Portsmouth head South: A Fan’s perspective

With the impending High Court hearing against HM Revenue and Customs looming, it may have been the final game at Fratton Park, with the mere existence of Portsmouth Football Club hanging in the balance as their team of battlers, misfits and good-for-nothings lost a hard-fought contest to Stoke City on Saturday evening. A Pompey fan, I was nearly moved to tears when the final whistle was blown and an atmosphere of dread finally seemed to descend on the terraces. This could be the end. 112 years of footballing history stubbed out through financial mismanagement and the inadequacy of a Football Association which has failed to address an illness which has plagued the English game since the Premier League came to be. The English FA has been at worst self-destructive, and at best, naive.

Sport is about the desire to win; the search for success. When the Premier League exploded on to the scene in the early nineties, success was, more than ever, dictated by the size of a club’s budget, and Manchester United et al gained their monopoly on every trophy going. How were the rest of us to compete? In stepped Mr Abramovich and all of a sudden it became obvious – pump in someone else’s money and the silverware will come. The FA should never have allowed this. It set an outrageous precedent which allowed other English clubs to follow suit in their understandable desire to merely survive in what has been self-gratifyingly dubbed “the best league in the world”. Alexandre Gaydamak poured money into Portsmouth and they survived – they even won the FA Cup. But what happens when the sugar daddy backs out? Well, the south coast club have shown us – financial meltdown and the very real prospect of liquidation. Portsmouth have been living beyond their means because their chairman allowed them to – even encouraged them to. When his money ran out, so did Pompey’s unsustainable business model. This wasn’t the failure of a club, but the failure of a system which has made no attempt to combat a problem which has existed for years, and which threatens the mere existence of the game we all love.

Football is business now, and regrettably our clubs have become mere cogs in the deplorable capitalist machine. As a result, if clubs are not run properly, they will go bust – a lesson Portsmouth have learned the hard way. The realists who succumb to the cut-throat world of business and competition will say that this is the way of the world – football clubs, like companies, can go bankrupt and cease to exist – that’s life. This will not do. Whilst it is clear that Portsmouth are in the wrong, all that will be achieved by liquidation is the theft of a club from a city who need it.

After all, Avram Grant has highlighted what really matters in this story – what Portsmouth Football Club truly means when all else is stripped away. After the hard-fought draw at home to Sunderland, the Pompey manager reflected uncompromisingly, condemning the attitude of all who have commented on the financial situation at the club. He rightly claimed that, “Football is not just money. Football is passion, passion to play, passion of the supporters”. Critics will say he was ranting. I think not. English football clubs are not just businesses. As Mr Grant pointed out, they are far more than that. They are clubs, places where people with a common interest come together to feel a part of something that they love; to support a team that they belong to, that they immerse themselves in.

Football is like a religion in England. Grown men cry in the face of relegation, sing their hearts out on the terraces, are buried in their club shirts. Football is not, and has never been, just money; it is a way of life. Whatever the paper and the money says, Portsmouth FC does not belong to one man; it belongs to the thousands sitting in the stands week in week out, kicking every ball, cheering every pass and loving every minute. For too long have we allowed the rich and the powerful to treat our clubs as toys; playthings to be discarded when an oligarch or sheikh finally gets bored. Football is the people’s game, our game. Winding up Portsmouth won’t just be winding up the business of several incompetent owners, it will be tearing away a vital part of a city’s identity – of a person’s identity.

My name is Harry Barker and I’m a Portsmouth fan. Please don’t take that away from me.