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| any town. |
Football is a mere symbol for other more pressing social concerns. An ever growing inequality and the margins becoming more extreme. Apathy and distraction rule the waves. Does football matter at all? No.
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| any town |
"We've got Simon Sadler, he knows what we're after - but if he goes, we're fucked" as the Blackpool chant sung to Slade's 'C'mon Feel the Noize' (sort of) goes.
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| investment opportunity |
The FA have essentially washed their hands of the domestic game and show no interest at all in it.
The EPL is a corrupt behemoth whose malign influence is global. They're like an ever hungry beast that won't stop eating till it bursts or it finds it's devoured everything and there's nothing left to gorge on but itself.
The EFL are incompetent and have their hand tied behind their back by structures, forever in the shadow of the higher tier and hamstrung by the ambitions of half their members to escape. A governing body that is run by people who don't really want to be part of it. Who thought that is a good plan?
The game is rotten. The money that has been grabbed and jealously guarded for so long stinks the place out. It turns the stomach and eats away at the memory of anything that might once of been true about the game in terms of romance or escapism or locality and place. The sheer beauty of Bale's football is less important than the size of his wages or the saga of his agent.
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| it's easy to lose sight of what matters |
It's become such a tired and tiring media driven sponsorship and branding exercise that people have forgotten that it was ever anything more than that. And no, back in the day, it wasn't perfect and in fact, it was often shit but fuck me, it wasn't this grasping, self important circus that it has become.
That's not the fault of Kevin De Bruyne or James Rodriguez. It's even not the fault of Manchester United fans, tempting as it is, to blame them.
It's the fault of the people whose psychopathy (an alternative term for 'business acumen') dictates that they don't care about the sport as a whole in any way, shape or form. It's down to those who plot, scheme and ultimately legislate to break away. Those who set up structures that ensure the winners get the most money. Those who create competitions that all but guarantee those with that money can perpetuate their success ad infinitum.
They've done that and feel entirely justified in having done so, because consumers like big names and big names cost big money. But that's ok. Because brands like to sponsor things consumers like and to enable that to work, that means closing the door on competition and doing away with upsets and romance. It means telling the world that less competition is more competition and doing it with a straight face.
These actions have created a discourse around football that sees us discussing net spend and dissecting tiers of financial payments as if they're sporting achievements. Who made 4th place important and survival at all costs the default mode of half the top flight? Who made escape at any cost the default mode of half the second tier. Who sucked the carefree absurdity out of football and made it serious, po-faced and anxious?
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| Fifth place club and top four. |
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| 'the parachute payments are over!' |
What Covid has highlighted is blindingly obvious. The elite don't care. (You can read into that what you want on an allegoric or social level.)
It shouldn't be a surprise given the direction of travel of the last few decades, but in the world of #footballfamily and saccharine sentiment I naively thought we might just possibly have had a modest re-balancing of finance to help secure the long term future of the broader game.
After all, the big clubs owe their global appeal to being part of the famously (historically) competitive English game. A structure, famed and revered around the globe, whose strength comes from a combination of tradition and depth. That's precisely what separates English football from say, the MLS or the Chinese Super league.
It seems daft in hindsight but I stupidly thought for a few weeks, there was a small chance that the EPL might realise that. It might acknowledge that it isn't successful in complete isolation. It's, at least in part, successful because it piggy backs on what went before and what still exists around it.
The EPL failing to acknowledge its global appeal is at least in part down to the wider football culture, the unique 'authenticity and tradition' of the whole English game is like Noel Gallagher denying the Beatles helped him write his songs.
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| "Lennon? mate, totally irrelevant, never heard of him." |
But no. There is no sense of belonging to a wider community. No debt to the past or acknowledgement of the existence of a wider framework for their success. Because there's no legal requirement to do so, there's not a second of thought to any moral imperative. It's all about the money. The money right now. As much of it as possible, all to them.
They only care about maximising their revenue to service the wage bills of elite clubs.
Which in turn creates the brand image of those clubs and the league.
Which in turn satisfies sponsors and advertisers who know their money will be connected to the glamour of superstardom.
That's it. That's the entire moral or ethical code of elite level football. Take as much as you can and spend it as wildly as you can. Fuck lower league clubs, fuck non league clubs and fuck grassroots.
"Sorry football. No, we, the elite cannot afford to give you 1%, 3%, 5% or 7% of 'our' money because we've got our own costs to service and pockets to line. We're not like you. We're not your brothers. Tighten your belts and eat your gruel and if some of you die of malnutrition, don't blame us, blame yourself and your own lack of ambition."
It's not quite the text of a press release from the EPL but it's more or less the subtext of every statement they've made on money for a long, long time.
RIP Macc. RIP Bury. RIP whoever is next.
