One look at Pep Guardiola being called a bald rat during the long climb of an FA Cup final loser at Wembley would tell anyone that football can be a bit much. Minutes earlier, Guardiola had shown himself up too. A few hours before that, Aberdeen’s Jack MacKenzie was hospitalised when one of his own supporters threw part of a seat onto the pitch at Tannadice.
These matches at either end of Britain highlighted the joy and misery of football. Guardiola’s loss was Crystal Palace’s gain and Wembley was a sight to behold as a historic London club won a major trophy for the first time in its history.
In Scotland, Aberdeen were beaten by Dundee United and finished behind them on goal difference as United leapfrogged them into a Europa League place. At least one travelling Don took umbrage at the home supporters celebrating on the pitch and MacKenzie, an unused substitute, bore the brunt.
High Protein Beef Paste
The next day, Everton supporters bade an emotional farewell to Goodison Park. Everything about their football experience is about to change after 133 years of ambling through familiar inner-city streets to one of English football’s great temples.
Leaving Goodison makes business sense, practically and financially, but Everton are leaving their home. Having to put a new postcode in the satnav for a few home matches next season will be the easy bit. Sitting easily in those new blue seats at Bramley Moore Dock is going to take much longer.
‘Home’ isn’t too big a word. What we saw at Wembley, at Goodison, at Tannadice, was the social heft of football. These and many, many others are grand old football clubs with grand old stadiums in grand old communities where neither can possibly be the same without the other.
Football’s entanglement with community is powerful and authentic but it’s also taken for granted. It’s simply assumed by the supporters who live it every other Saturday afternoon while the fans who observe it through a screen are largely oblivious.
But maintaining football clubs in, with, through, and for communities takes effort. At the upper end of the professional game, where money matters too whether we like it or not, keeping a football club attached to its social foundations doesn’t happen without deliberate, proactive effort.
Football is bursting with clubs whose foundations and community teams do a world of hidden work to nourish their roots.
My club, Aston Villa, have the Aston Villa Foundation, which is delivering a community strategy backed by three decades of graft away from the glow of the floodlights. Coventry City have Sky Blues in the Community, whose work I have engaged with personally.
The really beautiful thing about them is that they’re not exceptional in English football. It’s the same in Scotland.
It wasn’t Aberdeen who were most damaged by the result in Dundee on the final day of the Scottish Premiership. Jimmy Thelin’s Dons still claimed a European qualifying place and could still go one better with a Europa League spot if they beat Celtic in the Scottish Cup final.
The team that dropped out of the top five as a consequence of Sam Dalby’s penalty for United and James Forrest’s last-gasp equaliser for Celtic in their own game were St Mirren, who missed out on a second consecutive season in Europe.
Fan-owned, not fan-run
Scottish Football Week started on May 19th, aiming to “showcase the passion, effort and joy that takes place on pitches, in clubhouses, and across communities every single week.”
There might not be a better example of community football in the professional game in Scotland than St Mirren.
In October, when I abandoned my career without a safety net or a plan, I travelled to Paisley to watch them play.
Everything about that visit was special but it all began with an online ticket purchase. Next to where I clicked to buy my ticket, I noticed Help A Buddie.
It’s a purchase option that allows one fan to buy a ticket for another, donated through the club to a variety of beneficiaries in the town and beyond.
“[Our] stadium itself is in one of the most deprived areas in Scotland, never mind the West of Scotland or Paisley,” Keith Lasley, St Mirren’s Chief Operating Officer, told me.
“Help A Buddie runs alongside a club strategy we launched in 2023 to set out what we want to be as a club. We’re not just about the football. We’re all about the football but not just about the football if that makes sense.
St Mirren supporters in action
“I think phrases like ‘playing a part in the community’ can get thrown around but what does it actually mean? It looks good on a bit of paper but we wanted to look at ways that we could actually tangibly make a difference to people’s lives, people who can’t afford or don’t have the means to get to the game.”
