There’s something amazing happening tonight. FC United of Manchester, a club that didn’t even exist 5 years ago, are playing in the 1st round of the FA Cup against Rochdale.

It’s a difficult task for any non league club to make it through the preliminary games in order to get to the first round proper, but FCUM have done it.

The reason why it’s particularly amazing, and why even as an avid Liverpool supporter I’ll nonetheless be cheering on this group of Man United exiles tonight, is because this football club was built by the people.

FCUM was started by ordinary football fans. Today they continue to own it on a socialist basis, and it’s the supporters who govern it.

Those in charge of football think the game is only safe if it is passed from billionaire to billionaire. Clubs like FC United of Manchester, AFC Wimbledon, and AFC Liverpool which I founded in 2008, prove that malign view wrong.

The only people that football is safe with is the fans of each football club.

A victory tonight for FC United of Manchester is something that all football fans and all socialists should be cheering for.

I’ll be gigging tonight but I’ll be keeping an eye on the score. Best wishes to my many friends at FCUM. I salute everything you have achieved. Enjoy your moment of history tonight, and may you have another moment of history to follow – by winning and getting yourself into the hat for the second round draw.

AFC Liverpool, the worker-owned football club I set up last year, is free entry tomorrow (Sat 5 Dec, 3pm) for UNISON members. Just bring your union card.

The club is also joining in the climate campaign by wearing shirts the same blue colour of The Wave Climate Change Campaign for the day.

So thats a Liverpool supporters team wearing BLUE for climate change!!

How to get there: 10 or 10A bus goes straight there (we play at Prescot Cables
ground) but for more details visit http://afcliverpool.org.uk/go/directions-to-watch-afc-liverpool

It’s a top of the table clash and promises to be an exciting day out.

For non UNISON members the prices are still cheap (£5 adults, £3 seniors, £2 under 18s) and Saturday has the added spice that it’s a top of the table clash.

We also have two new strikers who have been setting the fans talking, as one is a carbon copy of the young Michael Owen (remember him?)

So if you can’t get to the climate march and want to mix the climate campaign with a workers-run football team, come to AFC Liverpool at 3pm on Saturday.

When I set up AFC Liverpool two years ago I wanted to build a club for Liverpool supporters who were disenfranchised by what is regarded as “the modern game.”

They were disenfranchised in two ways.

Firstly, they have no say in the running of their club. Instead, it is sold off like a piece of meat. I don’t know a single Liverpool supporter who wants the club owned by Hicks and Gillett, and there are several campaigns to get rid of them, such as Spirit of Shankly and Share Liverpool.

But it doesn’t matter what we think. LFC is now just a commodity to be bought and sold between rich men seeking an investment or a plaything.

Secondly, many fans, especially children, are disenfranchised from even entering the ground. Ticket prices are now so expensive in the Premier League that an entire generation has been raised by TV football rather than the real thing.

The average age of a Premiership fan is 43 years old. Bald or greying heads are in abundance at any Premier League ground.

Going to the match is now something that you save up for, not something that is a given part of the rhythm of your daily life. The poorest in Liverpool huddle together in pubs to watch their team, broadcast illegally on Scandinavian or Arabic TV channels.

Even in the 80s when unemployment in the city was rife, people went to the match. At times, it felt like the match was all we had.

Not any more.

Yet in Germany, there is a different story. Clubs in the German Bundesliga (their top flight league) are by rule owned and controlled by their members, and cannot be taken over by private investors.

This rule has just been overwhelmingly affirmed. Even the mighty Bayern Munich must have over 50% of its control in the hands of its members.

As a result, ticket prices are low. Young fans can get to watch games in the flesh than via Rupert Murdoch’s Sky. Attendances are among the highest in Europe.

Some may argue that such a system can’t compete with the huge private investors that are pumping money into English clubs. Nonetheless Bayern Munich remains one of the giants of European football. In the last 10 years it has appeared in 2 Champions League finals, winning one of them. More than Roman Abromavich’s Chelsea team have done.

But that aside, the core of any football season, here or abroad, is the domestic league. Europe is a recently added cherry on the cake. Given a thriving domestic league that fans can actually attend and feel a genuine connection to their club, who would sacrifice that for the ability to be competitive in Europe.

The German model is one to be cherished and used as a template for winning back our game from the money men here.

Part of that movement is happening in the lower leagues, where fans of clubs like Wimbledon, Manchester United, and Liverpool have turned their back on the Premiership in favour of creating a club that they themselves own.

AFC Wimbledon, FC United of Manchester, and AFC Liverpool are the seeds of a movement that calls upon football fans to return to our roots, and never again allow the stench of oligarchs and money to steal our football teams from us.

AFC Liverpool Cup Final Song

This is my official AFC Liverpool cup final song for last season’s cup final. For the record, we won it!

Links

AFC Liverpool Match Highlights
AFC Liverpool Official Website
Bundesliga article by the excellent David Conn

I tend to think in terms of goals. Stuff I want to achieve. Not necessarily just personal goals, but the social goals too.

So I’ll invent the idea of AFC Liverpool then make it happen.

Or I’ll invent the idea of the Working Class Music Festival and then make that happen.

Or I’ll decide I want to play festivals, then work to make that happen.

All the focus is on the goal.

I now think that this outlook is a mistake.

Life is not a collection of goals and milestones. Well, not until someone writes your obituary perhaps – but what good is that to you then?

While it’s happening, when it matters, it is a collection of journeys.

And that’s a big difference in outlook.

The arrival at the destination lasts just moments. And once you’re there, what then? Often a new goal!!

But the journey is how you spend the bulk of your life, traveling from goal to goal.

So why is the goal the focus?

Is it really good enough to achieve something fab, but really not enjoy the journey?

Sure, goals are important. You may as well travel to where you want to be.

But they’re not as important as the journey.

After all, the Working Class Music Festival lasted 4 days, but it took me 9 months graft to get there. So how can 4 days outweigh 9 months in importance?

Well, it can’t.

So there’s a flip change in my head now. I won’t be getting excited just by coming up with great ideas. I’ll be checking how much fun I’ll have getting from here to there.

And it will mainly be the journey, not the goal that will make me decide whether to go ahead with them or not.

This song of mine kind of fits this posting:

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Leafing through the pages of the Metro newspaper today on the train, I saw my ugly mug staring out at me – alongside a review of my new album, We Can Make The World Stop.

The review was written by the Metro’s Ben East, and since I can’t link to an online version, I’ll repeat it here for those who missed it first time around:

It’s easy to forget that between helping to found (and now being Life President of) AFC Liverpool, organising the Working Class Music Festival and being a voracious blogger and political activist, Alun Parry is in fact a singer-songwriter by trade.

Fully signed up to the union of message-laden, storytelling acoustica, his latest gig doubles as the launch party for his new album, We Can Make The World Stop, out this week.

Surprisingly, it’s just his second record, but certainly a step up from Corridors Of Stone.

Sure, it has the folky protest song he’s so good at down pat – particularly during the pubby chant-along knees-up of 1919 Irish tale The Limerick Soviet – but there’s also a humour and modernity here; Princess Deborah is a sideways look at the perils of chat-room obsessions.

It’s not an album that will propel Parry to wider fame, but sometimes that isn’t what it’s all about. Parry is the heart and soul of Liverpool, and long may that remain the case.