More than one and a half million foreigners visit the UK every year to watch football matches, leaving two billion euros in the battered British economy. But a warning to those who, after Luton Town’s promotion to the Premier League, have added Kenilworth Road (The Kenny) to their list of stadiums to go to: it’s an ugly city to die for. So much so that in 2004 it topped the list of “the fifty worst places to live in England” in its first edition, and in 2023 it won again and climbs the podium year after year. Absolute dominance, the equivalent of the seventeen NBA rings of the Lakers and the Celtics, or the three Michelin stars of the Roca brothers.
What has Luton done to be so ugly? You can’t say he doesn’t deserve the titles. Rows of very old and neglected Victorian houses, decay, one of the highest child poverty rates in the country, tension between far-right English nationalists and Pakistani and Eastern European immigrants, crime, twice as much unemployment as national average, pubs and commercial premises closed, with wooden boards sealing doors and windows, “for sale” and “for rent” signs everywhere, pawnshops everywhere, homeless people on the streets, motorways that cross it , a shopping mall that looks like it’s from the 1960s… Not a nice church or building.
The Kenilworth Road field, nestled in a poor residential neighborhood, is not out of step with the rest of the city. With a capacity of only ten thousand spectators, it is more like the fourth division than the Premier, a trip back in time, with huge columns obstructing the view in the main tribune (from which you can see the dome of a mosque ). The club has until the beginning of the season to adapt it to the demands of the League, improve the lighting and make a hole for fifty television cameras. It is a scenario that can intimidate the stars of Arsenal, City or United, with dressing rooms devoid of all kinds of luxuries and the spectators on the grass.
One of the historic centers of the English car industry, Vauxhall has been manufacturing cars in its suburbs for 120 years, and Luton has the fifth largest airport in the country (with many low-cost flights), which is also undergoing expansion. But the vast majority of the 32 million passengers have the good sense not to set foot in the city center. Maybe things change with promotion to the Premier League, and the football team leads an urban regeneration that envisages creating a cultural centre, a promenade along the river (more like a canal), green areas, super islands like the Consell de Cent, and renovate the old textile factories. Then the rents will go up, there will be gentrification and some will complain too.
Hope, as you know, is the last thing to lose and Luton, the city, has more morals than Alcoyà. He looks in the mirror at Leicester, where after his team won the 2015-16 League in one of the greatest feats in English football history, Icelanders and Norwegians started arriving to watch matches, tourism and investment they contributed 200 million euros to the coffers, and three thousand jobs were created. The other side of the coin is that City have just returned to second place.
The city’s reputation is so bad that many residents avoid admitting that they live in Luton and prefer to say “near Watford”, or Saint Albans, or Harpenden (which are also not the benchmark, but better). And if a street is called Luton Road, estate agents discount flats just because of the name.
