Sinister side of football’s autograph hunting craze

Four hours before kick-off on Sunday and word has swept through Ipswich about Pep Guardiola’s location. He and his Manchester City team spent Saturday night at a hotel 15 minutes walk from Portman Road and where City go, the autograph hunters follow. Given his current mood, it is a brave fan who asks for Guardiola’s signature.

A recent chapter in his ongoing winter of discontent showed him scolding seemingly teenage autograph hunters. “Don’t come again, I know your faces,” said Guardiola in the urgent, earnest tone familiar from clips of his team talks. “Go to school, prepare yourself guys, you are young. You want to live your life doing this?” Evidently, given the number of people who seek football autographs, the answer is yes.

Certainly the crowd assembling behind waist-height orange construction barriers in Ipswich seemed happy waiting for Guardiola and his team, despite near-freezing temperatures. Some had arrived as early as 10am, most bringing shirts, City merchandise or photos. All seemed to be motivated by the prospect of a souvenir rather than financial gain.

Henry Goddard brought his Erling Haaland shirt, a Phil Foden shirt, a scarf, some blank cards, a marker pen and mum Alex McGuigan. Foden is his top target “Then Haaland, then Grealish, then Ederson.” Today’s game will be his first experience of watching City in person and this is also his first time on the hunt for signatures. He is in primary school, an age at which you might expect a selfie to be the lingua franca, yet the autograph is his preferred keepsake “So I can take it into school and show everyone.”

Children like Goddard were not the target of Guardiola’s anger, nor Roy Keane’s when he praised the City manager last week. “Good on Pep Guardiola for lecturing the autograph hunters, they are an absolute nuisance. You see them everywhere and he’s dead right. Years ago, if you wanted a jersey or a photograph, there was an element of respect. There isn’t that respect now. They’re idiots, well done Pep.”

‘Authenticity is everything’

Hopes for a memento of modest social currency drove the autograph hunters of the past, but the modern incarnation have become a growing sore point for players and managers at the top of the game. Personal space is invaded, hostility has replaced politeness and liberties are being taken. Guardiola and Keane’s complaints are more about irritation than intimidation, but autograph hunting can be a sinister business.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was once followed from his hotel while Manchester United manager and had his car window banged on while waiting at traffic lights. His pursuer was after a signature. Other players have reported people loitering outside homes and there are common reports of coercive tactics.

Many looking to profit from autographs arrive with folders full of shirt numbers which are quicker to sign at speed than the shirts themselves. If a player is in a good mood they might do several, although printing the numbers onto shirts can endanger the signature. Those who come with shirts often use an embroidery hoop to keep material taut enough to sign cleanly in a hurry. Training grounds, hotels and restaurants are better bets than stadiums these days, with most Premier League teams providing a secure area away from fans for players to arrive for games.

The margins are what make it viable, given a replica shirt can triple in value with a high-profile autograph, more if you are unscrupulous enough to use fake shirts which are increasingly hard to distinguish from the real thing. Yet looking at completed listings on eBay, the numbers are not exactly life-changing. A couple of allegedly Guardiola-signed City shirts went for £84 and £120 last week, but there are several similar items priced more optimistically which remained unsold.

This is the dicier section of the trade, some way from Icons.com, which describes itself as the world’s leading football memorabilia company. “We always say authenticity is everything, so it’s all about us proving that this stuff is real and was signed by the right person,” says Dan Jamieson, its CEO. “One of the things which is a bit Wild West is people who get players to sign a number or a shirt.

“They’ll sell one he did sign but the worry is they will then list lots of stuff that they didn’t sign, that’s where it gets muddier. You’ve proved you got one thing signed, but why is your website or eBay selling 10?”

‘You charge too much’

Jamieson’s company has partnership deals with Lionel Messi, Sir Alex Ferguson and Fifa among others. Stars spend an hour per session to sign in bulk, with Icons paying for their time upfront rather than giving them a cut of sales. Signed Messi merchandise commands the highest prices, only rivalled by Michael Jordan.

Mohammed Salah and Jude Bellingham have so far resisted making autograph deals, although both occasionally sign for fans. Jamieson’s pitch to footballers who might be reluctant is that without a deal a vacuum will develop, which is inevitably filled with forgeries. “If you type in Jude Bellingham and Mo Salah, the internet is full of supposedly authentic autographs.”