"It's just a few bad owners. There's no real problem. Clubs just need to manage themselves. Move along, don't look at the balance sheets, look at a glossy package of highlights and have a sit in an executive box and a smoked salmon canape instead. There. Isn't that nice? Haven't we made football much better, much shinier, much glossier? Who needs Macclesfield and Bury anyway? How many executive boxes do they have? Hmm? I bet you'd have to eat a pie there and that would be disgusting. Probably don't even serve Chablis..."
It's high time we stopped playing ball and accepting things as they are. We, the fans, the people in the game, those in the media who aren't blind to what is happening are cursed by our own addiction. We love football. We love it so much that no matter how poorly it's run, the weekend is not the weekend without football.
That shouldn't be an excuse. Look at it this way. You're an addict. So sort out the dealer who is giving you a shit fix. It might be better to get clean, but if you're not going to do so, at least get the good stuff.
Calls to action, especially in words and online always have a certain shrill quality, they get blown on the wind and forgotten. They get lost in the noise. Remember, we love football. Remember all it is and all it can be. A stupidly simple game that satisfies like no other.
If enough people can care enough the balance of power can shift. If lockdown showed anything, aside from the complete antipathy of the elite towards the fate of the 'everyone else', it showed that the spectacle of football is the occasion and the game is a mere facilitator.
We have the power. Without us, they are nothing. There's answers that can fix the problem that are in the hands of the football authorities, but there's other options we don't need to grovel for.
Part 2: Action
EFL clubs should refuse to play the FA Cup, boot the u23 teams out the EFL trophy and ban the Premier League from the league cup. Let's just stop pretending the opportunity to be patted on the head by a media that is mainly hand in glove with the hype and shite is worth anything anyway.
At best, lip service is paid to the plight of anyone not fortunate enough to be feeding on the teat of multinational capital and it's all just an opportunity to get the shit kicked of you by City's kids and watch as your efforts and dedication are made to look pathetic by the power of money so big, you can barely imagine the numbers involved.
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| All in favour of giving Nathan Shaw a squad place? |
What's the fucking point in being in cups and league pyramids anyway? It's sooner or later going to be Jeff Bezos Utd vs Chinese Government FC. That sounds far fetched but given the sums of money involved in the top echelons and the rate at which that money keeps inflating, they'll be the only powers rich enough to influence the English game. We might as well just give up pretending we've got any hope of taking any joy from not really competing in that world.
The game as whole has plenty of money, even in these viral times. It's just ever more wrapped up in satisfying the gnat like attention spans of armchair fans salivating over the next hype infused pseudo soap opera event (or as we used to call them, football match)
And all the while it gets further away from the reach of Accy, of Rochdale, of Rotherham, of us, of everyone who ain't on the gravy train and that's frankly most of football. The train has got a LOT of gravy, but not much room for passengers.
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| Why don't people say 'sailing the gravy boat?' |
And yet... people keep buying into it. Shelling out money to support the empirically verifiable effect this all has on football. Arguing that 'it's not as bad as all that', when the evidence is incontestable. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of fact. The gap is wider, the winners are less varied geographically and in terms of club size. Clubs are in greater financial trouble in greater numbers than since who knows when, whilst a few clubs are making sums of money (and spending sums of money) that are unprecedented. All of that is there, in black and white. It's not my perception, it's honours lists, league tables and publicly available accounts that scream it loudly and clearly.
If you think that's hysteria, a Government report in June, stated very clearly that at least 15 league clubs were in a perilous state. That's a lot of clubs to lose. We're not talking 'need to sell their players to balance their books and probably get relegated as a result' trouble. We're talking 'no club, ground bulldozed, Phoenix club starts in the park' type issues.
Why the fuck anyone who follows a team that isn't in the top 6 gives good money to support the way football is, is beyond me. You might as well just get a wad of crisp tenners every month and stick one of them each in envelopes marked with addresses like 'The Glaziers, Old Trafford' and 'Roman Abramovich, a superyacht somewhere'
It sometimes feels like football fans maybe don't actually want football to be football. That maybe they don't subscribe to the ethos that a good game of football is a competitive one. I'm beginning to think people like power games, global politics, fashion shoots and celebrity gossip more than a bunch of lads having a kickabout. The latest absurd Premier League kits, like the City Paisley print one and the Utd zebra print kit kind of back that up. Football has become a catwalk.
It's a delusional pursuit football. It always is, it always was. Most teams won't win in any given season Even winning or losing is essentially pointless. Support is an illusory feeling of participation in something. Our choices of who we support are essentially arbitrary decision based on the luck of our birth, family history or preference of colour, an accidental encounter or whatever. Only proper knobheads actively choose their team. I support Blackpool because my dad took me and it is where my entire family are from as well as where I've worked for nearly 20 years as well as lived. I have a very soft spot for Everton because my Auntie's ex boyfriend took me there a few times. These things chose me. What is there, really to celebrate about the success or failure of either club that reflects on me?
