The Guardian view on the collapse of Bury FC: a tragedy bigger than mere football

Football is about more than money, however much lucre has come to shape the beautiful game. Over this summer, English top-tier clubs had spent a total of £1.41bn, with Manchester United shelling out a world record fee on a defender of £80m for Leicester City’s Harry Maguire. Yet these amounts and the teams that spend them are symptoms of an unsentimental business model that is indifferent to tradition, place and practice. It is eroding the sense that many football clubs are a central and vital part of people’s identity.

That is why the end of Bury Football Club after 134 years is important. Before it was shut, 400 supporters had volunteered to mop and sweep the Gigg Lane ground hoping to show that the true value of their football club cannot be counted in pounds and pennies. Bury FC was the town’s pride until 5pm on Tuesday. The club disappeared after prospective buyers said that there were “systemic failings” that could not be overcome. With capitalism increasingly dominating community as the driving force in modern football, other clubs could risk a similar fate.

Bury’s mayor, David Jones, said the club’s demise would be the last nail in the town’s coffin. He has a point. Since 2010, the council has suffered cuts of £85m, 61% of its annual budget. Several libraries, those other cherished emblems of small-town identity, have closed. A hard Brexit may well make matters worse – it’s predicted to shrink the north-west of England’s economy by 12%. Bury’s football team has also suffered from their proximity to two of the world’s most famous football brands: Manchester’s City and United. Both have been bankrolled by foreign billionaires. How could a humble League One team compete on that playing field? Bury’s Metrolink tram service to central Manchester, which has made the town more attractive for young commuters, might also have encouraged football fans to forgo Gigg Lane, and instead travel to the Etihad or Old Trafford to see the Premier League’s highest-paid players, Kevin De Bruyne (£350,000 a week) at City and Paul Pogba (£290,000) at United.

Today, football typifies British inequality. At Tottenham Hostpur’s new stadium, for instance, the elite “H Club” pay an estimated £30,000 a season for their seats, and are offered carefully sourced half-time cheeses and the chance to drink beers from the in-stadium microbrewery. Bury, by contrast, is not a club of big cheeses. Bury was formed from teams of football-loving Victorian churchgoers. It was brought low by Mammon: ending life as an asset-stripped shell, sunk by debt and mortgaged to a company based in Malta via the British Virgin Islands.

It’s too soon to say if Bury FC’s fanbase can bring the club back from the dead. AFC Wimbledon’s rise from the ashes may offer a precedent. For now, an unfashionable club in a small English town has been destroyed by speculative capital while the football authorities paid insufficient attention. Bury deserved better.