Manchester United’s Fans Treatment of Joshua Zirkzee Is Embarrassing
Being a Manchester United fan used to be something you wore proudly on your sleeve. The best club in the country, with a fan base that well and truly made the hairs on your neck stand up every match day. That us against the world mantra that Sir Alex Ferguson sent through the club no matter what. Protecting his players from the media, limiting the amount of scope rival fans had to use against them while also stopping the pile on from a journalism industry that bays for the blood of every human being that walks through the door of the 20 times English champions.
That description of the football club is gone. Pride is no longer the word associated with supporting Manchester United, but embarrassment. Joshua Zirkzee being booed off the pitch last night is one of the lowest moments I have personally ever felt while supporting this football club. This is a 23-year-old lad who won young player of the year last season in a hugely impressive Bologna side, who has played for Bayern Munich in the past, jeered off a football pitch by his own fan base 5 months into his new career at the club. What a welcome to Manchester United that is. What a depiction of what the club is to the potential players that are thinking about coming to Old Trafford. We are doomed if that is how we treat our own.
Toxic fanbase a huge issue, Zirkzee deserves better
Manchester United fans are one of the biggest issues with this football club. The treatment of Harry Maguire during his rough period at the club was disgusting, especially when the entire team made individual errors on a weekly basis and got away without half the public lambasting that Maguire did. Marcus Rashford—well, I don’t even have to mention the disgusting treatment to Marcus by the media and our own fan base. 16 articles mentioning Marcus in December alone, written by the Telegraph. Clickbait rubbish, peddling a narrative against a personality who went against the government and won. Funny that. Once you realise the majority of publications are all backed by a group of people who want to push an agenda behind each article, you begin to detach from the rubbish you read in the media week in and week out.
The club is toxic, and Ruben Amorim has walked into a club devoid of identity and direction. I spoke to the agent of a hugely touted and talented young player last January about the prospect of potentially joining Manchester United in the coming months, and he laughed. His exact words were, I would not send my client near the circus that is Manchester United. Do fans think situations like last night towards Zirkzee help that opinion?
Everyone needs someone to blame. That’s the issue. Kobbie Mainoo was targeted last week. Idiots online, questioning whether he had put on too much weight. People who have never kicked a football in their lives or dealt with the development of an athlete questioning elite coaches on how to nurture a young 19-year-old. Kobbie has been recovering from a bad injury. His minutes are being managed by Ruben Amorim. He is supremely talented and that will shine through. But don’t let that get in the way of pushing your clickbait nonsense.
It is a soap opera. The shirt weighs too heavy. Every player that comes in with a positive reputation leaves with a negative one. Fans are attempting to act like Matthijs De Ligt, who is 25 years old and a serial winner with league titles in two different countries, is not a good football player. It goes against the grain of what United once were, and every single week these days they are moving further and further away from it.
A shock is needed:
Ruben Amorim is right; the club needs a shock. Perhaps a relegation is genuinely needed to weed out all these fancam rubbish fans who are using the club for their own personal and financial gain. People like SaeedTV, asking INEOS for fights outside the ground because the team has lost a football match. This is an example of faux outrage to try and drive interactions and make money off a football club. Embarrassing. Or “PlanetFaz,” lecturing Alejandro Garnacho on how to pass a football while posting compilations of himself running around an astro like a headless chicken with two left feet. Probably not the best video to have on the internet if you are trying to lecture a pro on how to pass a football.
If you don’t want to support a club when they are bad, don’t support them when they are good. It’s that simple. Do you think Joshua Zirkzee, a player clearly devoid of confidence, is going to suddenly become confident when 75,000 of his own fans are celebrating him being substituted off the pitch? What kind of logic is that? Suggestions that these players should be capable of this criticism due to the fact they earn large amounts of money. Do they stop being human beings because they make money? When did that become the general feeling in human nature? Those who are close to Josh Zirkzee would describe him as the nicest lad you are ever likely to meet. Someone who had dreams of coming to Manchester United and making a career here. But he’s fallen victim to something nearly every single player that has signed for the club over the last decade has also fallen victim to. The Old Trafford graveyard.
Doomed until we are not:
Fans who slated a club legend for smiling after games watched him cry while giving his final farewell to use after two incredible seasons in charge, returning us to probably the best shape we have been in post Fergie, and still did not blink an eye. That’s the fan base the majority are turning into. Entitled. Self righteous. Glory hunters. Plain and simply.
I saw a picture of Erik ten Hag last week with his family on a Christmas holiday. Rejuvenated. Fresh faced. No stress. Good to see. A top manager who will prove he is a top manager at his next club. Look at Amorim before signing for United; the most highly touted young manager on the planet now has the record for most defeats in a single month in the league as a United manager ever. When do we start realising that the damage the Glazer family has done to this football club goes beyond any single football player or one football manager, and until INEOS, who have had a shaky start, develop a method to fix the damage of 20 years of misguidance and mismanagement, Manchester United will continue to fall into the abyss with these fake fans who claim to be anything but.
Rebuilding requires patience, and this will be an enduring process. There’s more of these days to come. Newcastle’s first half an hour will happen again, possibly this Sunday at Anfield. Liverpool are the most in form team on the planet; Manchester United are the least in form team on the planet, with a squad of players who have only trained together in full four times since Amorim came into the club. How can you push across your philosophy and idea in four training sessions? But my fear is: how long before they turn on another manager? How long before the fans start their public campaigns, with that shiny new toy syndrome, thinking yet again that another man in the dugout can undo the damage of a family in America who have not addressed the fans publicly in over 20 years? It won’t happen. You can bring in your De Zerbi’s, your McKenna’s, even your father, who thinks he knows more than the men in the dugout; they will all meet the same faith at this football club until the mistakes of the last 20 years are rectified. Let’s hope despite a shaky start that INEOS are the men to do it; until then, get behind the players, push behind the manager, and remember what made Manchester United the best club in all the land.
About The Author
