Jeremy Corbyn is already attempting to win over the youth vote with policies such as the abolition of university tuition fees and rent controls. Now he is wooing young football fans too.
The Labour leader vowed to evoke the spirit of Liverpool’s Champions League final comeback in 2005 in an interview with the football video blog Copa90, which has 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. “I love football. I love sport as a whole. I am not brilliantly sporty, but I love watching it and think we’ve got to nurture the grassroots of football because the lesson for children of being able to go out and play, get muddy, win, lose, draw, whatever, is such a good thing for their character and so important.”
In the interview, entitled Jeremy Corbyn and Chill, which was published last week and has been viewed more than 170,000 times, Mr Corbyn touted his policies to protect the grassroots game. He said: “What we are going to do is take some money out from the Premier League clubs and put it here.”
Asked whether a Labour election victory would be bigger than Liverpool’s Champions League victory in Istanbul, when Rafael Benítez’s team came back from 3-0 down to beat AC Milan on penalties, Mr Corbyn, an Arsenal supporter, suggested that it would be an even greater comeback. “We are coming up towards the 84th minute,” he said. “We are not ahead, we are not even totally level, but we’ve got this massive bank of supporters behind us . . . There is no extra time in elections.” A popular meme on Twitter superimposes Mr Corbyn’s face on to Steven Gerrard as the Liverpool captain celebrates scoring his side’s first goal in the comeback.
Mundial, a football lifestyle magazine with 16,000 followers on Twitter, has frequently used football references to support Mr Corbyn.