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The most recent example of this would be the fetching Sunderland x Arsenal number at a game last weekend. But they've also been spotted at Liverpool v Hull, Chelsea v Man United and, internationally, Dortmund v Munich. Needless to say, this has caused a whole lot of consternation among the die-hards, with people accusing the 50/50 squad of being the personification of everything wrong with football, harbingers of some terrible dawn of neutrality. Most of the hate exists on Twitter and the occasional headsy blog right now, but be sure that as soon as it reaches the Talk Sport offices there'll be a three hour Call Collymore diatribe about it, in which Stan accuses the plastics of "ripping the heart and soul out of the working man's game".No words. Except my faith in humanity has died a little #SAFC #SUNNEW https://t.co/KygOojkjQW pic.twitter.com/MQexX9PkD1
— FootballFanCast.com (@FootballFanCast) October 25, 2015
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Enis Koylu, a football writer at Goal.com, explains: "The first time we saw the old ties to clubs breaking down was the 1990s with Manchester United, but it's not purely down to Ferguson and his team's success. It was also a natural consequence of the Champions League, not just a great competition, but an incredibly glamorous one, which brought with it global broadcasting. Famous names such as Juventus, AC Milan and Real Madrid, which people across the world would only have heard of and read about, were beamed into the homes of billions of new people, and it became possible to follow teams from faraway lands on a weekly basis."Why did football clubs need to reach fans beyond their own ends? To make more money. And the simple fact is that by appealing to people who have no geographical or familial links to football clubs, you're going to have offer them football as an experience, not an obligation. With ever-rising ticket prices, and ever-rising TV sports package prices, simply expecting people to pay their shillings at the turnstyle out of some sense of tribal duty just isn't feasible any more. You've got to offer them football as something closer to the WWE, or a U2 concert, or Derren Brown: Live. And to do that, you're going to have to take away the rough edges and let these new fans do it the way they want. Because the customer is always right. It's first-day-at-your-Business-Studies-GNVQ stuff.Read more sports stories on VICE Sports
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Problem is, what exactly is a football club when it's cutting ties with its local area, trying to attract a more affluent fanbase than its traditional working class one and generally more interested in running itself like a business above all else? Well, it's just a brand. A brand that plays football. Standard Chartered with a stadium. And that's where it gets a little bit worrying.Because the more football clubs move away from being sporting representations of the parts of the world they inhabit, carrying the hopes of the towns and cities that birthed them, the more they just become abstract, rootless, money-making machines offering you a service of fluctuating quality. They become Pret, essentially. Just a thing that's there that's quite expensive and mostly a bit disappointing, yet you still seem to go for it anyway, if only for a bit of a cheap thrill. However, the entire thrill of football should rely on having to support a team, for whatever reason that may be. Because football with neutrality is like sex without romance, inherently pleasurable, but lacking the life and death factor that really makes it worth it. Football is always better when there's feelings involved. If you want the highs to be as high as possible, it's being there for the third round replays that will take the game to the next level, not supporting a team whose manager you like the most.READ ON VICE SPORTS: How to Catch a Match Fixer
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