We no longer have real villages, churches or communities, and the idea of a nation, except at times of war or during the World Cup, fails to move us. But like the Dianaites, who also yearn for collective purpose, many football fans have adopted the language of the helpless, passive victim. I know it's a rip-off. If you speak to anybody unhappy about the price of football today, I would guarantee that the words 'you have to', 'they expect you' and 'they force you' will crop up. Instead of just not paying for an overpriced product, they demand that a higher authority does the thinking for them - like the association of supporters' rights groups who lobbied the state to create the Government Football Taskforce, in an effort to get clubs to cap the prices on entrance and replica shirt prices.
Many football fans argue that the game is somehow above consumerism, outside industry.
It is something 'special', part of our social fabric. But the game has always been a product. It has always been an industry. Ever since its inception as a professional spectator sport, it has involved the ritual of handing over cash to the man in the turnstile so that you can participate in a tribal, 'imagined community'. The only thing that has changed in the past 10 years is that this feature has become so explicit.