Out of the ruins a fairer, more sustainable game could have emerged and match-going fans might just have been winners
The changing of a year is a time to reflect, to both remember moments that have passed and imagine how they might have happened differently. These considerations are likely to be personal: should I really have let my hair grow long? What if I had not forced the hire car into the narrow parking space next to the concrete pillar? They can also be grander too and one thought that has returned frequently over the course of the past week is of the latter type. It runs as follows: did we miss a trick by not letting the European Super League happen?
By we I mean the source of the amorphous people power credited with bringing the 12-club breakaway competition to a halt. I also mean specifically the English contingent of that protest because the dynamics at work in Spain and Italy are different. Finally I mean the part of that group described as the ‘legacy fan’, those who watch their team in a stadium and who support them in a kind of unconditional fashion, as if we were almost part of it ourselves.
