Talking about the next generation

A lot has been written about football in the 80s. Not that much of it is positive. To be fair to that particular decade, it just happened to be the one where a lot of things went verywrong.

In the space of a few days in May 1985, incidents at Birmingham, Bradford and Brussels saw 96 fans tragically lose their lives, and bringing to light some clear gaps in stadium safety and crowd behaviour.  Four years later, Hillsborough was the scene of the worst disaster in English football history when the stadium design, and police failings, conspired to claim a further 97 lives in total.

But was football a disaster just waiting to happen long before that? The problems were nothing new; hooliganism and stadium safety issues had been rife in the previous decade, but football had somehow managed to avoid a major disaster since 66 people were killed at a Rangers versus Celtic match at Ibrox in 1971.

It was obviously very different back then. Watch any old footage from a packed stadium in the 70s and see the way the [all-standing] crowd sways back and forth, especially after a goal. I’ve stood on those kinds of terraces and it was possible to end up in a completely different spot by the end of the game. Kind of fun at the time, admittedly, and part of the experience, but it’s also miracle that no one was seriously hurt, or worse, before the 80s.

The next major tragedy was in Moscow in October 1982 when 66* people died in a crush on an icy staircase at the end of a European Cup match (*the number of fatalities ranges from 3 to 340 according to various sources and although it was confirmed several years later by Russian authorities, the actual figures are still disputed).

All of these awful events included the deaths of young fans. If the numbers are correct, the one in Moscow recorded that 45 teenagers, the youngest just 14, perished. It is this one that possibly resonates most with my early experience of football, even though I doubt I even heard about it when it happened, I was a young fan myself at that very time and what was happening had an impact on how I was able to enjoy it.

I became a teenager - and football mad - during the 1980s. I had only ‘found’ football in 1980 and within two years, I was going to games on a regular basis. One significant game I could have gone to was the 1982 European Cup Final (a few months before the Moscow stadium disaster) between Aston Villa and Bayern Munich as my uncle was a season-ticket holder at Villa Park. But my hopes of a ferry dash to Rotterdam were ended when my mother said no. There had been lots of trouble before, during and after both legs of the semi-final versus Anderlecht, and that had been enough to dissuade her that I’d return to the West Midlands unscathed.

It also played a large part in my club selection. Despite most of my family supporting – and attending games at – Villa or Wolves, I chose my local club, Walsall. This decision was entirely driven by the culture of crowd trouble in those times. I wanted to go to games every week, but if I was to go there alone (although no-one really goes to game on their own; it’s a form of community in itself), then it had to be somewhere I could easily get to and where I’d be ‘safe’ (I was 12, so fair enough) and Walsall was within walking distance – just.

But it wasn’t just about getting my steps in. Fellows Park was a homely place and there was a sense of safety there that the bigger stadiums probably couldn’t offer at the time. Remember it was before mobiles phones, all-seater stadiums, and definitely before Here to Help teams, so it did make sense from a parental POV (although interestingly, Walsall had their own incident when a wall collapsed during a League Cup semi-final versus Liverpool in 1984 that possibly offered some early warnings about stadium and crowd issues that went unheeded.)

Now, in 1982, I didn’t have a huge amount of alternatives to going to the football, other than not going. There wasn’t a lot of other sport competing with it. I certainly couldn’t stay at home instead and play on my PlayStation or Xbox, and there wasn’t the abundance of choice there is today for parents looking for a leisure pursuit for the family. There might have been the odd ten pin bowling place, and there was the cinema, of course, but Laser Quest, trampoline parks and the like were still some way off.

Nowadays, there are dozens of things a kid or their family can do on a weekend. And while in the early 1980’s, the FA Cup, European Cup Final and the England v Scotland home international were the only three games screened live on TV, just about every game on the planet is available on a screen somewhere in 2025. The attention span of younger people, and a diet of content that shrinks everything into less than a minute, has created a very different junior fan than I was at that age. They might be content with watching short clips of games, or following players more than teams, so for a club, it’s a challenge to get younger people to even come to games in the first place.

Not that football doesn’t try. It markets the game so much better now, and has become incredibly safe. The chances of being caught up in crowd disturbances are extremely low. Fan zones, family areas, much better facilities and stewarding, plus the aforementioned Here To Help staff, have all made stadiums much friendlier, welcoming and enjoyable places to be. There are still the odd bits of anti-social behaviour but, by and large, parents feel very relaxed about bringing kids to games or letting slightly older ones go by themselves.

But where is it headed? When my generation - and the one after - are too old to be relied on for our regular and almost guaranteed attendance, are the next generation going to be there the way we were? Are they going to want to be there?

It seems obvious that they would, but why? Football clubs do a great job of getting younger fans to games – much younger than the age I first started to go – and that’s great. The rise of the family experience has introduced millions to the game, especially in the EFL, and from mascots to half-time entertainment, there is a lot for 7-12 year olds to enjoy.

But what about the older ones? What about the group that wouldn’t be seen in the same room as a mascot, let alone high-fiving them, and for whom a first-time fan certificate is more cringe-worthy than something to get excited about?

I know – not suspect – that the vast majority of clubs aren’t really doing much for this group at all. It’s firmly filed in a folder called ‘too difficult’ or ‘wait and see what the others do’ and it has been for many years.

But it can’t stay there indefinitely.

Football, and its clubs, didn’t have to do anything to get me there in 1982, even if it had wanted to. It was any easy sell. Kids for a quid was the actual price, and as long as they sold me a programme and a pie when I got there, I was in my element.

But that won’t wash with the ‘youth of today’. They’re not even getting out of bed for a pie and programme. And while attendances are at all-time highs and it all looks very rosy, there is still – on average - a third of tickets unsold in EFL games, so there is room for more fans at most of the grounds as it is, but an even bigger need to secure the interest, and attendance, of that next generation.

My paper on the subject of Teenage Kicks goes much further, and into the detail of how to solve the issue, including 5 immediate fixes, and 5 longer-term solutions.

Get in touch to request a copy.