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Officially being allowed to stand again as a Chelsea fan, that could come true from 2022
Photo: DYLAN MARTINEZ / REUTERS
When Jon Darch talks about why the return of standing room is a big deal for football fans in England, there's no getting around how they were once banned.
After the disaster at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield in April 1989 with almost 100 dead Liverpool fans, the government of the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher turned all venues in England's first and second leagues into purely seated stadiums.
She sent the signal that standing room was the cause of the tragedy.
This assumption was wrong, as has now been proven.
Instead of standing room, police mistakes in handling the crowd led to the Hillsborough disaster.
Jon Darch, an English activist for the return of standing room, told SPIEGEL: »The standing room was banned on the basis of a false narrative.
It read: All fans who stand are hooligans. «The fact that there will be standing room again in the Premier League and in the English second division, the championship, is therefore also a rehabilitation for football fans in England in general.
The recognition that not every fan who prefers to stand is a potential threat.
United and Tottenham are already there
The Sports Ground Safety Authority (SGSA) has just announced that standing room sectors will be tested in some stadiums in England from January 2022. The authority accepts applications from interested clubs until the beginning of October. Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have already officially announced their applications, and Manchester City, Liverpool FC and Chelsea FC are also expected to apply. In the stadiums that the SGSA has given the contract to test standing places, what was previously practiced in a legal gray area will be officially allowed in the future.
If you look around the stadiums of the Premier League, you will find that fans are in some sectors anyway, especially behind the goals and in the away block.
You do not violate any applicable laws.
These only stipulate that all stadiums must be purely seated stadiums, but do not oblige you to actually sit down.
Standing fans have so far only been a violation of the stadium rules, and one in which the clubs look the other way, at least in the sectors where there are hundreds or thousands of standing fans.
From January the SGSA will interpret the applicable law differently: England's stadiums will officially remain purely seated venues, but in future they may officially stand where fans are already standing - if the appropriate infrastructure is available to enable safe standing.
In anticipation of the new guidelines, some Premier League clubs created this infrastructure in the summer and installed "rail seating" in some blocks, in other words seats with a waist-high railing.
Tailwind for fan interests
It all sounds technocratic and complicated - but what is certain is that the official return from standing room in England is a victory for fan interests and can be interpreted as further evidence that fans can exert influence even in the turbo-capitalism of the Premier League.
In the spring there was a groundbreaking uprising against the Super League plans, which were discarded in record time.
The struggle to get standing room back is as old as banning it itself, and it's now rewarded.
»English fans are by no means as good at organizing themselves as fans in Germany.
But we're getting better.
The more the passive fans see that campaigns can lead to success, the more likely it is that they will get involved in the future, ”says Jon Darch.
For a few months now, football fans in England have had what is called momentum, namely momentum, tailwind, a run. Also because politicians have recognized that fan interests are also voters interests. The conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented itself as the savior of the sacred English league pyramid during the debate on the Super League.
Now Johnson is also the one who fulfills England's fans' desire for standing room.
The fact that some Premier League stadiums will officially stand as of January does not mean that the debate about standing in England is over.
There are fewer emotional or historical reasons for this - even the relatives of the Hillsborough dead have now put their concerns about standing room to an end.
It is practical factors that complicate the situation.
Bundesliga as a role model
The SGSA predicts that in some stadiums seats will be lost due to the introduction of standing room sectors.
The reason for this is the assumption that standing fans need more space than seated fans.
Because the rows of seats in English stadiums are often narrower than in German stadiums, the fans cannot stand staggered, but stand shoulder to shoulder.
According to a calculation example by the SGSA, there would therefore be less space for up to five fans in a row with 28 seats when converting to standing room.
That means: less income for the clubs.
They will not be able to come to terms with this so easily, even if it is estimated that the Premier League clubs only generate a seventh of their turnover from ticket sales because of the luxurious TV contracts.
Standing activist Darch spends a large part of his time in Germany, he is a member of Union Berlin, so he can easily compare the Bundesliga and the Premier League.
He suggests that some English clubs were not entirely happy to simply put a railing on the existing seating.
In his opinion, it would have been more clever to install the system common in the Bundesliga, namely the railings with folding metal seats, which, when folded, would take up less space than the seats in English stadiums.
According to Darch, the return of standing places in the Premier League is "not as straightforward as some clubs and fans think," that is, less straightforward.
And another upcoming success for fan interests is likely to bring further difficulties: If alcohol is allowed in the stands in England's stadiums again in the future, as is currently emerging, then the space problem in the standing room sectors will be even greater.
Fans must then also be able to find their way through the rows to the beer stands and back.