Once looked upon as one of the most dedicated and fanatical groups in the world, football fans are alleged to be losing interest in the beautiful game at an alarming rate.
And it's happening everywhere.
Declining crowds are the norm in almost every major footballing nation, indicated by massed ranks of empty seats all around some of the world's most impressive stadia.
One reason for the slump in interest was posited as the "FIFA Stance."
The game's international body have, in many humble fans' opinion reduced the game's reputation to the level of farce, with bizarre rulings, stultifying decision making, and being completely out of touch as to what football fans at grass roots level feel would improve the game.
A more likely explanation, at least as far as England is concerned, seems to be that the fans feel little, if any connection with the pampered stars who turn out for their clubs on horrendously inflated salaries, before showing little other than utter contempt for their employers, and the fans who essentially pay the vastly inflated salaries.
The sad reality for football is that most of the top players are more likely to dominate the front pages of the sunday papers with their off the pitch antics, rather than the back pages with reports of stunning performances on the pitch.
Most fans have had it to the back teeth with reports of star players falling drunk out of nightclubs at 5am, groping glamour models in VIP lounges, carrying out extra marital affairs with the wives of their best friends, recording roasting sessions with prostitutes on mobile phones, jetting off to the Caribbean to patch things up with the WAG of choice following yet another indiscretion, or trying to get a leg over with a member of a popular girl band in the back of a taxi.
The fans appear to have become so tired of reading about their former idols wrecking luxury cars, developing substance abuse habits, getting into fights and generally showing off how rich and good they are that they're abandoning their favourite sport in droves.
It seems that the fans are growing thoroughly tired of seeing a donkey with half a brain, who couldn't kick a ball straight if his life depended on it, getting paid £80,000 a week.
And then losing to Rushden and Diamonds, or Iceland.
Many ex-fans are said to be developing an interest in crown green bowling, with membership of bowling clubs growing at a phenomenal rate.
