I have never been a corporate fan, but in
the interests of balanced reporting I generously accepted an offer to accompany a friend who is. His firm holds six VIP tickets for every FC Cologne home game, and last night they played my local team, Eintracht Frankfurt. It's the kind of gritty, undercover
work that we football bloggers are occasionally forced into when exploring the
seedy under-belly of sport's darker side. My only problem would be resisting
the lucrative job offers that would no doubt come my way via a shady half-time
handshake. I was determined not to become 'one of us'.
 |
| Far from the 'wild horde' at FC Köln's Müngersdorfer Stadium |
First, let me tell you about my friend,
'John' (his real name). We met when we were both proper journalists several
years ago before our profession died and he crossed to a more generous
paymaster to work in something called 'communications' (and I crossed into a
cash-free zone called 'freelancing'). His job, however, is not to communicate, but to
obfuscate. That's why his firm's web site proclaims that it "provides
solutions to propel our customers
from start to finish to unlock new insights". Understand?
John has three
colleagues along on the corporate tab who are all FC Cologne fans. John himself
claims to be a Bayern Munich supporter for some tenuous reason I can't recall,
although he's from Chicago and lives near Frankfurt. Let's just