Guardiola has been a client for a decade but when Icons posted on Instagram showing his video scolding fans compared to a session of official signing with the company the response was surprisingly negative, one in three reckons Jamieson. “They were saying you commercialise it, you charge too much, you’re taking it out of the hands of real fans. You buy off these people too. No we don’t, we have a strict policy to never buy from in-person dealers, as they are called.”

Not everyone shares that reluctance. One memorabilia dealer, speaking anonymously, does sometimes buy from those who obtain autographs the old-fashioned way. The dealer sympathises with the footballers’ point of view given how aggressively some autograph hunters behave. The problem is that pushing hardest is what gets results. “I know boys who will ask for one or two and are too shy to ask for a third,” says the dealer. “Others might ask for 10 and say ‘just do two more for luck,’ so they’re getting 12 and earning four times as much as the other kid.”

Some will turn up day after day, young enough to be missing school to do so. Others are able to cry on demand to elicit sympathy. Any items they manage to get signed could be put straight online themselves, or sold to more established dealers with bigger followings.

‘It is being spoilt for the kids now’

In time and with the right mix of nous, charm and chutzpah, it can be advantageous to be recognised by players as a repeated autograph hunter. Some dealers manage to infiltrate the inner circles of football and make deals with players to sign exclusively for them. It is an old-fashioned industry in some ways, relying on trust and tip-offs about where players might be or what time training is happening.

But the persistence of the organised autograph groups has generated anger among both hunters and hunted. Footballers and their agents, forever conscious of a short career when the money tap can turn off quickly, do not wish to be taken advantage of. It is a short jump from there to decide that no one should be making money from them if they are not also seeing some of the profits.

Many are now wise to the tactics of autograph sellers. Experts noticed that in the video of him chastising his serial pursuers, Guardiola did eventually sign his number on a Barcelona shirt, but did so upside down. This effectively makes a shirt unsellable, just as it does if a player asks an autograph hunter their name, then dedicates the autograph to them. Your market for a “To Dave,” signed shirt is limited to Daves, or Dave’s generous friends and family. In such situations you can be stuck with a printed replica shirt bought for around £100 which you would struggle to recoup.

No such financial motivation for Andrew Harvey, among the crowd in Ipswich and an autograph hunter of older vintage. His cockapoo Teddy and cocker spaniel Freddie are keeping him company. He comes to places like this in search of a fleeting encounter with someone famous, but has no desire to monetise his hobby, nor any special displays at home. “There’s a lot of aggro now with the professionals who are just there to make money, trying to get people to sign multiple things” he says. “That spoils it for the youngsters and the true supporters who have come out to see their idols.”

Josh Dye initially looks like one of those professionals, armed as he is with glossy photos of Haaland, Rico Lewis and Jack Grealish. He is back outside the City hotel for round two, having successfully collected a Foden autograph when the team arrived the previous night. Yet he is another purist. “I don’t plan on selling them, it’s more for a personal collection. I want to get frames, it would be cool to have a collage.” What would it take for him to part with his signed Foden photo? “I don’t think I would, even if it’s something that’s worth a lot of money. It’s valuable to me.”

It is not until just before 3pm that the City players emerge. The best-known are greeted by shouts of their surname. Without exception, the entire squad walks straight onto the team bus, ignoring all requests. Guardiola is nowhere to be seen, apparently sneaking out of a side exit while the attention of the crowd was trained on the main entrance.

There is some anger about the mass blanking, but most of it comes from the older contingent. For the youngsters it seems enough to have seen their heroes at close quarters and mildly out of context. Earlier there were waves from Haaland, Lewis and Jeremy Doku to kids from the other side of the glass as they strode through the hotel reception.

City’s blinkered focus on their match seemed to pay off, they thumped Ipswich 6-0. After the game and his press duties at Portman Road, Guardiola is spotted by a small group leaning on a steel door which separates fans from professionals. They peer through a small hole and shout the manager’s name as he bounds into view. He stops, takes the sky blue shirt which is hastily forced through the hole, and signs it without complaint. Or a self-improvement seminar.

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