Fanzines give new soccer insights

Press, 26 April 1989, Page 22

Fanzines give new soccer insights

John Guastad’s Sportspages bookship has become the London focal point of an explosion in English football magazines. The shop stocks as many as 20 different editions of “fanzines,” magazines produced by and for soccer fans. The new publications were inspired by the need to give fans a voice and restore their reputation, especially after the Heysel Stadium disaster in Belgium. They have now developed into something of an underground football press movement. Although often crudely produced with typewriter and copying machine, the magazines are usually aimed at providing a humorous but critical look at each major club. The blggest-selling magazine “When Saturday Comes,” was set up as an antidote to “adoles-cents-only” magazines such as “Shoot.” Its publishers say it is aimed at the intelligent fan who does not want to know what players eat for tea. The paper attacks poor management of the game, but with a sense of humour. Gaustad says the emergence of fanzines Is a backlash from the poor image soccer fans have following crowd violence. “It almost got to the stage here where people were afraid to admit they were football fans,” he says. The fanzines are being used by soccer fans to fight the British Government’s plan to Introduce a compulsory identity card system. Content of the fanzines reflects the fact that ordinary fans deplore football violence just as much as the rest of the population does. But they often view soccer and its management in much the same way as the satirical magazine “Private Eye” observes politics and the news media in Britain. Guastad sells several hundred copies of each edition of some of the magazines.