The energy of football’s outrage over the Super League has been heartening, but were the clubs only posturing after all?
As the sun dipped below the roof-line of Stamford Bridge something strange began to happen. The birds flew backwards through the sky, the cats barked, the trees turned a tangerine hue, and Roman Abramovich became, at a stroke, the protector of the people’s game, enemy of the elites, the oligarch of the masses.
What world is this we have now entered? How far have we travelled through the looking glass? What powerful hallucinogenic drugs have been administered to lead us in the space of three days to a place where the hordes of football supporters on the Fulham Road can proclaim English football’s original – and most dizzyingly transformative oligarch – as their white knight, tender of the grass roots, pharaoh of pyramid and all the rest of it?
