London, my London

A defining moment of the Viking Age came in 1066 at the village of Stamford Bridge. It was here where King Harold Godwinson defeated invading Norwegian forces under the command of King Harald Hardrada and Tostig Godwinson, Harold’s brother.

This Stamford Bridge, however, was, and still is, in Yorkshire, north of England. Nothing to do with the one in SW6, London; the finish line of my three-stadium bike-tour. And yet, I saw parallels between the two places.

For the last thirteen years there has been a battle in English football, specifically in the top division, namely, the Premier League. This conflict has gone beyond the terraces. It is more a financial matter than a fan-driven one. It has pitted owners versus cash-strapped supporters. It has awakened followers, football-refuseniks and neutrals to the reality of modern soccer. At the heart of this issue is the sport itself, what it used to be and what it has become.

In the summer of 2003, Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire, arrived at Stamford Bridge, southwestern London, to take over Chelsea Football Club. On doing this he changed the face of the sport forever. In that first summer, Chelsea spent £110m on 13 players. This set the tone for the various takeovers that would happen in subsequent years: Manchester City, Manchester united and Liverpool Football Club are all now foreign-owned. The latter, with its well-proven pedigree in the sport, was bought by the Fenway Sports Group. Anyone familiar with baseball will recognise the first word in that company’s name. It is the name of the Boston Red Sox's stadium.

As I stood outside CFC's home ground, giving both my bike and myself a much-needed rest, I could not help thinking that the only times I had been inside “The Bridge” (as we fans call it) had been to purchase merchandise in its shop or as participant in events held on its premises. I had never been to a match. The ticket price was too high for me. In this bloodless battle over who bought which club I could see only one casualty: the loyal football fan.

In the hot midday sun, I also reflected on how this tug-of-war was not limited just to the Premier League. I had just cycled from one end of the city to the other. 34.4 miles in three hours, fifty minutes and 25 seconds. Along the way I had seen deprivation, regeneration-linked gentrification, magical and practical urbanisation and new-money invasion. The well-designed housing estates on the almost-traffic-free Grosvenor Road in Pimlico, contrasted with the 60s-built, ordinary-looking Tottenham mid-rises. In the minimalist properties in SW3 I imagined most notes were scribbled using the Cyrillic alphabet these days. Council properties in East London were being flogged off in the Far East at plush fairs to prospective buyers who never had any intention of relocating to Britain. It was not just football where the playing field had changed for the worse. Unlike in 1066 the battle was not between an invading force and a fearless home-grown army but between unbridled free-market power and national sovereignty. For all that the rightwing press railed against “foreign welfare scroungers”, they were letting off the hook the tycoons whose tax contributions to the Exchequer were, at most, risible. Some of them lived in the white doll-looking houses past which I had just cycled.

I had conceived the idea of the three-stadium bike-tour based on the fact that Tottenham Hotspurs, my starting point, had not won the league since 1961. Arsenal’s Emirates, my next stop, had not tasted success in England’s elite football competition for eleven years, whereas Chelsea, at whose stadium I was now, had won four Premier League titles since Abramovich's takeover. From former to current glories. Irony of ironies. Look at the table now and see who is doing better and who is doing worse. During my journey, though, I realised that I was also taking the lid off another London. One that had eluded me all these years, either because I was just another commuter going from A to B, or because I was not looking at the whole picture. Stamford Bridge gave me that final – but still only temporary – piece of the puzzle. Roman’s pet project had unwittingly become a synecdoche, not just for football but also for what was happening in London, property-wise, investment-wise, finances-wise. The part that was being used for the whole. Suddenly, Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire and its SW6 cousin were no longer just two places in England, separated by hundreds of miles, but two conflict zones. The former, steeped in history, the latter’s outcome, yet to be known.

© 2016

Next Post: “Living in a Multilingual World”, to be published on Tuesday 23rd February at 6pm (GMT)