Chapter 5 Visitors as the ‘Creativity Amplifier’
III. Visitors as the linkage in stadium experience and beyond
Drawing upon the last two sections, we can conclude that there are two evident yet paradoxical characteristics permeated within the football culture: ever-changing and nostalgic. It is impossible to be fully object-free to sustain memories and apparently,
football fans will not be in favour of this idea since collecting has always been a significant and indispensable part for them. In the course of collecting, supporters aim at making sense of their social identity. Thus, the very act of doing everything related to football provides a unique opportunity for a period of extended reinforcement of their sporting memory and the coalition of football stadium and tourism is what I intend to shed light on in this research.
After the respective exploration of the club, the stadium and the fans, it is arguable that everything is under construction and re-invention. Besides, it is difficult to come up a unanimously accepted opinion about which party is truly dominating in producing a stadium experience. Be that as it may, there is definitely a degree of synergy between the stadium and visitors.
A life-long season ticket booked
“Liverpool vs. Everton in 1974 was my first Anfield game when I was five years old…… Liverpool won 1:0. Sat in the Kemlyn Road stand (now
centenary stand, family folklore is that I spent more time listening to while looking at pigeons on the roof than the football. Also when I got home, I questioned my mother about whether or not Dad really liked Liverpool, because he spent most of the match shouting at them. Anfield for me is a home from home.”
(Extracted from the interview with E.G. on 22nd January, 2015.)
“My first visit to the stadium was when my father took my brother and I to
mid-week reserve team games at Anfield. Back then, these games were free for season ticket holders like my father with children also entering the stadium for free. I was probably 8 or 9 years old. My father would watch the game while my brother and I ran around and played, jumping from seat to seat as I remember……”
(Extracted from the interview with S.H. on 22nd January, 2015.)
“……The first season I remember fondly was 2000/01. This is probably the
time I began looking for information on the club as an individual [emphasis added], rather than following people around me.”
(Extracted from the interview with A.C. on 1st March, 2015.)
Those moments might be outwardly insignificant when attending the football matches was not directly linked to their wishes, but was more of an alternative of family obligation. However, it is through such means that the identities are formed and passed down unwittingly.
During my first fieldwork in Anfield Experience, I have notice a father who shared the same table with me because he has seized every possible moment to instil some football tales for his daughter in the stadium tour and I was benefited a lot from their father-daughter talk as well. They travelled from Chester to Liverpool as their weekend
football fan because she just wanted to keep company with her dad, while her dad seemed to expect more from this experience:
“I think it’s a good way to show my girl what is all about her dad’s football
club and we are coming back for the first game of the new season. The experience will be a great preview for her. In that case, she can feel more related to and excited about the game.”
(Extracted from the fieldwork note on 27th July, 2013.)
Culture. It is a word we hear so much of on a day-to-day basis and many of us associate it with different things. In the case of football, everything starts with the likeness which might happen earlier than one can remember or it may mean nothing personal at that point, but it is actually a way of working together towards common goals that have been mediated and produced so frequently and so successfully that people do not even think about trying to do things another way. In my second time visit to Anfield Experience, a father and his son drew my attention because they are always the last two at the visiting route. The father put a lot of effort, making sure his son has been enlightened by those important objects that seem to tell stories, such as the old boot room104 (See Figure 5.17), dressing room and the proper knowledge (See
104 Bill Shankly converted the typical boot room into an informal coaches' meeting room, with a relaxing atmosphere that paid dividends for a Liverpool side who were rebuilding at the time. Due to the breakaway of Premier League from The Football League in 1992 encouraged by British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), each football club is required to have a media room and therefore, the boot room is relocated to Melwood(Liverpool FC’s training ground). In order to in memory of Shankly’s legacy, the boot room was preserved and introduced as a highlight in the tour.
Figure5.18 and 5.19). In this way, experiencing a stadium outside an event provides the younger generation with the opportunity to somehow get closer to it and to recognise the stadium as an important place, both personally and collectively.
Figure 5.17 The old boot room105
Figure 5.18 Father-son talk at the dressing room106
Figure 5.19 A little boy wearing his LFC jersey to the stadium tour107
Those objects do not define a culture or a piece of history arbitrarily. These instincts are not formed overnight. Rather, they are the result of shared learning through construction in family while nowadays football is given as a social good that becomes part of the popular cultural air that people of many societies breathe (Wagg, 2004),
105 Photo by the author on 29th August, 2014.
because the social experiences and relationships seem to be increasingly unavailable in today’s modern society (Shipway and Kirkup, 2010). Those mnemonic props could not
organise a mediatised nostalgia performance without the trigger from human agency and establish the stability in the face of individuals’ constant searching for new experiences with the right community, so that the right look could be returned.
