Aidan Smith: A chance to gawp at the teams in the Tunnel Club

Remember Live 8? The son of Live Aid, or sons, these were the 2005 mega-gigs to feed the world. I was at the biggest of them, Hyde Park in London, and won't easily forget Madonna's first words from the stage: 'Golden Circle! Get off your f****n' asses and dance!'

A Tunnel Club members snap of Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany before he played against Everton.

For Golden Circle, now read Manchester City’s Tunnel Club. Exclusive areas where the membership is granted privileges denied the riff-raff. But such elitism only ends up detracting from the spectacle.

At the Etihad on Monday night, fans who have forked out £18,812 for the season-long special access enjoyed the first fruits: dinner, drinks and the chance to gawp through glass as the teams move from the dressing rooms, then stand and wait to make their entrance in the arena – hence the name, the Tunnel Club.

The problem with the Golden Circle was that it put VIPs closest to the stage and the celebs wouldn’t dance, or danced badly – hence Madonna’s anger. I got in because I was reporting on the concert for our sister paper Scotland on Sunday so could almost justify my superior vantage point. But, with the late Sir David Frost looking distinctly out of place just a few feet away, self-consciously trying to tap a buckled suede loafer to the beat, safe in the knowledge no mud-covered dervish would tread on it, I sympathised with the pop superstar.

The problem with the Tunnel Club is not one of atmosphere, or lack of it. Its members, once the games start, will probably be no different from the rest of the prawn-sandwich brigade, who’ve been dozing through England’s Premier League for a while.

No, the problem is it’s naff and is already making fans cringe.

Unsurprisingly, opposition supporters wasted no time ridiculing the wheeze when they saw the City and Everton players shuffle along the corridor past noses pressed against the glass and a battery of flashing cameras. “Like a human zoo,” tweeted one.

City fans unwilling or unable to pay the £18,812 were left embarrassed: “Bloke in the Tunnel Club wearing yellow trousers – everything wrong with football and our club… Tunnel Club or Tory party conference?… Feels like a huge misjudgement of what this club is or once represented – no thanks.”

So what’s this? Football Loses Touch With its Roots, part 72? Well, some of those unhappy 
Citizens might get overly-nostalgic for the good old/bad old days of English football and forget what their team scruffing around in the third tier was really like. But here they have a point.

Maybe whoever dreamed up the Tunnel Club thought it could help remove some of the disconnect that exists between supporters and the money-drenched “Prem”. But the chances are that if you can afford £18,812 you’re probably not much bothered by this – indeed you may have been trying to disconnect yourself from the rest of the punters for some time and membership is giving you the perfect opportunity.

Perhaps the Tunnel Club is being promoted as a unique insight into previously hidden moments just before kick-off but I imagine this could be pretty boring by game No 3. How many different ways can footballers make that walk? Also, will the audience leering behind the glass not inhibit them in their pre-match routines and rituals – to say nothing of post-match punch-ups? And how long before a Tunnel Club member, who’s glugged too much Man City bubbly, makes an even bigger prat of himself than having Tunnel Club membership in the first place?