From Upton Park to London’s Olympic Stadium, West Ham fans uprooted

Behind the counter, Amanda is busy taking care of the first customers who come to warm themselves inside, while the rain pours down outside in London, at the end of the afternoon, Wednesday April 6th. Between two orders, the waitress at the Boleyn Tavern, one of the iconic bars in the history of the West Ham club, explains to us that she expects to see several Hammers supporters arrive the next afternoon. The program: have a few pints before heading to London’s Olympic Stadium five kilometers away.

There will be the quarter-final first leg of the Europa League between West Ham, 6th in the Premier League, and Olympique Lyonnais. A game eagerly awaited by the Hammers, who have not reached this stage of European competition for more than forty years. A sign reflects the latent excitement: in just a few minutes, the 60,000 tickets for the match were sold on the club’s ticketing site. And it is at the Boleyn Tavern that some of the supporters will meet before the match.

“We see less supporters since the club moved“, concedes Amanda, whose bar is located only a hundred meters from where West Ham’s old stadium was: Upton Park, also called Boleyn Ground. Since 2016, the east London club has left this enclosure for the Olympic stadium and the fans gradually deserted the East End, one of the most disadvantaged districts of the capital. But some nostalgic people continue to come regularly to the district to experience the pre-matches before joining the London Stadium by tube or bus.

This is the case of Paul Colborne. The man in his sixties goes to every match in his favorite pub in Plaistow, ten minutes from Upton Park. “There is nothing in the area to remember that the club has been present in the past“, regrets the chairman of the Hammers United Supporters Club group, which has 18,500 members. The Upton Park stadium, where West Ham played between 1904 and 2016, was completely demolished after the club moved. lawn now rise blocks of buildings, some of which are still under construction.

Looking carefully, in a dead end located not far from the old stadium, an element marks the passage of West Ham in the area. A famous Boleyn Ground graffiti, for eternity we hope among some melancholy supporters. In the six years since the move took place, part of the Hammers fans have still not digested the fact of leaving Upton Park.

Their new home, London’s Olympic Stadium, contrasts with the authenticity of the East End. On the eve of the match, we are also busy around the London Stadium to restock the foodtrucks which will serve burgers and beers to the fans present during the pre-match on Thursday. West Ham’s shift into modernity welcomes us with a giant screen announcing the upcoming concert of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with the stadium also hosting concerts. In 2013, after a long legal battle, West Ham secured a 99-year lease on the stadium at the expense of London rivals Tottenham.

The wind is blowing hard in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, where the London Stadium is located. The Olympic Village, designed to host the 2012 Games, “will soon be one of the largest and most ambitious cultural and educational districtsof the city, according to Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. at Upton Park. The change of stadium foreshadows the change in dimension of the club, as announced by Karren Brady. The vice-president of West Ham promises “a world-class team and a world-class coach in a world-class stadium“.

But the surroundings of the Olympic Village, where more than 40,000 people will be employed by 2025, are however not the most suitable place to host a pre-match worthy of the name… nor a football match, according to some supporters. “It’s not a football stadium, it’s an athletics stadium. The first time I went there, I said to myself: ‘It’s impressive, it looks good from the outside.’ And when I got in, I saw that the stands were very far from the field“, asserts Andrew McConnell, member of the Hammers United Supporters Club.

With the remains of the athletics track of the Olympic stadium, the stands are indeed located far from the lawn. An aberration for English football where fans can usually feel the breath of players on the pitch. “We hate this place“, says Paul Colborne, who has not been to the London Stadium for four years … forced by a stadium ban.

In March 2018, as the club was fighting relegation two years after the owners had promised to change, the supporter made a name for himself by entering the lawn of the London Stadium during a match between West Ham and Burnley . “Wanted to emulate a 1992 fan who planted the corner post in midfield to protest the club’s ticketing policy“, explains Colborne.

