In his regular Monday column, TF90M’s Tim Sansom compares the cheesiest music event of the year with Europe’s premiere football competition…
I know that the Eurovision Song Contest is one of the key events of the year for many people in the UK as well as across Europe. Despite my attempts to set aside a whole Saturday night to enjoy the delights of Norwegian pipe music of Belgian ‘funky hip hop hard house,’ it has never quite worked for me. I am bored after about half an hour of spandex and dodgy harmonicas. I try and raise a cheer to the United Kingdom’s entry. The results drone on for over an hour, and the UK comes near the bottom of the board or even last. The United Kingdom has twice won the contest in my lifetime.
I sometimes wonder whether there has been any point to the Eurovision Song Contest but I know that some people hold Eurovision parties, and cover their dinner tables in pineapple and cheese sticks as well as vats of dandelion and burdock fizzy pop. They have been enjoying the semi finals of the contest, and reliving their Abba, Bucks Fizz and Brotherhood of Man moments from the contests of the past. They say that they support Sweden or Lithuania in the contest for a wide variety of interesting reasons, even though they have no personal connection with those countries.
I have to admit that I have seen people glory hunting in the Eurovision Song Contest. It is a pretty desperate state of affairs, for a pretty desperate television event. How many of us would admit that we have Gina Gee’s iconic ‘Ooh Aah, Just a Little Bit’ in our music collection?
You meet similar fans when you decide to catch Champions League action. There are people who have their Premiership teams, and their Champions League team. They support AC or Inter Milan, or Real Madrid even though they have had no personal connection with Italy or Spain. They may have been to those countries on a summer package holiday, and brought a AC Roma football shirt from a beachside café and decide to be Roma fans for Champions League purposes only.
These fans surface at the key Champions League games. They have been bubbling under the surface during the interminable group games, because it is difficult to flaunt your love for your ‘Champions League’ team when a large amount of fans are not especially excited when AC Milan wallop Slovenia’s top side on a cold Tuesday night in early December. It is after Christmas when these fans surface for those matches when the Champions League seems to catch the imagination of the general public. Those showdowns are between the European giants such as Barcelona and Chelsea, or Manchester United and AC Milan.
For the record, I have enjoyed the mesmerising passing of Barcelona this season, their willingness (before the recent Chelsea game) to take shots on the opposition’s goal, and score some memorable goals. I have been in awe of Xavi, Messi and Eto’o during this year’s Champions League, and I believe that some of the goalkeeping saves from Victor Valdes should be shown on continuous looping tapes within the goalkeeping colleges of the UK and across Europe too. I admire Barcelona and hope that they will perform well in the forthcoming European Cup Final, but I am not a Barcelona ‘fan.’
I cannot profess to have an extensive knowledge of the Barcelona team over the last twenty- nine years. My intelligence is mostly based on football superstar names, a BBC TV theme, various travel programmes, and my love of Spanish football. The city of Barcelona came into my consciousness during the 1992 Olympics that were always introduced by the BBC with ‘Barcelona’ from Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe. It always looks to be a truly beautiful city, and the Nou Camp is one of Europe’s (and the world’s) greatest football stadiums. I want to visit Barcelona but none of these factors would make me a Barcelona ‘fan.’ I am just an ‘admirer’ of this Spanish team.
In a similar way to the Eurovision Song Contest, the British People seem to have a variety of attitudes to the Champions League. Although they would never admit it, I believe that there are a large amount of fans that support the Premiership’s top four teams, who care more about success in the Champions League rather than a Premiership title.
There are the fans from the non-Champions League teams who suffer the Champions League games, who hope to stumble on a nugget of a game to see the cream of Europe’s footballing talent. There are the fans who believe that the Champions League is nothing more than a blood sucking monster, sucking the life out of everything that is great about football.
I have talked about the fans that treat the Champions League like a normal domestic league competition, and they are the fans that treat AC Milan as their second team. It is also interesting that the same fans never have a ‘League One’ or a ‘League Two’ team that they profess their fervent support. It is a bit irritating for the football fans, who believe that supporting a team is more than a matter of words and buying shirts, but it is a sign of the confusion that many of us have when we think about the Champions League.
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