“Going to the football is essentially a social experience and I think a lot of people are used to it but for whatever reason they don’t have that in their lives anymore. That’s what I think the club can hopefully give back to them, that opportunity to be in that sort of environment again.
One of the key differences between St Mirren and other clubs, one of the reasons initiatives like Help A Buddie can feel more buttoned-up here than elsewhere, is that it’s a fan-owned club – not fan-run, crucially – but fan-owned.
“That experience of being amongst other people, your own people, it’s important. Hardship affects people in many ways, whether it’s financial, or loneliness, maybe they’ve lost family members they used to go to the football with, maybe it’s just age. All these things can have an effect,” Lasley continues.
“We try to differentiate ourselves as a football club. We feel strongly that it’s about our fans, and that’s why we like the idea of our supporters contributing to other supporters being able to come to the game. It’s not just about the club putting up money. We facilitate it but really we’re just a connector.”
A true communion of Saints
One of the connections facilitated by the existence of Help A Buddie is between the team at the Misery Hunters podcast and the dozens of local Buddies fans who’ve received match tickets as a result of their support of the campaign.
“There’s a lot of local kids that probably won’t be able to go to games. I think for us as well, we all grew up in Paisley and you’d get free tickets through the school, so we all had that experience,” explains Sam Smith.
“We used that system when we were younger and we don’t take any money out of Misery Hunters, so we thought, ‘How can we give back? Who can we help?’ And yeah, great idea from the club. On we go.”
Misery Hunters doesn’t just donate an amount of money to Help A Buddie. Between them, the podcast team came up with a way to buoy the idea’s awareness at the same time as contributing towards it.
“At the start of one season we thought about how do we do something more than just donating to it, so we picked three players and donated a ticket for every goal they scored. We picked Mark O’Hara and I think he scored 15 goals in that first season. We got to 29 last season,” says Smith.
“I think it’s fun as well, it’s engaging. We’ve got a thread on our X account that whenever one of the players scores we’ll just update people.”
This season, Misery Hunters broke their record by one goal – the goal scored at Celtic on the final day by Jonah Ayunga, which felt for a while like it could take the Buddies back into Europe.
Because of their campaign in 2024/25, Misery Hunters were able to donate thirty tickets through the club to fans who wouldn’t otherwise be going to games.
Football is community, and community matters
Programmes like Help A Buddie might not seem like much on the surface.
Indeed, it’s clever precisely because it’s so simple. But scratch away the top layer, understand the idea, know the motivations of the people who get behind it, and it’s the embodiment of football’s social spirit.
It was motivated by community. It works because of community. It engenders community. It’s a perfect encapsulation of what football is supposed to be.
Smith tells me about the combined effect of initiatives like Help A Buddie, Stephen Robinson’s team, and St Mirren’s bold decision to reintroduce sensible limits on away fans for games against the Rangers and Celtic, clubs young fans in Paisley might otherwise adopt as their own.
“I’ve supported St Mirren all my life. I’ve been at that stadium when it’s had two or three thousand people in it and it’s a bit of a morgue. But the last few seasons, along with the team doing well, all this is encouraging more young people to come along,” he says.
“Let’s be clear, the way the club is organised means a lot of these people are already putting money in beyond their own match tickets on a monthly or annual basis as well,” adds Lasley.
“One example is the 1877 Club which is a members club and they’ve got involved in it now. They’ll raffle off tickets, raise funds to buy Help A Buddie tickets, so rather than maybe spending that money on something else, they have a totaliser in the social club on a Saturday of how many tickets they’ve been able to donate.
“I think football still, in my view, doesn’t get enough credit from the government and from councils in terms of the impact clubs have in their local communities. Lots of clubs are doing lots of good things.
“I think some people might say, ‘Well, you’re a football club and you play football.’ You know, we want to stand a bit taller than that. Why shouldn’t we shout about that a bit more?”
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