Fulham On The Brink

I know that the majority of my readers are American and barely if at all interested in the goings-on of English football, so I've tried to limit my posts on that subject to the occasional piss and moan about the travails of being a Fulham supporter.

And indeed it's been a dismal season, more dismal than even I had realized until today when I heard a BBC commentator note that Fulham had just won back-to-back victories for the first time since September 2006. But note the operative word: "won." Fulham has, after a stomach-churning freefall toward oblivion that has been in effect since before Christmas, have suddenly come to life. All but the most rosy-spectacled fans had already mentally prepared themselves for life in the First Division (which in the bizarre argot of the Football Association is now called the "Championship" but is actually the Second Division), and suddenly Fulham is winning on a regular basis. In fact, if they win just one more - next Sunday's season finale - they're guaranteed to stay in the Premiership (which is actually the First Division).

Unfortunately, that game is against Portsmouth, who are always tough, and away at Fratton Park, making things even tougher. But after Fulham came back from 2-0 down at the City of Manchester Stadium to win 3-2 in the final minute of stoppage time, following it up with today's 2-0 dismantling of Birmingham, almost anything seems possible. Still, it's almost painful to have hope which had all but vanished suddenly resurrected with, however, the knowledge that it could still be cruelly snatched away again. Worse, come next Sunday I'll be in Frisco with, as far as I know, no access to a television to keep track of the proceedings. Which might be for the better: I'm not sure I have the stomach to watch, considering the stakes, and besides, every one of Fulham's recent victories have come on a day when I was unable to watch, whereas nearly every time I have watched, they've lost, often ignominiously so.

So perhaps I'm a jinx, even though all this time, I'd thought Fulham's misfortunes stemmed from their being brokenhearted over my leaving England and no longer being a season ticket-holding regular in the Riverside Stand. Jinx or not, though, my nephew and I will be there come late August to see the mighty (okay, perhaps that's stretching a point) Whites roll out a new season, regardless of what division they're in. But maybe, just maybe, against all odds, it's going to be the Premiership after all.

Watching The Mighty Fall

I've been very nostalgic for England lately; it seems whichever way I turn, whether to books or films or perusing the internet or conversations with friends, there are reminders of the life I once led across the sea. Naturally my reminiscences have been miraculously filtered of any and all unpleasant memories: in my dreams of London, it never rains, the trains are always on time, and things that used to madden me - the early-closing shops and cafes, the resolute resistance to change, no matter how sensible, the rising crime and crumbling social order - have unaccountably vanished.

Now I see only picturesque and quiet streets, perfectly preserved and harmonious remnants of a more stately architectural era, colorful but completely congenial citizens striding happily through streets and parks where never a traffic jam is seen or a horn heard to be honked in anger. In short, a London that I never saw except perhaps in fitful dreams during the entire time I lived there, but a London that has become nonetheless real in my absence.

It doesn't make any difference, either, that old friends frequently complain that London is worse than ever, that they themselves are thinking of getting out, or already have. Obviously they're mistaken, I tell them, though at the same time, all such ruminations remain confined to daydreams; apart from the occasional visit, I'm making no plans to return.

Speaking of the occasional visit, though, I'm currently arranging a trip there in late August for my 12 year old nephew and myself. He's been fascinated by England ever since I moved there and Harry Potter burst upon the world, both of which happened about the same time, and this will be his first visit. I'm busily trying to figure out just what will appeal most to the 12 year old mind (shouldn't be too much of a stretch for me, I can already hear some of you saying), and apart from the usual castles, funny accents, and double decker buses, he's been promised at least one Premiership football match.

When told about that, he responded, "Fulham, I suppose?" (He knows his uncle well.) And normally that would be a safe bet, since I'm still a member at Fulham and can pretty much always count on getting tickets there. However, the odds on Fulham still being a Premiership team come August 2008 are dismal and dwindling rapidly, which could put me in the awkward and unpleasant position of having to shell out large cash to watch one of our historical enemies like Chelsea or Spurs (I will not pay for an Arsenal match that doesn't involve Fulham, that's already a given). I'll still go watch Fulham no matter what division they're in - they were in the old Second Division - currently known in FA Newspeak as "League One" - when I got my first season ticket, and if I'm honest, I sometimes enjoyed those old Second and First Division matches more than Premiership matches (certainly more than most of Fulham's Premiership matches this year). But I'm not sure a 12 year old who wants to see famous footballers will share my undiminished loyalty.

