Salt and vinegar but no chips

'Now for extended highlights of Tranmere...'

Football is back, back, back. 

Except it isn't really because you can't play it and I don't support any of the tiny amount of sides that are allowed to play. According to Wikipedia (only the best sources for you dear reader) England has "over 40,000 association football clubs*" and just 44 of them are allowed to play. That means that 0.001% of football is back. 

*Yes I did put the Wikipedia phrase in quotation marks, and yes, that was to try and imbue it with an authority it perhaps doesn't deserve. What do you want from a free blog on the internet? I don't even put ads on it FFS. Stop complaining. Eat your dinner. 

Most teams have had to live with the situation and some of them have gained or lost accordingly but seemingly the elite deserve different. In these strange times, sporting integrity is down to whether you can afford to stump up the sums to have your players tested and survive playing with little prospect of income. It helps if your costs are offset by a massive lump of TV money... 

Yesterday, I listened to a bit of football on the radio. I can't tell you what match it was. I did know at the time, but I forgot. That's how exciting it was. Two blokes describing something with the odd muted cry in the background. It might not even have happened.

Sometimes when I can't sleep, I make up football matches in my head. It usually does the trick. For all I know they were doing the same on Five Live. It might all actually have been a dream.

Last night I watched Crystal Palace vs Bournemouth on the telly. I couldn't say I found it an especially moving experience. It wasn't as good as when you're going through the freeview channels and you find that there's a Scottish 2nd division match in Gaelic on BBC Alba for example. There's something incredibly exotic about watch the 800 people in somewhere like East Fife or Ayr huddled under a dimly lit corrugated iron roof that was sadly lacking about the big BBC primetime return.

What I learned: 

1: Crystal Palace are a slightly upgraded version of Rotherham United. If you've seen Rotherham recently this will make sense. If you havn't, just imagine Crystal Palace sans Zaha and you more or less have Rotherham. 

2: Bournemouth weren't very good. One of the two people pointlessly stationed by the pitch let me know that 'the fans, if they were here, wouldn't be very happy' at one point, which was helpful. There's something incredibly through the looking glass about having an ex pro on hand to tell fans at home what they would be thinking if they were present in front of a stand where they visibly aren't.

3: The BBC obviously couldn't afford a proper crowd simulation so held up the noise of the sea in a seashell to one of the mics in the commentary box. It was so half arsed an effort to simulate the noise of a ground as to seem quite charming. 

4: Not much else really.

I've pondered for a while whether I'm being misanthropic about football's return. I've tried saying to myself 'FFS, can't you just enjoy something for what it is.' I've been thinking that it's grand to have football on telly again. What a wonderful thing it would be if everything was on Saturday afternoon except for one game on Saturday night on the proper telly. If only.

One game on the BBC would pull 3 or 4 times (or more if it was a big match) the audience that Sky do. Football could get back in its box and out of the corner it's boxed into by being on the box less but in front of more.... A weekly primetime outing should be enough, a big spectacle, not loads of games spread out unsatisfactorily, like when you've almost run out of 'fuck my life, this really must be butter, even though it doesn't taste owt like butter' and need to spread 3 slices worth across six pieces of toast. It would be grand.

I can believe...

My overwhelming respose to the game was to note what a hollow experience it was. It seems churlish to analyse the bored sounding commentators, struggling manfully to fill the silence and keep their enthusiasm levels up. Their words may have spoken of their contractually obliged thrill but their tone 25 minutes through the second half told a different story.
Is football without fans nothing? It's not exactly nothing, but the whole affair seems to unmask football a little. It all seemed a bit like seeing a supermodel without make up, wearing a scruffy tracksuit and buying a bottle of bleach in a corner shop. It was an action film but with all the CGI taken out.

Remember when the BBC solidered on with Grandstand, long after they didn't really have any sport to show? Think of Steve Ryder announcing 50 minutes live coverage of the women's u19 regional volleyball heats, followed by the Scottish curling (Renfrewshire district league) semi finals. Sports played in gym halls to the squeek of trainers on polished floors (or in the latter case, brushes on ice) with the breathy shouts of the players echoing through your CRT speakers...

Football always seemed so much more. These sports suffered from seeming a bit shit because there was no sense of spectacle. They felt a bit oddball. Why would you want to watch a game like this regularly when there's another game available, with chanting, intensity and colour aplenty? 

That's sort of what watching #boucry felt like. It wasn't quite the Hemel Hemstead u23 regional indoor tag rugby fives but it wasn't a million miles away either.

It makes me wonder if I do love football for something different than some of my peers. 

I watched the freekick that the Palace lad scored and I appreciated it. 'What a very good example of someone kicking a ball accurately' I thought. I didn't feel a thing. As the ball hit the back of the net, there was no thrill. No excitement. Not even surprise. It was one of those goals I saw coming from the way he shaped up. You can tell. Watch enough football and you become prescient. 

Why didn't I feel anything though...?
It's not because I don't support Bournemouth or Palace. I've watched plenty of games as a nuetral and I can usually invent a reason to support someone. I might prefer the kit, the sound of the teams name, I might have some sort of vague personal connection or any other of a myriad of reasons. In the case of Saturday's game, Palace's white kit with the double diagonal stripe is an all time classic, they're called Crystal Palace ffs and my grandad followed them. So I should have felt at least a little twinge of pleasure. 

