91Èȱ¬

While many football fans around the world will be avidly debating and agonising over the fates of their national teams in June, it is often at the domestic club level where the game finds its most passionate support. A new series, The Power And The Passion, on 91Èȱ¬ World Service from Monday 7 June 2010, explores this phenomenon.

Writer and broadcaster David Goldblatt travels to four very different football games in Italy, Egypt, Ghana and the UK, to experience the build-up and pitch action from the perspective of the fans.

David says: "What are football clubs? Some see them as businesses, but aren't businesses purely about profit? Clubs are about more than their private owners, or the players and coaches who come and go – they are the accumulated trove of memories, meanings and identities that generations of fans have bestowed upon their sporting glories and disasters.

"Without this a football club is just a balance sheet and some very meagre assets."

He adds: "Clubs may be owned by the powerful and quixotic, managed by the shrewd and the machiavellian, but, in the end, the people who really know the club are the fans.

"In this series, we travelled to four different games to talk to supporters and to find out about the history, passion and fervour that underpin these fixtures".

The series premieres as follows:

Episode one
The Milan Derby – Inter Milan v AC Milan
Monday 7 June, 1900 GMT*

David travelled to the citadel of Italian football, Milan, on 14 January 2010 to follow the build-up to the Derby della Madonnina.

It's a fixture that grips both city and nation. Inter Milan, the Nerazzurri, play their city counterparts AC Milan – the Rossoneri in the gigantic San Siro stadium, which the two clubs share. At this point in the season, and for the first time in years, both clubs had a chance of winning the championship.

For decades, Inter seemed to be the unlucky ones, in the shadow of AC Milan's domestic and European glory. AC Milan is also a club whose recent glamorous fortunes have been intimately linked to those of Silvio Berlusconi.

But, since 2006, and the fall-out from the far reaching Calciopoli scandal, Inter have gone on to win successive championships on the back of a formidable transfer budget, whilst Milan's power has begun to wane.

In the company of Calcio historian John Foot, David meets with fans and members of the football community and discovers that, in Milan, football is a public theatre of operatic intensity, shot through with neuroses and a touch of poetry.

Yet, unlike so many other derbies characterised by intense rivalry and loathing, friends and even families support both sides, and walk alongside each other to the match.

Episode two
The Secret Policeman's Football – Zamalek v El Ahly
Monday 14 June, 1900 GMT

Often billed as one of the world's most violent derbies, David finds a very different game of football and politics when El Ahly play their Cairo rivals Zamalek – the two oldest clubs in Egypt.

This game, which took place on 12 December 2009, is a clue as to the significance of football in the lives of millions across Cairo and the nation and is one of the few legitimate arenas in which politics can be cautiously expressed and pent-up emotions given a raucous escape.

The game takes place against the backdrop of the bitter fall out of Egypt's failure to qualify for the World Cup, just days earlier. Now a kind of football fever has fallen upon Cairo, full of anger, frustration and paranoia.

The ultra fanatics of both teams plan in secret and, come match night, the National Stadium is surrounded by worried police and the army. As David arrives to follow the build-up to the game he begins to doubt he'll ever be allowed in.

Episode three
The King's Men – Asante Kotoko v Accra Hearts Of Oak
Monday 21 June, 1900 GMT*

Asante Kotoko and Accra Hearts of Oak have been contesting ‘bragging rights' for decades. The two teams are the traditional source of players for the national team, otherwise known as The Black Stars.

But Ghanaian domestic football is not well. Stadium disasters, corruption and governance have bitten into its soul, but even more damaging, as David discovers, is the massive talent drain of the best players to the money-rich leagues of Europe.

As a result, the games of the English Premiership, Serie A and La Liga attract huge and passionate crowds to bars and shacks across Accra and the nation, often at the expense of domestic football attendance. This domestic fixture is one of the few that still draws a large and boisterous crowd.

In the company of local football journalist Jerome Otchere, David Goldblatt hears from the founder of Circle O, the musical voice of Hearts of Oak, who is still traumatised by the tragedy of 2001, when 126 people lost their lives during a Hearts of Oak v Kotoko game.

Episode four
The Geordie Nation – Newcastle United v anyone
Monday 28 June, 1900 GMT*

This episode starts on 11 May 2009, when Newcastle United are playing local rivals Middlesbrough. At this late stage in the season, both clubs were in deep trouble and fighting to avoid relegation.

In the event, Newcastle, backed by an unbroken wall of noise, won the game. But the fans relief proves short-lived, as even temporary manager and Newcastle hero Alan Shearer's legendary aura fails to save them from relegation to England's second tier, the Championship.

Newcastle United's recent woes form a tragicomic litany – scandal, sackings and mismanagement and now relegation – some of the club's fans have even written their own play, You Couldn't Make It Up, to chart Newcastle's misfortunes.

The black and white hordes of the "Toon" army have often been portrayed as blindly loyal in this one club city, but at this point many were extremely angry at the club's relegation and resentful towards the club's American owner Mike Ashley, who bought the club in 2007.

David also speaks to former Newcastle United owner Sir John Hall, a key figure in the regeneration of the club in the Eighties, who reveals the impossible dream of the Geordie nation.

By the time David returns to Newcastle United in April 2010 hope has returned. This solitary season in the lower league has bonded fans and club together, and now they face Ipswich, the result almost irrelevant, for Newcastle have already clinched both promotion and the Championship title.

But, even in their hour of triumph, already fans are beginning to air their doubts and wonder at what the future might bring.

Notes to Editors

* For further information on programme times in your region, visit bbcworldservice.com/schedules.

The Power And The Passion transmission times (GMT):

Australasia | Mon 0006 rpt 0506, 1206, 1706; rpt Sat 0606, 2206 GMT (Mon 1006 rpt 1506, 2206, Tue 0306 ; rpt Sat 1606 Sun 0806 EST).

East Asia | Mon 0306 rpt 0806, 1306, 1606; Sat 1106, 2106

South Asia | Mon 0406 rpt 0906, 1606, 2106; Sat 0806; Sun 0006

East Africa | Mon 0706 rpt 1306, 2106; Tue 0106; Sat 0806; Sun 2106

West Africa | Mon 0906 rpt 1406, 2106; Tue 0006; Sun 0206, 1306*

Middle East | Mon 0906 rpt 1206, 1906, Tue 0006; Sat 0906; Sun 2206

Europe | Mon 0906 rpt 1206, 1906, Tue 0006; Sat 0906; Sun 2206

Americas & Caribbean | Mon 1306 rpt 1806; Tue 0006, 0506; Sat 2106; Sun 0606 ; Mon 0206 GMT (Mon 0906 rpt 1406 2006 ; Tue 0106 ; Sat 1706 ; Sun 0206 2206 EDT)

David Goldblatt

David is a writer, broadcaster and teacher, who works as a sports writer and historian. He is a regular columnist for Prospect Magazine, writing on the politics and economics of sport. David is also the author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football, as well as a number of atlases and encyclopaedias of football

As a radio broadcaster David has worked for 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4 and 91Èȱ¬ World Service, reporting on a range of topics including the politics of football in Israel, the economics of baseball in the Dominican Republic and most recently on education in rural India.

David has also worked as a teacher in primary and secondary schools and at Bristol city study centre, as well as at Bristol University where he teaches a course on the sociology of sport.

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