It is often thought that this was because the players didn’t speak the languages of the countries they’d moved to. But this belief is a mistaken one; after all, not being able to speak English had never stopped them getting on at home. Rather, the problem lay in the fact that the players missed their traditional English food, such as curries, kebabs and chicken chow mein.)
Although his money has brought Chelsea huge success, Abramovich has become known for his impatience with underachieving managers. After promptly dismissing the incumbent team boss Claudio ‘The Tinkerman’ Ranieri, and then losing José Mourinho (who achieved the Roman Emperor’s first bout of consecutive successes), several other foreign bosses such as Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari and André Villas-Boas have come and gone. Not even winning the FA Cup and the Champions League in the same season (2012), as achieved by Roberto Di Matteo, is any guarantee of job security. After a brief and tumultuous caretaker reign by deeply unpopular former Liverpool manager Rafa Benítez, José Mourinho has returned to the club amid widespread rejoicing. The unbridled joy cannot possibly last.
ARSENAL
One of the two main North London clubs. Although in recent years the other one, Tottenham Hotspur, have enjoyed a resurgence in form, they still haven’t actually won the Premier League or FA Cup in over two decades. Arsenal have done both, and indeed in 1998 and 2002 they did the ‘double’ (winning both titles in the same season). This annoys Spurs fans immensely, especially as Arsenal aren’t even proper North Londoners; they were originally from Woolwich in South London. The club crossed the river in 1913, but even today Tottenham fans still give their rivals the very keenest encouragement to make the return journey.
Manager Arsène Wenger is a lugubrious Frenchman from Strasbourg who has notoriously bad eyesight when asked to comment on any suggestion in which his team might be at fault in some respect. Remarkably, it becomes keener than a hawk’s when there is any suggestion that his team might have been offended against. He is, incidentally, the club’s longest-serving manager and currently the longest-serving manager in English league football.
Arsenal’s old stadium, Highbury, was renowned for its immaculate pitch. Until the mid-1990s the team was also known for its grindingly dull defensive tactics, to the extent that it was often more interesting to watch the famous grass grow than it was to concentrate on the play. In its latter years the ground was nicknamed ‘Highbury the Library’, on account of the team’s middle-class fans clapping politely instead of roaring on their team. It was once worked out that the energy of 10,000 football fans cheering is sufficient to boil three pints of water. At an Arsenal match you might just get enough for a teaspoon.
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
As noted previously, it has been a while since Spurs won either of the two main domestic honours. Even when they were winning, they traditionally performed more strongly in cups than in the league. Their claim that they always win the FA Cup ‘when the year ends in one’ is based on that fact that they won the competition in 1961, 1981 and 1991. They tend to shut up about the theory when you point out to them that the 1971 winners were their hated rivals Arsenal, and that they were conspicuous by their absence in 2001 and 2011. No matter. They can always look forward to 2021.
A piece of linguistic trivia to throw in whenever Spurs are mentioned is that their name is the only one of the top 92 teams to end in ‘r’. (People assume from the common abbreviation that the club’s full name is ‘Tottenham Hotspurs’ – not so.)
LIVERPOOL
Under legendary managers Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, and with players of the class of Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush, Liverpool were the most successful English club from the 1960s until the 1980s. Countless League trophies, FA Cups, League Cups and European Cups (the old name for the Champions League) made their way to the trophy cabinet at the club’s ground.
Since 1990, and despite the presence of many immensely talented players such as Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard, Liverpool have failed to win the top-flight title. They won the FA Cup in 2001 and 2006, and even managed to (as many people saw it) ‘fluke’ the Champions League in 2005 (they came from 3-0 down at half-time in the final to win on penalties) – but until the ‘Reds’ win the Premier League their fans will feel short-changed.
In the meantime, though, those supporters continue to support the side vigorously. They’re famous for the anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Opposition fans frequently change this to ‘You’ll Never Work Again’ (including the refrain, ‘Sign on, sign on, with a pen in your hand…’).
EVERTON
The other team in Liverpool, and perennial underachievers. Their ground, Goodison Park, is adjacent to a church which actually protrudes into the ground – but not actually onto the pitch. The club does not play early kick-offs on Sundays in order to permit Sunday services at the church to proceed uninterrupted. However, even having God as a season ticket holder hasn’t helped them match the historic success achieved by Liverpool.
NEWCASTLE UNITED
Known as the ‘Magpies’, their fans are renowned both for their unwavering loyalty and for their hardiness. On the very coldest of winter days, they occasionally relent and wear a second T-shirt.