Why the Death of the Half-and-Half Scarf Cult Isn’t Necessarily a Good Thing

It’s the end of an era—the half-and-half scarf is dead.

Well, that’s the case for Chelsea fans at least, after it was revealed the club has put a trademark on the Chelsea name being on any item of clothing. That has meant the sound of the death knell ringing loud for any fans attending matches at Stamford Bridge and hoping to buy so-called friendship scarves; the Chelsea name can no longer be used on them.

Cue the celebrations. The phenomenon that has largely been derided by the masses is no more; fans can go back to revelling in the partisan culture that envelops football matches.

That was always the problem here. It wasn’t the scarves themselves or even the fans who bought them that so riled supporters of any club. It was the idea of friendship; the notion that fans can go along to matches arm in arm with their rivals and clap along to the action.

This isn’t The X-Factor; it’s football.

The scarves represented the sanitisation of the game; they were and are a symbol of the corporate attitudes that now govern every aspect of football. Corporate is clean, it tries to be the friend of everyone and please the masses. It’s the antithesis of what sport is all about.

Take Chelsea fans, for instance. Very few could imagine wearing an item of clothing that promotes a false sense of brotherhood with, say, West Ham United, whom the Blues face on the opening weekend of the new Premier League campaign.

The feeling is mutual, with the Hammers feeling just as passionately about their dislike for Chelsea.

Football has a chequered history with violence when those feelings of animosity have boiled over into thuggery. But taking away moronic behaviour, it’s rivalries that have fed the game and made it what it is. The biggest games in any season are the city derbies or clashes between clubs whose hatred for the other had been built on a diet of on-pitch feuding down the years.

Witnessing fans turn up to matches and not buy into that culture has been at odds with it all. Symbolic handshakes between Liverpool and …

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