For me, it was 2014. Robbie Lyle had posted a match video online at Newcastle, speaking about the ludicrous endeavour it takes to reach the St James’ Park away stand. Indeed, the camera follows him up some seven flights to the top of the gantry, where you’re offered some epic skyline views of the city as some minor reward for your venture, and yet only a minuscule pitch and figures that resemble amoebas.
Lyle huffed in a conclusive sort of way: “Do something about it, Newcastle. It’s out of order.”
Two questions crossed my mind after watching the clip and encountering AFTV for the first time: does this man, whoever the blue hell he is, truly think Newcastle are going to heed to his calls for a step reduction, an intrusive project during season time that will no doubt run into the thousands of pounds? And secondly, more potently, other than any Newcastle fan perhaps fascinated with their stadium’s architecture, who really gives a sh** about this?
Well, apparently, people did – and still very much do.
Soon there were interviews outside the stadium post-game with fans on AFTV (no longer Arsenal Fan TV) who barked with particular venom, and then years grew and they were found in a professional studio – and even a TV show for a period. By 2016, the whole concept of fifty-or-so individuals huddled round in collective chaotic energy while one spits on the microphone like a raging emcee no longer seemed so strange.
However, we did all think the football fan TV concept would be some temporary fad, like the vuvuzela horn: it will no doubt blow out of gusto, or be shouted down in annoyance and diminished; one or the other, it’ll come to a halt.
But football fan TV now is truly embedded into football culture. It was a boom Lyle foresaw but no one believed at the time. The precise total number of fan channels in the Premier League (and beyond) would take some time to tally without leaving at least a few red-faced at the absence of their mentioning, but it’s safe to presume there’s at least one representative of each club.
It’s hard to pinpoint precisely when fan TV content become a ‘thing’. They slipped into mainstream public consciousness truly around 2017. The frenzy of online haemorrhaging by way of shouty rants outside stadiums had collectivised into something tangible by then, and that inevitably meant it was to be discussed by the mainstream media.
The headliner writer, in fairness, did not capture the essence of the words inside which was more sympathetic, but nevertheless: ‘Fan TV: revolution or just a vehicle for venting attention-grabbing fury?’, summed up quite well, just about, the entirety of the national media’s thoughts. Like a dog with a new toy, not quite sure what to make of this intrusive entity laying by its paw, articles provided more speculation and gentle prodding than anything purposeful.
But the ‘attention-grabbing’ critique remained (and still does to some extent) the largest gripe. It’s fan-based, it’s YouTube, bottom-of-the-barrel, lacking in elegance and wit and charm and all the other grandiose terms we typically apply when describing football-led content from the more established media outlets.
Some argue fan TV content has struggled to free itself from this concept. But yet, it’s not like people like Lyle truly give a s*** what anyone outside their own fanbase feels about them, with over a million subscribers now.
The AFTV owner, and apparent football fan TV collective spokesman, always maintains the same response to the line of questioning he repeatedly faces from the press, as they appear to attempt to hammer down on the validity of the movement: “We merely giving fans a voice.”
That’s one way of saying it. It’s unfiltered, unrelenting and brash. No sub-editors taking out the indiscretions and edge, no softening to meet the editorial line. Brazen, unhinged at times, expletive, verbal delight for us to view online over and over again, becoming its own backwards sort of poetic language; a bit like The Thick of It but in a sporting discourse.
And this is true even when it’s at its most heartfelt:
“I am so happy because of these people that no longer with us […] the guys that are up there, I am happy for them because they would have been proud to see we’ve broken that nine-year stint. And I am so proud of these f******* fans, by the way, who’re the most patient fans in the world. They deserve everything.”
Claude Callegari sadly passed away over the weekend. A popular component of AFTV, a recognisable – if not a synonymous – face to the digital age of football, perhaps most famous from the outside for his bursts of outrage during the WengerOut era, but such a snobbish label would be extremely misplaced and disrespectful given the reaction to the news. It was actually quite eye-opening: former Premier League players, other fan channel accounts, even the Arsenal’s Twitter account, all expressed condolences – a fan with a great fondness of the club, who believed, by his own accord, that football was life itself.
“To be honest, if I didn’t have the football, I wouldn’t be here tonight, because, frankly, I’ve got nothing else in my life. I’ve got nothing else. People must say, ‘what a sad guy; what a sad kid’, but that’s how I am.”
This is from an interview four years ago, please take the minute to check up on your mates, it can make a huge difference.
RIP Claude
pic.twitter.com/iYtlwluYNt
— Ciaran (@CiaranCPFC) March 30, 2021
A depressingly relatable message, and one that that rings very clear in both the aftermath of Claude’s death and for ourselves at this time. While the pandemic has seen most principal broadcasters and Premier League attempt to squeeze every last fibre of commerce out its audience, football fan channels have reached out further, done more, naturally provided a warm distraction between games for fans. And all for the price of f*** all.
Their gushes of verbal chaos post-game or via live-stream, well no, it’s not Shelley, Wilde, or even Winter – but in that very principle, there’s something quite raw and animalistic about it. There’s no place here for balance and nuance, just instantaneous, uncompromising exhalation which content lovers, supporters or otherwise, can breathe in.
Their devotion is unfounded, from 24/7 live news updates on Twitter, to ticket purchases and hundreds of hours of work each week, mostly unpaid.
They’re cut from a different vine – very personable, sometimes provocative, mates we enjoy hanging around with on match-day and beyond. They don’t always feel the need to be bullish when thought to be wrong or be so foully pompous when they are indeed proved to be.
Lacking in any degree of nuance, without slick language, particular grace, abstract metaphors, conjectural similes, or references to 17th Century gothic literature or something equally aloft, they’re much more human, like us, and of course that’s the attraction.
The fan TV model was once some foreign jester the mainstream could hardly make out in the distant fog, hollering like bats*** and probably enjoying its own continence – but now the skies have passed, the haze lifted, and in some respects, the press are now doing their utmost to emulate those they once attempted to dissect and label.
It speaks highly of the significance of Claude, if you were ever to challenge his relevancy.
One of you – an archetypal impassioned fan of the game, who did nothing if not remind us of our own fervent selves on match day, drunk on atmosphere, striving to breathe every single fibre of football possible, all in view of thousands of eyes and with live cameras rolling.
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