Hammers United Supporter Club Chairman fails to plant the corner flag -“it was plastic” – but brandishes it in the middle of the field. The image remains engraved in the minds and decides to lead the revolt against the owners. In February 2020, a first demonstration takes place and 8,500 supporters take part in it. The grumbling is heard while the team is in difficulty on the sporting level.

One of the reasons for these poor results? “Lack of atmosphere like in Upton Parkretorts without hesitation Andrew McConnell. Fans and opposing teams were afraid to go to Upton Park because they were afraid of this atmosphere, of us, of the twelfth man. It allowed us to win games. All of that suddenly disappeared when we arrived at the London Stadium. When you hear opposing fans chanting ‘you’re not really West Ham anymore’, it’s hard to answer them, because they’re not completely wrong.“

Colborne, who has supported the Hammers for 50 years, also misses the Upton Park vibe that “the most fanatical fanbase in London, if not the country“, according to him. “At first I thought London Stadium would be like Upton Park but with 20,000 more people. But I hadn’t anticipated that those 20,000 people wouldn’t be West Ham supporters and that they would be supporting other teams during matches.“, he describes. An affront to the fans of the Hammers.

But the London Stadium has also allowed the arrival of new faces. “This is the biggest success of the stadium change“, assures David Blackmore, editor for the fanzine Blowing Bubbles. He understands the difficulty of leaving Upton Park and realizes that “many fans will never call the Olympic Stadium their home“. Still, he got used to “this very modern and commercial conception of football“, even if he continues to live his pre-matches in a bar fifteen minutes walk from Upton Park.

Other supporters will prefer to find themselves in the huge shopping center which borders the Olympic village and in all the new infrastructures on which the club is betting, symbol of the new era in which West Ham entered a few years ago. Receptive to criticism from the Hammers United Supporters Club, the management of the Hammers nevertheless made slight changes to improve the atmosphere at the London Stadium, such as bringing the stands closer behind the goals on the lawn.

The owners have also called on the history of the club to try to bring some consistency to this sanitized place that is the London Stadium. The old Upton Park gates are displayed in the club’s official store and a statue representing three West Ham legends (Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Sir Geoff Hurst) was inaugurated a few months ago on the forecourt of the London Stadium. .

“It’s a step in the right directionadmits McConnell. But there is still so much to do.“But as the club’s results improve, and West Ham prepare for their first European quarter-final in 40 years, the discontent is lessening. Last October, the protest organized by the group of supporters gathered only 400 people.

“The good memories the players are creating make this stadium feel more like home“, defends David Blackmore. Crossed at the exit of the official store of the club on Wednesday, Andrew Smith, a supporter of the Hammers based in the United States, abounds: “To have this magnificent stadium is great. It allows us to consider a place in the top 4 in the long term and to play in the Champions League, especially with the good team we have at the moment.“

Still unhappy with the turn of events, the Hammers United Supporters Club are still calling for the owners to leave. But the group is procrastinating for the moment. “We must also accept that for people, the priority is that the team works well”, assumes Colborne. Far from hoping for the fall of his team in the Premier League and the Europa League, the Hammers supporter maintains that the choices of the management, to whom he blames a lack of investment in terms of transfer, will have a negative impact on the team. In which case, the sling would start again.

For the moment, West Ham is living a daydream, carried by its captain Declan Rice, a true idol of the club. The latter could leave the Hammers in the event of non-qualification for the European Cup next season. One more heartbreak, “which would illustrate the bad decisions of the owners“, according to Colborne. In the meantime, he and his colleagues continue to heal the wounds of a departure from the Upton Park stadium which does not pass.

Their latest project: after having bought a huge plaque present on the walls of Boleyn Ground in the 1980s, the group of supporters wishes to install it near Boleyn Tavern, this mythical bar of the club with a recently redone storefront. A way for supporters to remember that one day, the West Ham club lived, five kilometers from the London Olympic Stadium, in the heart of the East End, a large part of its rich history.