Millwall bring biggest-small-club-in-the-world energy to Selhurst Park

The Guardian

28-02-2025

'By undertaking a Freudian analysis of Millwall fandom, combined with a Lacanian interpretation of the death drive … it is possible to perceive Millwall fandom as a form of symbolic masochism.' Hmm. OK then. That sounds, on balance, like a strong disapprove. Although to be fair the walk from New Cross can be a bit bleak at this time of year.
The great days of anthropologically vital city-centre rumbles may be long gone, but there is unlikely to be a shortage of this kind of stuff any time soon.
A search of the study archive Jstor reveals a tally of 316 academic papers containing the words 'Millwall Football Club', from Princeton Press to the Journal of Arts, from Joshua Sofaer's Dramaturgies of Interference in Public Space, to Supporters et Hooligans en Grande-Bretagne Depuis 1871, to the University of New England pamphlet quoted above, which does, as pamphlets go, slightly take the fun out of shouting at people and waving your arms around on a foggy Tuesday night in Bermondsey.
By way of comparison, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City, holders down the years of 49 league titles, have racked up a mere 304 papers between them. Millwall have barely disturbed the waters of elite competition during their 140-year existence, have never played in the Premier League or won a major cup, but there remains an undying fascination with the club's identity.
Above all with the urge to locate a unique and definitive kind of footballing darkness there. No one likes us. Apart, it seems, from social science academics looking for a little red meat to go with the dry stuff. As Millwall prepare to travel to Selhurst Park for Saturday's Windrush Line derby, south London will no doubt be crawling once again with leather-satchelled seekers after truth. And to be fair this is a brilliantly well-matched FA Cup fifth-round tie, for legitimate footballing reasons.
Palace are in buoyant form, solidly placed in the league and a potent presence in this side of the draw. Millwall are safely lodged in the Millwall Zone of the past few seasons, eternally six to eight points off the Championship playoffs. It seems fair to say Saturday's Cup tie is the biggest event in the calendar for either of these teams as the season starts to narrow to its end point.
Plus there is, of course, another hyper-specific London rivalry to be played out. For Millwall supporters enemy No 1 will always be West Ham. This makes cultural sense. The Dockers derby has its roots in wharf tensions on the River Thames, the days when those people from just across the river were literally taking money, work, loading contracts off your own kitchen table.
Millwall have a more slow-burn relationship with their various south London neighbours. There is a famous scene to this effect in the reputationally disastrous 1977 Panorama film about football hooliganism, mention of which is likely to bring longsuffering groans from supporters of a certain age.
At one point the mass of Millwall's away support is shown travelling north for a game at Sunderland, while a minority of 'faces' ('the real nutters, self-confessed loonies like Harry the Dog') choose instead to infiltrate the nearest neutral ground for 'a ruck'. This is a prelude to 12 undercover Millwall fans sparking a 2,000-person riot in the Tottenham away section, at least according to the blokes filmed talking about it afterwards in the pub, and gleefully parroted by the BBC narration.
The hosts on that occasion were Charlton. But Selhurst Park, a few miles south, would have done just as well. There is a very specific kind of animosity between Millwall and Palace. Often football hatred has no real content. It is simply self-sustaining tribalism. This one is at least interesting for its almost imperceptible notions of class. These are both blue-collar London clubs. But from the Millwall perspective, or at least to the enduring Millwall sense of self as inner London, dock-based, authentic, Palace fans are Stripey Nigels from the Surrey borders, lower middle class, nasal, Croydon-not-London, a fanbase of Southgates.
From the opposite end Millwall fans are, as ever, seen as feral teenagers in market stall jumpers, disenfranchised urban litter, primary school dropouts, avatars of amorality. How much of this is real? Almost none of it. These things exist only in cartoon form. Bermondsey, with its plastic new-build high rises, is no longer crammed with the descendants of dockers. The housing market has made sure of this. The diaspora often comes in from Kent and beyond now.
With this in mind it is worth remembering that had things gone differently a few years back there is a chance Millwall's first trip to Selhurst Park since 2012 (2-2 draw; 20-year-old Chris Wood in the Millwall team) would no longer even qualify as a derby.
