The snobbery and wrongness of this and takes like this kills me. If you’re not aware of the connections between football, supporters trust and socialist activism, that’s your problem and your ignorant snobbery. ‘Are you finally ready to join us?’ Babe, they beat you here.

Behind the scenes, for years, football fans at all levels have been at war with property developers, billionaires, racists to keep their communities and teams alive. Your kid’s playground is probably funded by your local club, which was saved from being turned into flats by fans.

Your paltry, snobbish misunderstanding of football is your own stupid problem. And if you wish they’d protest about something ‘more significant’, maybe get yourselves as organised as supporters do.

This was a breaking point for football fans, who have not slept soundly through the capitalist seizure of their clubs, from grassroots to the premier league. They have fought every step of the way. We didn’t wake up to YOUR problem, you’ve woken up to OURS.

South Londoners will look you in the eye and tell you what happens when billionaires and developers buy their local football teams. They’ll tell you: it’s not a football fan problem. It’ll effect everyone. It’ll harm the community.

Because away from the glitz of the premier league that’s all you know about because it’s all you care to know about, are legions of local teams that are all that is left of the communal space in our towns, boroughs and villages. Our parks have been taken. Libraries. Pubs.

They’ve come for everything and they’ve bought it up and turned everything into a fucking block of flats. Football fans fight constantly to keep their community spaces from this monied thievery. While you buy the new build flats and tut about football fans not standing up sooner.

The land behind Dulwich Hamlet had an Astro. Owned by the club. Free to local kids. We trained there. Kids played there. Kids trained there. They have *nowhere* else to go. Then property developers closed the club, held it to ransom. They put wire fences around the astro.

We cut holes in it. Fans turned up to meetings. I wrote letters. Our team sent emails. Some wrote articles. In south london, where every free, safe open space has been sold off, where kids have nowhere to go, this was their last place. Made by football. Taken from them.

The supporters won that fight. For now.

My god don’t talk down to football fans about socialism. Fuck me, your ignorance is astounding. Football fans have been at the coal face of corporate takeover and know first hand how it rips communities to shreds.

In many communities, the only people with the money to give back to kids, sports, schools, community spaces are your local clubs. When they get bought out and abused, your whole community suffers. If you don’t know, you’re just not paying attention.

When we wrote letters and screamed to anyone who’ll listen about how it might look like a small club and a run down astro, but it was the bigger picture of the capitalist seizure of our community, it was YOU who did not listen. YOU who did not stand up.

Don’t talk down now.

We told you these same people who were trying to buy our club were the same people who’d thrown thousands out of their homes at the other side of the borough. We know these things are connected. We weren’t confused. We didn’t sleep on it.