The first Fulham match I ever saw was an FA Cup tie against Barnsley that the Cottagers won 4-0. At the time I didn't even know the difference between FA Cup matches and regular season ones; I just had read that Fulham were playing that day, so I turned up at the stadium midway through the first half, bought a ticket and went in. What I saw delighted me enough to keep me coming back, and it was only weeks later when I bought my first season ticket. Which made for some awful symmetry these past couple weeks when I watched lowly Barnsley defeat first Liverpool and now Chelsea in this years FA Cup competition, from which Fulham had already been ignominiously dispatched by even lowlier Bristol Rovers.

For Americans who don't know what the FA Cup is, a gross oversimplification would be that it's more or less England's equivalent to the Super Bowl, with a couple of significant differences, one being that all teams, not just those in the upper half of the standings, have the opportunity to enter the playoffs. And when I say "all teams," I mean that literally: it's not just for Premier League teams or even just for First, Second and Third Division teams (which would be the equivalent of minor league teams in American sports. Any semi-professional or even amateur team can theoretically enter, and though it's been a while since this happened, can even win. To understand this in American terms, imagine a sandlot team from a local baseball league working its way up through the ranks to play the New York Yankees in the World Series.

Most years you can count on the winner of the Cup coming from the same small group that usually wins the Premier League title: Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, with occasional appearances by Liverpool or a handful of other clubs. But this year, all these teams have already been eliminated, some of them rather humiliatingly so by teams far smaller. In fact the final four for this year's Cup is composed of stalwart nonentities Barnsley, Cardiff, West Bromwich Albion and Portsmouth, of whom only Portsmouth are in the Premier League at all.

But watching Barnsley, who are struggling to hang on in their own division, take apart two star-studded multi-millionaire teams has been sheer delight, and a perfect example of why the English love the FA Cup so much: the opportunity to see the high and mighty brought down a peg. There's a sympathy for the underdog in almost all cultures, I suspect, but I doubt that it's refined and cultivated anywhere else to the extent it it is in England. "He wants taking down a peg or two" is language nearly any Englishman can relate to, and apparently I lived there long enough for its spirit to have thoroughly rubbed off on me.

The downside of this is that if/when Fulham get relegated to a lower division at the end of this dismal season, I'll get scant sympathy, even from friends. They'll be too quick to remind me instead of the couple hundred million pounds owner Mohammed al-Fayed splashed out on the team back when they were riding high, and the never-realized promises that we were going to be "the Manchester United of the south." In other words, almost everyone not a dyed-in-the-wool Fulham supporter, especially fans of the lower division teams we beat up on our way to the top division, will think it absolutely hilarious to see us come sliding back down again. They'll be singing, "Going down, going down, going down" and "Premier League, you're having a laugh" to us for the rest of this season and into the next. Ah well, perhaps in that light, being 3,000 miles away isn't so bad after all.

Oh To Be In England...

...now that football season's here.

Yes, it's been a seemingly interminable - what, almost three months? - wait since the curtain came down on the last Premiership season, and here we go again: just when I was beginning to get used to having my Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays free, the marathon begins again. And now that I'm watching my matches on television rather than in person, there's actually a lot more of them. Especially since I'm considering getting Setanta in addition to the Fox Soccer Channel: it could mean that I'm barely able to leave the house until the FA Cup comes around again next May.

Not that I've been completely starved of football these past few months; there's always something, if not on FSC, then on one of the Mexican channels. Which reminds me of something that came as a revelation to me the other night while I was watching some lower division clash from the ass end of Southern Mexico: every time there was a lull in the action, a band would strike up a few bars of the Mexican Hat Dance.

What's remarkable about that? Well, I guess I'd just assumed that the Mexican Hat Dance, like California burritos, was essentially a gringo takeoff on Mexican culture, and that real Mexicans would never dream of having anything to do with it. Guess I was wrong; either that, or some American TV producer had got in on the act and convinced someone to play the MHD as a way of adding an air of verisimilitude for the Norteamericano audience.

Anyway, this morning I watched Man City systematically take West Ham apart, and while in an ideal world I would have liked to have seen both teams loses, West Ham for their dodgy dealings in the transfer market last year and Man City because they're now coached by Sven Boring Eriksson, the inflicter of untold misery on English football fans and ruination of two World Cups and a European championship.

Unfortunately, Sven's team done good today, and thoroughly deserved their win. Liverpool, who squeaked past the perennially tedious Aston Villa thanks to an own goal, not so much. In fact today's second match was totally forgettable affair, but that was all right, as the plumbers were busily making a racket in my apartment trying to fix the pumps so there won't be any more floods.