It is still extraordinary that the Battle for Millwall's Car Park created such heat. It came from a compulsory purchase shemozzle involving Lewisham council that the club considered at one point might threaten its existence in the borough.
At which point strange noises off began emerging. The chosen developer for the council's housing project was owned by a mysterious Panama-based trust. Who actually owned the land or the company? 'Why was the previous mayor of Lewisham, Dave Sullivan, mixed up historically with a developer benefiting from decisions being made by the (then) current mayor of Lewisham, Steve Bullock?
All allegations of impropriety were denied, and were never backed by any hard evidence. Still, wild rumours skirled, talk of nefarious involvement and outlandish connections. The story went around the world because of Millwall's brand, that compelling biggest-small-club-in-the-world energy, and the link with gentrification, misuse of power, land grabs.
The whole thing collapsed in the end and then resurrected itself. A new plan with the developers was glossed. The ground will now be surrounded, but not displaced, by even taller plastic residential towers, extra space clawed out of the air not the land.
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It is still unclear what all parties, including Millwall's US ownership, really wanted from the entire saga. But the club is safely moored now and there is a new kind of energy about the place. There was genuine sadness at the death in 2024 of John Berylson, a much-loved owner. His son has taken over the role.
The most significant development for the club is the granting of a new super-long lease on its land by the council, a gamechanger for anyone with the will to redevelop, either now or after some oft-rumoured future sale.
It isn't hard to see why Millwall could be attractive to purchasers. This is one of the last remaining unmodernised, un-flushed-out corners of inner London. Bermondsey has been called many things down the years, from Biscuit Town (home of Peek Freans), to London's Larder, to Target Area G in the Luftwaffe playbook. New Bermondsey, the latest version, has not yet taken shape. The Greggs still has a security guard outside. The magnificently craning rubbish incinerator is still dispersing its particulates.
But money is already acting on neglected squares of land around the ground. Thrillingly uncluttered architects' drawings have been circulating of a redeveloped version of the club's site, as they have since the impossible dream of a Super Den (an Asda! A bowling alley!) in the 1970s.
The club will at least be present while this happens and there is a sense of general renewal. Steve Kavanagh, the long-serving chief executive, was among those to leave last year. Steve Gallen has come in as an interventionist director of football. The new training ground has coincided with a sense of talent rising through the ranks.
This is where Saturday's opponents provide a kind of model. South London has become an obvious talent factory in the past 10 years, the concrete Catalonia, a three-million strong population stretching into the Croydon hinterlands of ambition, cage-ball and well-run academies. Palace have been efficient in channelling this. The academy building looms up like an alien hangar as south London merges into Kent south of Sydenham.
There are some signs Millwall have begun to draw on that same pool. The academy is said to be flourishing. Romain Esse is the obvious point of interest before Saturday's game, a homegrown club record sale to Palace in the last transfer window. Tellingly, there was no real sense of outrage when Esse made the switch. The money is good. This is how the club can grow and feed itself. Local kids in the team, a connection to its own terroir. It is a happy model for a club that has at times in the past seemed a little isolated on its peninsula.
It is to be hoped Saturday can pass off peacefully. There is always something in these games, not to mention an unusually large ratio of media observers present to report the details. The last couple of meetings have brought some moments of friction and a little performative teenage hooliganism.
This time the spectacle itself should be quite enough. Millwall play a relatively fluent style of football under Alex Neil in front of the solid defensive heart of Jake Cooper and a flourishing Japhet Tanganga. Palace have won seven of their past nine and have Jean-Philippe Mateta on a run of seven goals in that time. For both these clubs there is a sense of life and regeneration in whatever form, as disappointing as that news might be for the Death Drive Freudian Masochism crowd.