Can we have our cup back please?

Liverpool's astonishing turnaround in last night's Champions League final is only surpassed by the way the attitudes of politicians to football have changed since the last time Liverpool made the final.

That was back in 1985, when the match was played in the crumbling Heysel stadium in Brussels. A violent charge by Liverpool fans into a section of Juventus supporters resulted in 39 deaths as a wall collapsed and people were crushed. At the time there was already a media panic about football hooliganism, and after Heysel Margaret Thatcher was said to have wanted to ban football altogether. As it was, she forced England's Football Association to withdraw English teams from European competitions. The demonisation of football fans that followed led directly to the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans at Sheffield's Hillsborough stadium four years later.

Now, no self-respecting politician can resist associating themselves with football success. 'Unbelievable. Incredible. Brilliant. The whole country is very proud of you', said Tony Blair in a message to the Liverpool team. Even the Turkish prime minister, whose country hosted the final, phoned up Blair to congratulate him.

Well, as a Liverpool fan, may I say on behalf of Reds supporters across the country, nay the world: please stop trying to bask in our glory! Proper football fans support their enemy's enemy. I can proudly say I was cheering on Bayern Munich when they played Man Utd in 1999. If Blair was a proper Newcastle fan, as he claims to be, he'd have been supporting Milan in the true parochial traditions of English football.

Victorious Reds return to England, BBC News, 26 May 2005