West Ham, between identity nostalgia and modernity – Yo Amo el Fútbol

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In February 2020, between 3,000 and 7,000 West Ham United fans (the number depends on who calculates it) demonstrated in the heart of London’s East End to protest against the club’s owners and against their move, in 2016, from the old stadium. from Upton Park to the refurbished Olympic Stadium, renamed London Stadium. At those times, Hammers (the hammers), as they are known from their origins linked to the metal industry, struggled to maintain the category.

Today, West Ham is third in the Premier, three points behind the leader, they have beaten Liverpool and Tottenham, eliminated United and City from the League Cup and lead their group in the Europa League. The climax of the season was reached a week ago, with the spectacular triumph against Liverpool (3-2). That day, the atmosphere at London Stadium was so electric and euphoric that few remembered Upton Park.

But the move to the Olympic Stadium has been traumatic for a hobby that is linked like few others to the identity nostalgia of a past that, with or without Upton Park, no longer exists. In many ways, it is a very Brexit-like conflict. The departure from the European Union was encouraged by a minority of deeply anti-European English nationalists who succeeded in making their message of return to their roots reach especially among the older population, those who feel that their world and its traditions are disappearing and attribute it to modernity, multiculturalism, globalization. Many voted Brexit knowing that the country’s economy would suffer. They did not care: for them, identity is above well-being.

At West Ham, fan groups like Hammers United think something like this. They believe that they have been misled (“we sold a dream, they gave us a nightmare”) and that, although in the long run the move to the Olympic Park may make financial sense, it does not compensate them. They want to go back to a past where the outskirts of Upton Park on game days were a party with cheap pints of beer, jellied eels and patties with mashed potatoes (pie and mush). Today, its stadium is in the Olympic Park, in the middle of nowhere, the closest pubs offer craft beers to hipsters and postmodern and the restaurants are in a gigantic mall in which a soccer fan fits like an elephant in a china shop.

The problem is that everything has changed and the East End is not what it used to be. Today the workers are no longer in the factories but rather delivering packages, cleaning offices at night or writing articles for the piece. Less than a third of the inhabitants of the East End are British white. And actually, many (if not most…) of West Ham United fans no longer live in the East End.

On the outskirts of London Stadium it does not smell like an onion burger, but almost 60,000 people gather inside, not far from twice the 35,000 that could fit in the old Upton Park (which was actually called Boleyn Ground). And the club’s hated owners (David Sullivan and David Gold, two businessmen with local roots and a shady past, something not very original in the East End, legendary cradle of gangsters), have just obtained authorization to expand it to 62,500 spectators (above the 60,260 of Arsenal’s Emirates) and have plans to reach 67,000, which would surpass Tottenham’s new stadium and would be the second largest in the Premier, behind Old Trafford.

On October 3, when West Ham was already going from strength to strength, Hammers United called a new protest to show that good results are not enough to calm their discontent. This time only between 200 and 400 fans attended. In football, modernity is more bearable when one is up. As in life itself.

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