The relentless selling of the game as vital, as every match as important, crucial, serious ties into its positioning as a commodity rather than a sport. Selling something requires you to demonstrate that people 'need' it. If people don't need it, you have to make them think they do. Football has done a remarkable job of transforming itself from a dowdy game, into a global phenomenon onto which people project their identity. People on social media will rage about the 'need' for their club to spend £100 million or face a 'wasted' season. People will actually cry in frustration at their club finishing 5th instead of 4th and insist that the only way to solve this crisis is to pay someone £80,000 a week to get them over the line.
Success matters, for success breeds money and money is the key to more success. Listen to a phone in after any match. It's a joyless, humourless and angry experience and by and large the calls will split into two simple camps. Firstly, people furiously decreeing that player X or Y is a disgrace and needs to be immediately replaced with a big name player for lots of money and unless that happens, it's a disgrace and a betrayal of everything the club stands for. Secondly, smug fans of a club who've done well, talking about how the big name players are worth every penny and maybe speculating on how their value has increased.
For me, the best moment of the last game I watched was the referee falling over and giving a foul whilst sat down. I can't be alone in finding the constant demands that eye watering sums of money are spent, quite alienating. And yet... What else are supporters supposed to do? When the top league (and hence the pyramid) is set up in such a way that success is rewarded with money and thus becomes self fulfilling, there really is no other way to get success other than spend money. Football fans want to win. They always have, but now the stakes are raised and the business of competing is far more serious. Clubs are like corporations, entire departments dedicated to wringing every penny out of supporters and scouring the globe for every possible market to find more.
It's little wonder that as fans are bled dry and new fans bred who have no obvious connection to the club, locality or the occasion of a live game that the way we support teams and what we expect of them has changed. Observing fandom has become strangely similar to the bizarre experience of going online and watching people arguing over which brand of phone is better or not. Genuine anger can be expressed over which phone has the better processor or the sharper screen and insults traded over 'what sort of person' thinks that Apple, Google or Samsung is the best and what, consequently, that says about them.
Similar arguments can be witnessed between fans, siding with or slating players and ranking various assets in order of value. Fans have always had 'banter' and its ranged from humorous regional stereotyping to full on knife fights and murder. What's new, is the idea that somehow, like a choice of phone, a choice of football club reflects 'you' and thus, when accused of being 'shit' rather than chuckle and respond with another insult or wry comment, or a fist, this kind of fan internalises it and demands angrily that his club fixes their 'shitness' immediately. The fan is either bitter that they've spent an exorbitant and ever increasing amount of money in an increasingly sterile and joyless stadium or they've never been to the stadium, perhaps never even the county, or even the country and to them, the club is a brand they've adopted and they're angry the brand hasn't kept up it's standards.
In this context, it's hardly surprising some younger fans seem to hitch themselves to players. It's an even more direct form of iconography and the world is full of CR7, Messi and Mbappe loyalists. Such a notion seemed absurd a generation ago, but given the level of branding around individuals and the constant lauding of their skills and wealth, it's hardly surprising.
Football is just a game. It's a game played against an invasive media backdrop that constantly hypes it up as 'mattering' and demanding an emotional response. Everything is important and the answer to everything is money.
Where that leaves the clubs without any is a matter of no concern. They've got no money. They are therefore unimportant.
It's a game that is wallpapered with analysis and facts. A game which has dedicated TV and radio channels aplenty, has spawned podcasts and servers full of online articles and yet by and large, it manages to hide the facts of its issues. You can easily find out the last time Tottenham beat a team with an S in their name on a Tuesday night with an Argentinian on either subs bench. You can look at a heat map telling you the left back played at left back easily enough. These things are treated as insight and given value. Hours are spent on them, whole days go by debating the relative value of player A and player B or the possibility that player C might be intending to move clubs and therefore what will happen to player D.
There's nothing wrong with that. I can bore for England on my team and how it's playing and what I think of the players or formations. What is problematic, is when we're in a time in which many clubs are facing an existential crisis and many of those that aren't could be but for the whim of their owners, we shouldn't ONLY be talking about that.
If you ask why are Liverpool starting a season where they were quite brilliant and finished way ahead of everyone else with more money from the Premier League than anyone else and what impact that has on the spending habits of the rest of the teams, then there's generally silence. I've listened to my share of football phone ins, podcasts and read my share of newspapers - I've very rarely heard that question asked.
Ask why clubs are being wound up for less money than a third or fourth choice GK that never plays earns for chucking himself about in training for a bit, and in the main the football media is simply not geared up or prepared to give time to that question. We have a largely shallow media that hasn't adapted to the serious business football has become. Everything is 'that's the way it is' and on to the next event.
