Football fans are sick of being lectured

There’s a menace on the terraces. At football grounds across the land, there are fans who are ruining the beautiful game for everyone else. They’re bringing their prejudices into football. They think nothing of grunting and groaning at people they don’t like, at people they view as inferior. It’s becoming intolerable.

No, I’m not talking about noisy, rowdy Millwall fans who do naughty things like boo the taking of the knee. I’m talking about the middle-class NuFootball mob. I’m talking about the Johnny-Come-Latelys to the beautiful game who turn up with the Guardian folded under their arm and a neatly cut sandwich in an eco-friendly stainless-steel lunchbox. These people worry me far more than the portly bloke shouting expletive-heavy abuse at the opposing team.

The recent fuss over Millwall confirmed just how problematic some of these well-spoken followers of football have become. Easily the most shocking thing about the Millwall booing was not the incident itself — fans booing and jeering? Fetch my smelling salts! — but the reaction to it.