This short but intense update to 2019's 'Can We Have Our Football Back?' by John Nicholson retreads a lot of the ground that book travelled, but with the looming spectre of Covid for company this time.
It's no surprise to see familiar themes emerge like
- The need for a morality in football and the (rarely questioned) immorality of such untrammeled financial waste
- The challenging of the myth that big clubs are 'good businesses'
- An exploration of the problematic financial structures that threaten the game's future
- Attacks on the way the game markets itself
- Criticism of the simplistic tribal view of the game that dominates how we think about the game
- VAR and its corrosive effect on the match going experience.
Where the piece works particularly well is exploring the notion that pay per view TV models actually *cost* the taxpayer in terms of lost health benefits of having sporting role models available to all. This is an argument Nicholson has made before but the brevity with which he makes it here strengthens rather than diminishes his claims.
He's also very strong on the ludicrous exceptionalism of the Premier League, something more apparent than ever over the last 12 months as top level football has dressed up profit making as a publicly minded mental health service
This isn't a highly structured academic treatise. It's a powerful and honest diatribe and reads like it too. That shouldn't put you off. Nicholson has plenty to say on the structure of society and he says it with wit, punch and vivid images. Whilst it may at times appear to be a digressive read, he's essentially reminding us of the way football has moved from a sport of the people to becoming a cheerleader for the kind of nihilist consumerism of permanent, idealess, hopeless, boredom punctured only by the hollow thrill of buying things that the likes of Mark Fisher identify as the true identity of late western capitalism.
There's few football writers you can say that about. He's also very accessible and does an excellent job of summarising financial complexity down to the simple measure of 'How many Joelintons does it cost?'
There's plenty of good football writers about who use words very well, but few who refuse to pull their punches like Nicholson. I especially enjoyed his criticism of the wider football media and its complicity in marketing the Premier League.
To finish, I'll add a digression of my own: I recently watched the new Adam Curtis documentary in which the film maker quotes David Graeber thus
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently”
What makes Nicholson important as a football writer is, he is one of the few who don't simply accept the status quo and work from there.
He reminds us that football as it is now is a construct and his railing against that status quo is important in keeping that fact in our minds. Whether or not Nicholson has the answer in terms of how change can and will happen is moot. He's a refreshing antidote to the cynical mode of thinking which sees what is as all there ever can be and rejects any alternatives.
What this work and its predecessor tells us is that football can be so much better, so much more accessible, enjoyable, socially beneficial and generally likable, if only we can work together to make it so.
It's that simple.
Links
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John's own store https://t.co/w1MOHKViu0
Kindle https://t.co/l3UOFxVg9x
Amazon https://t.co/BUCdLD3YwU https://t.co/whiwpKiwGS
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