But tomorrow - in a mere 6 1/2 hours, actually - I've got to be up for the real start of the 2007-08 season, as my beloved Fulham go charging (or more likely skulking) into the macerating maw of Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. Fulham have never won at Arsenal, never once in their entire history, and I'm not counting on much different a result this morning. In fact, there's every likelihood that this could be a bleak and truly dismal affair, and that crawling out of bed to watch it will be the equivalent of witnessing a 90-minute train wreck that I just can't turn my eyes away from.

Ah well, hope springs eternal in the youthful heart, they say. Or was that the foolish heart? At my age, it's definitely got to be the latter, but hey, at least until 2 pm UK time, we won't have dropped a single point and have every bit as much a chance of winning the championship as anyone else. Yeah, right, but what I guess it comes down to is that opening day is like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny for grownups. Until they've actually delivered that lump of coal, the world is full of infinite possibilities.

Relegation Blues

I could barely bring myself to watch today's match between Arsenal and Fulham, not only because Fulham had scant chance of winning, but also because so much was riding on it. For Fulham, anyway; Arsenal is going nowhere this season and have settled into what for them is mediocrity, a fourth place position from which they have no hope of rising any higher.

But for poor little Fulham, now fourth from bottom and sinking fast, defeat meant another step toward disaster. For Americans and other non-followers of football, allow me to explain the principle of relegation: each season the bottom teams in each division are demoted to the next lower league (and conversely, the top three promoted to the next higher). Imagine, for example, if the New York Yankees had a bad year and finished in the cellar. The following season they would have to play in the minor leagues, and would stay there until they won their way back up into the majors.

For an English football team, relegation is disastrous. Just for starters, it will cost the owners in the neighborhood of £30 million ($60 million) in lost revenues from TV and merchandising. They'll also lose most of their best players, who will have to be sold on to other clubs who can afford to pay their wages. That in turn causes many fans to stop coming to matches, and ticket prices have to be reduced to counteract that trend, leading to even more of a decline in revenues. Many teams relegated from the Premiership never make it back, and gradually sink to yet lower divisions.

So that's the position Fulham finds itself in. If they don't win at least one of their remaining two games (or possibly draw both of them), they're almost certain to lose their Premiership status. From my purely personal standpoint, the biggest loss would be that their games would no longer be telecast in America. I was a season ticket holder when Fulham were a Second and First Division team, and since I just plain love football, I'd be happy to watch them even if they were only playing Swindon Town or Wycombe Wanderers. Unfortunately, the only reliable way to watch lower division English football is in person, and since I'm no longer in England, I'd be out of luck.

All that's meant to give you some insight into how I felt this afternoon as I watched, like a horrible car crash unfolding in slow motion, Fulham's 3-1 loss to Arsenal. It was made even worse by Fulham, after trailing most of the match, pulling back a goal to make it 1-1 with only 10 minutes left. If they'd been able to maintain that score, they would have gained a precious point and moved a bit up from rather than down toward the relegation zone. But it was not to be.

In the dismal aftermath, I found myself wondering why it upset me so much. I mean, unlike the club's owner, Mohammed al-Fayed, I don't stand to lose millions of dollars. My own season ticket expired last year, so I don't have any investment in the club apart from emotional, and if I were that desperate to see them play on a regular basis, I suppose I could have stayed in London.

And yet, I wandered about all afternoon in a grim stupor, almost as though someone close to me had died. Then a strange thought struck me: in a sense, I had gone through personal relegation of a sort. 10 years ago, you could say I was playing in a higher league, at least when it came to my particular line of work at the time, the music business. I had over a dozen employees, was responsible for multi-million dollar budgets, and had the privilege (and occasional pain) of dealing with some of the best bands in America (even if you never heard of some of them, trust me, they were). And now? Let's just say my life is lived on a considerably lower profile.

True, I still get the occasional author, journalist or filmmaker coming around to solicit my views on 80s and 90s punk rock and the DIY explosion, but for all intents and purposes, I'm history, which of course is why they're interested in me. Yet - and here's the kicker - while I do sometimes miss the frantic and frenetic days of being a scenemaker and music magnate, it occasions far less grief in me than the prospect of Fulham Football Club, of whom I was only ever a passive spectator, going down.

I asked someone why he thought this might be, and he replied, "Oh, that's simple. You don't have any control over what happens to Fulham, and that's why it drives you crazy. Whereas with Lookout Records and your music career, you made your own choice, or at least convinced yourself that's what you were doing. Accepting what we can't control is always the hardest part. It strikes right at the heart of our ego."

I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense. Maybe quite a bit of sense. But now that I've learned that invaluable lesson, could Fulham just maybe defeat the odds, win their last two games, and stay up in the Premiership for another season? Pretty please?