The 2005 Champions League Final108 is the match Liverpool FC supporters will never get tired of watching it over and over again. It is also arguably the greatest football match had ever played.
“I went on a stadium tour in 2005, just after Liverpool won the Champions League. I can’t remember too much about the experience apart from seeing the famous the European Cup [emphasis added]……especially it was also
the first time we had won since I was born in 1991……”
(Extracted from the interview with A.C. on 1st March, 2015.)
“The tour was really great. We got to go behind the scenes and enjoy the
parts of the stadium that only the professionals usually see. It was particularly good to see the European Trophy face to face [emphasis added]…...”
108 The match was contested between Liverpool of England and Milan of Italy at the Atatürk Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey on 25 May 2005. AC Milan made it 3-0 before half-time. In the second half Liverpool launched a comeback and scored three goals in a dramatic six-minute spell to level the scores at 3–3. The scores remained the same during extra time, and a penalty shoot-out was required to decide the champions. The score was 3–2 to Liverpool when Andriy Shevchenko's penalty was saved by Liverpool goalkeeper. Liverpool's comeback gave rise to the final being known as the Miracle of Istanbul, and is regarded as one of the finest moments of the club's history.
(Extracted from the interview with S.H. on 22nd January, 2015.)
In the club museum, a movie poster-like printed picture was displayed next to a media room (See Figure 5.20). Inside the room, there was the fifteen-minute highlight of the Miracle of Istanbul screening. Most of the people in the room must be fully aware of the scenario of the match and probably just have watched the game plenty of times, as I can hear people whispering to remind their company or simply talking to themselves when the turning point was about to approach and stir up (See Figure 5.21). In the process, space and time are re-invented in forms of video clips, mediating those memorable moments to manipulate the on-site visitors and open up the possibility of reinvention of a lost era. The game has finished, but the moment can be re-produced and lived afresh.
Figure 5.20 A simulated movie poster for 2005 UEFA final109
Figure 5.21 Fans watching A.C Milan vs.
Liverpool FC Champions League final in 2005110
For a supporter who was not able to witness the glory at the exact time as me, it might be the best alternative to make my Liverpool FC fan profile complete when there is nothing I can do about the days of yore, let alone my lack of proximity as a global fan.
Thus, a privilege such as having found and been with the right crowd to value the value at the right place not only articulate the implicit cultural codes and texts, but also compensate for the missing of being at home.
“The stadium itself is powerful, beautiful. Anfield is home. Anfield is magic.
As soon as you get around Anfield, you feel something very special [emphasis added] in your heart.”
(Extracted from the interview with M.D. on 30th March, 2015.)
“Walking into Anfield makes you proud, gives you goose bumps, you just feel the spirit [emphasis added] within the stadium ‒ it talks [emphasis added] to
you.”
(Extracted from the interview with S.P. on 27th March, 2015.)
There is little doubt that the representation has once again played a chief role in the conveyance of the notion of home and has reconstructed the cognitive images through the stadium and the familiar objects. In the insistence on the social ubiquity of human-object relationships, it is argued that part of what is to be human is to interact with things in distinct object worlds (Edensor, 2002). Familiar objects with given meanings endure its cultural capital value (See Smart, 2007) in certain places, are part
of the way things are, contributing to forms of shared solidarity. Here I would like to point out that it is the kind of case when individual identification interacts with representation both between place and people and interpersonal, marking out football heritage among other types of heritage.
“……It was also important to interact with other people on the tour, many of
whom had good stories to relate about their own memories of visits to Anfield both on match days plus other stories relating to Liverpool FC.”
(Extracted from the second interview with D.H. on 5th May, 2015.)
“The stadium guide did a fantastic job of making us all feel [emphasis added]
like we were welcome members of the LFC family. He told us many interesting anecdotal stories about each part of the stadium, how Bill Shankly managed to manipulate the emotions of the opposition team with the ‘This is Anfield’ sign etc., and many other tales.”
(Extracted from the interview with S.H. on 22nd January, 2015.)
