Why we support

ADDENDUM: So, I wrote the piece below on Friday 5/9 before the events in Nashville the following day. These events are perfectly outlined HERE by Justin Horneker. If this does not drive home the following message I don’t know what will.

By now dear reader, you may have noticed a very pointed theme coming from our corner of the internet and from many other spaces that are ostensibly about soccer/supporters groups. That theme is of course political in nature. As Paul Gustave Simon used to sing :

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you’d have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton

My gun is metaphorical and literary but I wield it just the same. Again dear reader, you may ask why a supporters group for a small soccer team in the northeast is throwing this political discourse all over your pure and simple sports. If you know anything about the Vermont Green then you know that their very creation was a political act. Let me just drop this link to The Green’s 2024 Environmental Report, but also let me put the opening lines from the clubs mission statement front and center:

“Vermont Green Football Club believes soccer can be a powerful catalyst for a more environmentally sustainable and socially just world. We’re on a mission to build a football club that reflects these values and embeds environmental justice into its competitive strategy, operational processes, and culture.”

THIS IS WHY WE CHOOSE TO SUPPORT THEM. This is an OVERTLY political team in a sport that has always been pretty vocal about its political leanings all over the globe. 

England has the working class industrial teams from the north who take special joy from beating ANY team from London. Spain only needs one word: Catalonia. Germany LITERALLY wrote the book on making sure that fans have a political say in the way their teams are run with the 50+1 rule. Italy? Do we even need to remind you about Roma vs Lazio? Livorno? Genoa? MILAN vs INTER? Scotland has Celtic vs Rangers and I won’t dip my toe into that sectarian divide (Up the Bhoys in Green). I get that this list is VERY euro centric but it’s the leagues that I follow and what I feel most comfortable referencing; there are examples from all over the world that I am clearly missing.

And don’t give me that lecture about it being an international thing. If America thought sports were truly apolitical, they wouldn’t play the national anthem before games. Also, do you think our own sports leagues are clear of political influence? Uhhhhh, they're not. We just choose to be open and upfront about these things.

Charge your megaphones

Hang your banners

Fuck the fascists

With love, from all the bhoys