Sunday, June 18, 2023

Some colorful details in this article about passionate hooligan support for very low level English soccer teams

From a long article focusing on why hooligan arrests have skyrocketed since the pandemic:

Outside a pub named The Feathered Fish stirred a few hundred young lads decked out in CP Goggle jackets, tapered trackies and ‘Meet Me at McDonald’s’ haircuts

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They were here for Cheltenham Town’s match against Gloucestershire rivals Forest Green Rovers – a fixture known to locals as ‘El Glosico’

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The Gloucestershire derby is the perfect accelerator for this phenomenon: a local grudge match that brings ancient village rivalries in line with the wider British culture war. Because while Cheltenham Town are a standard lower-league football team run by a local solicitor and featuring a squad of itinerant journeymen, Forest Green are a very different prospect. Owned by wind-farm magnate Dale Vince – a former New Age traveller in the Spiral Tribe mould who once sported a Richie Hawtin haircut – the club boasts of being the world’s first vegan football club, as well as the first carbon-neutral football club. Indeed, there are no animal products on sale at their stadium, The New Lawn, which has solar panels on its roof and a pitch that recycles water. (Work on a new stadium designed by Zaha Hadid is underway.) Among Cheltenham fans, this is no cause for solidarity, with one terrace chant referring to Vince as a “sad vegan bastard”.

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“Gloucestershire’s quite an affluent part of the country, but Cheltenham Town has stayed true to its roots… whereas Forest Green has always been inherently middle class. I mean, look at veganism. When’s the last time you saw a working class vegan?”

(Various theories on why they're called "Meet Met at McDonald's" haircuts, btw.) (The goggle jackets have hoods with built-in goggles.) (Here's an SI article asking if Forest Green can "save the planet")