Ian Pattison, Enfield and Lea Valley Socialist Party
A profiteering football match in the USA has been cancelled. Spanish teams, Villarreal and Barcelona, were due to play their regular league match in Miami.
But player and fan protest has stopped this. Football writer Matt Slater said: “Football keeps forgetting to run it past the players”.
Players organised visually effective protests in every La Liga match on the weekend of 18-19 October, refusing to move for the first 15 seconds.
But La Liga and TV broadcasters refused to televise the player protest, further angering players. Players are also angry that the US match ignored their ‘convenios colectivos’, supposed to guarantee workers’ rights.
And fan protest helped this win too. Just like when we beat the breakaway Super League in 2021. Then, thousands of fans protested, reflecting millions of fans across England.
Like the Miami match, a similar ‘39th game’ for English Premier League teams to play in another country was stopped before it started, because of fan backlash. And it hasn’t resurfaced.
Why is this happening?
Lots of different people have the right to access football. Barcelona is the most popular football team in the US. Almost 200,000 people came to see them play during the team’s summer pre-season US tour, two years ago.
But the capitalists that run football think about ordinary people last. Free-market madness in the US – who are co-hosting next year’s World Cup – means that the cheapest ticket for the opening match there is £414!
There are a handful of ‘cheap’ £44 tickets. But so few of those are available that you have to zoom in to see that section of the stadiums on ticket websites. And they’re already sold out!
Football fans, staff, including players, and local communities, should come together to democratically decide how everyone can access football – not the billionaire owners or undemocratic governing bodies.