Few better shirts exist... (other than tangerine ones obvs)

I really do like Palace pretty much as much as I like any Premier League side. I like how they're an anti fashion side. I like how Woy defies the odds and just gets them organised instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. I like how they still have 'a big lad' up top who just jumps about and gets in the way and I like their left back who got in a row with Katie Hopkins. I like how the enigmatic and intelligent Steve Coppell seemed only to be able to manage them and kept going back. Their victory over Liverpool in the 1990 cup semi final is one of the greatest dramas I've ever witnessed (followed closely by the epic final against Manchester Utd) and like Blackpool they have a kit that is instantly recognisable.

Without the hum of the crowd, it's nothing. I can't feel the buzz from the away fans as they realise their team are in command. I can't feel the way the home fans become edgy, I can't feel the relationship between the fans and the players... The real drama lies in the experience of the fan, the groan as the usual suspect sprays a misplaced pass, the sudden rush of energy as a favourite son picks up the ball, the way that sometimes the crowd take matters into their own hands and urge a struggling side to greater heights. The crowd inform the viewer as to what is going on, with a greater richness than any ex pro ever can.

On the TV this was evident, on the radio even more so.

Without crowds football really suffers. It becomes just another sport.

I love country cricket. An afternoon slumbering at an out ground or listening to local radio commentary is just about my idea of June bliss. Cricket works in the context of paltry crowds because it's a more cerebral game. You can lose yourself in the tactics and the strategy and the infinite variations of pitches and conditions. Cricket is rich with statistics and milestones, where as football analysis is an affectation. You can move the players about a bit and there are three basic modes of playing. All out defense, counter attack and all out attack. You can go down the wing or up the middle. It's not a game to satisfy the intellect. There's no time on the pitch for the players to really think. It's not like cricket, where there are so many variations of field position and types of bowler. You can sit on your own and watch a game of cricket and lose yourself in the mind of the captain. It's a bit like chess. Football is different - its appeal is visceral, emotional and hypnotic.

I don't want to make some wanky statement about football as theatre for the working class (partly because it's wanky and partly because for many years theatre was a working class activity, long before football ever was) but it's like watching a play in an empty auditorium. The greatest writers wrote with an understanding of the rhythms of the audience, they wrote in laughter, gasps of shock and moments of emotional release. That's how theatre works, without them, it's just words being read out. It comes alive through the shared experience of those on stage and those in the darkness. Football works in exactly the same way.

The whole thing has a feel of a rehearsal. 

Football without crowds isn't exactly nothing but crowds without football remain something. Crowds don't need football to feel thrilling, dangerous, joyful or angry. Football needs crowds to feel anything other than an empty exercise in technical appreciation.

I don't know if it's just because I don't really watch football on telly that much but I can't help feeling it's like eating dry cereal. It's like having salt and vinegar but no chips. 

Watch the above and then tell me that it's all about the football. I've been bewitched by football crowds since I was about 7. I remain so.

Far from being a morale boost, I'm finding the return of football a really strange, bittersweet example of how odd things really are. For all the optimism, watching a game in these circumstances just screams 'it's far from OK out there...' 

Seeing teams play, completely shorn of any cultural context, the game clinically extracted from the community that drives it is a bizzare experience. Others have expended words on whether this is just a speeded up endgame for the vision of modern football, one where everyone is a TV fan and the beautiful elite perform without the inconvenience and ugliness that supporters bring. I don't know, I somehow doubt it because it all speaks to the vital role crowds play. The biggest machine can fail to function with the smallest component missing.

What this should bring home to everyone is exactly what the supporters place is. They are as much the product being sold as the players are. Perhaps we might see a reflection on some of the reletive value we place on the different parts of the equation.

Supporters are taken for granted, they're subjected to absurd kick off times, inflated prices, access to games is squeezed by the spread of hospitality packages... Yet, when they aren't there, the game is a shadow of itself. A faded photocopy of the real thing.

Imagine a world where once a week, we could all enjoy a game on the telly and bask in the atmosphere. Imagine a world where a greater slice of the wealth in football was channelled into reducing ticket prices or even into the communities around clubs, where football wasn't just a glorified soap opera, but something you could look at and take a bit of pride in what it stood for. It's all got a bit John Lennon and that's never a good look, but if you can't dream in the surreal world of mid 2020 then when can you?

In 21st century top flight football (and increasingly in lower league football) the only thing that gives a club its identity is the supporters. The vast majority of players have little or no connection to the communities they notionally represent. The likes of Trent Alexander Arnold, Chris Wilder and Dean Smith are very much the exceptions that prove the rule.

English football is a global brand, because it speaks of some sort of authenticity. It's the original manifestation of the professional game. The model from which the globe took inspiration. The brands 'Manchester United' and 'Liverpool' are symbols, loaded with geographical and historical significance in the minds of the global marketplace. In an era of endless transfer churn, rootless players and global consortiums, it's only Anfield and Old Trafford (and by extension, those who make the atmosphere) that really represent the long term appeal of those clubs. Players come and go, but the songs remain the same.

The supporters are all that remain when everything else is transient and has been bought and sold so many times that whatever authenticity was there has been been rubbed away by the oily fingers of greed.

Maybe the new normal could involve the game as whole recognising that actual supporters aren't simply bystanders. They are the essence of what makes football more than badminton or quoits. The direction of travel for as long as I can remember has been against the wishes of many the actual paying fans. Unwanted ground moves ripping clubs from traditional homes to out of town shopping malls, games rescheduled at the whim of TV directors, sanitisation of stadiums in favour of 'a better (richer) kind of supporter'

It's frankly a miracle that more fans haven't turned their backs on the game at the top level. Perhaps, this experience shows we could start listening to them, instead of simply telling them what they want is what they're getting...  

UTMP

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