In this regard, Anfield is sold as the authorised place for Liverpool FC and its supporters. Abercrombie and Longhurst suggest that community is essentially a relational concept, defined in relation to one another as well as by the quality of the internal relationships in the community (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998). Despite the globalisation and allegedly increasingly homogenous societies, it is justifiable to
of the construction from family, friends, educational, neighbourhood, legal and religious institution and the mass media that lead to deep mediation. Once the sense of belonging to the community fosters, it lasts ingrained, because the practice of identity is embodied in the fan’s life thereby making ‘being one of the Kop’ (See Figure 5.22) a way of life and dictating the fan’s relationships with the significant others.
“……My images of those days are still black and white. I had never seen a
stadium before and I remember the Kop towering above me. When I entered the stadium (the Kop), I just had an overwhelming feeling of happiness and proudness ‒ I was actually there on the Kop.”
(Extracted from the interview with S.P. on 27th March, 2015.)
Figure 5.22 Kop scene on a match day111 Repeating history in a creative fashion
The primary concern is often grounded in the concern that such economic exchange results in places morphing into sites and sights that tourists desire to see and pay for ‒
111 Photo by the author on 14th September, 2014.
rather than offering more honest culturally based representations (Gammon, 2010). Of course, the dilemma is that the revenue is the oxygen of stadium maintenance, and it would be difficult to envisage it existing without it. Evidently, the debates are not whether the stadia should be commodified, but rather to explore, where possible, the sporting memory and family memory can be sustained in the forms of stadium experience.
“I think visiting the stadium is something you do once. There is no real point doing it several times. I have done it, I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I will do it again, except in the future, with my kids [emphasis added].”
(Extracted from the interview with M.D. on 30th March, 2015.)
“I don’t see any reason to do Anfield Experience again, unless I was taking my children [emphasis added].”
(Extracted from the interview with E.G. on 22nd January, 2015.)
“I have been twice now, so I would only go if accompanying a visitor [emphasis added].”
(Extracted from the interview with J.R. on 5th February, 2015.)
“I will probably not do another tour because I only wanted to see the stadium and the European cups.”
“I will re-visit Anfield Experience to hear more updated stories [emphasis
added]……and it’s good to see the club making some hardware update to have better capacity.”
(Extracted from the interview with R.H. on 19th February, 2015.)
“We’d love to revisit Anfield Experience, but maybe not too soon. We will
probably when Carragher112 becomes one of the guides. The club won’t be always the same, so new memories [emphasis added] could be made!”
(Extracted from the field note from the first fieldwork on 27h July, 2013.)
In Gaffney and Bale’s analysis, they have pointed out that the restrictive movement of being in a crowd is part of the stadium experience in which the normal rules of personal space and individualism is given up to the amorphous power of the horde, for : ‘the individuals create the crowd and the crowd consumes them’ (Gaffney and Bale, 2004).
However, the inspection is chiefly focused upon the experience on a match day. Indeed, without the sound, the stadium is empty, because there are very few sensory experiences as powerful as the collective harmony of 50,000 people, dramatising the spatial experience with songs and chants passed down year after year. No matter how advanced and spectacular stadia are, we cannot deny the fact that stadia are the containers of important socio-economic, demographical and psychological issues that can actually produce interactions and construct memories.
112 Jamie Carragher, a retired English footballer who played as a defender for Premier League club Liverpool for 17 years. He is currently a pundit on Sky Sports.
The tendency to sacralise of tours heightens the sense of historical import is becoming prevalent nowadays and it is the kind of experience one wants to have with their beloved ones, especially those ones in younger generations. For those tourists who are just happy to collect gazes, the tour simply represents no more than a ticked-off box of iconic places to visit. On the other hand, for those who have stronger links to a stadium will consume such sights more intimately where the gaze is a lot more romantic and constructed. One way or another, the heritage value of Anfield is certainly elevated by those visits.
More often than not history has accordingly become a romantic and biased leverage to construct and maintain the sporting memory, because the sense of historical continuity and the sense of participating are just as important as each other. The history represented in the stadium is fairly fragmented, although the route of a tour always stops and enters quite ordinary spaces such as the changing rooms or the dug-outs, showing visitors the scenes normally used by the privileges, constructing the star-gaze in the tour.
In addition, the prepared stadium can be a very different space outside match conditions. Matter such as rarely complete silence and unoccupied seats of rubbish cleared contribute the unrealistic imagined touch to the tour. The creativity people have been seeking for, in fact, lies in the alienation and unfamiliarity of the stadium, promoting the ‘scripted and produced’ experience as a selling advantage in the industry.