Why? Money, viewers, advertisers, sponsorship and market share. Football is a big earner for the media and don't bite the hand that feeds. Who cares about Bury and Macclesfield anyway? They don't get on telly much do they?
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| It's common sense! Give the biggest clubs more and that will make things better FOR EVERYONE! OBVIOUSLY!!! ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD QUESTION THIS!!!!! |
I don't understand why we (those of us who actually watch games in the flesh) are financing this delusion.
More of us watch football outside the Premier League than within it. Even then more of us watch teams within the Premier League that have little or no prospect of success in the short or medium term future than watch the top 5 or 6 clubs. As John Nicholson put it, in his brilliant book 'Can we have our football back' - What's the point in Everton? (and indeed anyone below them.)
By paying for Sky or BT we're actively paying for the teams above us to receive extra money (for that's how the prize money is allocated and the prize money comes from TV.) This not only makes them better but also increases the costs for our side of keeping up with them. It seems really odd. It's like finding a TV programme you like, and then paying the wages of a bad writer to spoil the episodes every week or entering a running race, paying for your opponent's steroids and clean urine and then weighing yourself down with a lead vest. Why would you do that?
And what do you get for your money? A stack of analysts to tell you what you should be able to work out yourself from watching the game. It's fucking football not the large hadron collider, metaphysics or the writing of James Joyce, I don't need 5 people in a studio to explain it and I'm a rank average human. You don't need it either.
It's football - We'd got it by the time we were 8 and why grown adults need it spoon feeding to them is beyond me. You kick the ball towards the goal and the lad in the green shirt can use his hands. That's more or less it. Offside can be a bit tricky but give it five minutes and you've got it. Don't kick it over the lines on the edge or trip people up. That's the penalty box. Now you understand football. The end.
It's as if we've come to believe that without the TV companies and their money, football simply couldn't function. This is a kind of collective insanity. A kind of Stockholm syndrome where the TV companies assert their power and we, supporters (especially those of us who don't support the top few clubs) accept we're trapped, even though the door is right there and there's nothing to stop us walking through it.
There's nothing wrong with TV, there's nothing wrong with paying to watch TV, but there is something wrong when the appeal to foreign TV markets is the driving principle behind the governing bodies decisions and TV companies can dictate everything from fixture lists and kick off times to (seemingly) the division of the game into 4 quarters to increase the potential for in game advertising.
That's not the only fundamental change to actual game. The actual game should be off limits to broadcasters but the tying of refereeing to TV technology is an example of where it steps over the line and ceases to report and inserts itself at the heart of the spectacle.
It seems like a naked power grab, a crude attempt to dilute the live experience, and attempt to undermine the idea that the paying spectator is the most privileged viewer, being at the game the ultimate experience and replace that with a situation in which the TV viewer actually understands more about what is happening than the person there.
The shame of a game where the experience of a casual viewer in Newcastle (South Australia) takes precedence over the experience of the actual supporter in Newcastle (England) should be palpable, but it's not evident at all. The outrage at VAR was spread throughout the division, took in all clubs, matchday fans protested, even some of the usually inert media and pundits spoke against it but the EPL was stubbornly resistant to criticism. Because it's their game and they can do with it what they want.
It's about 'getting it right' - Guess why?
'because a lot of money rides on these decisions'
"Money. Again. As much of it as possible. Right now. And if the game has to change because of that, then that's the price we'll have to pay. In fact, it's not a price we'll pay, because we don't even like football. All we like is success, branding, global reach and opportunities for synergy. So fuck football and fuck what fans want because we own it and there's nothing you can do about that. If the physicality, pace and chaos of football occasionally throws up a mistake and if that mistake might perhaps lead to one of our leading brands losing market share, then we'll drive the physicality, pace and chaos from the game..."
That's again, not quite a statement from the EPL and various clubs but it could well be. In a world where people can read rhetoric for what it is, that's how people would read their words.
There's no reason to accept this.
We don't need video dementors stopping the game and splicing together slow motion replays at pixel blurring levels of magnification to see whether the rules were followed by the width of a blade of grass. It's not that important. A game is a game is a game. It makes no sense at all to spoil a game in the name of improving the game. To actively make the game worse to make it better is a surreal masterstroke of deception and the game is clearly worse for VAR.
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| Exclusive images from inside Stockley Park as VAR rules on offside call |
We need to demand more from the media. Many of us are as glued to that as we are to games and those with a platform and a voice need to start thinking deeper and speaking louder. We need to stop acquiescing with the tightly controlled and heavily spun shallow coverage of football that mistakes 'lots of shallow stuff' for depth.
All the shite, the liquidy verbal excrement sprayed around, coating the pages of newspapers, sticking in the speakers of radios, sliding down our TV screens and yet no one seems to ever say anything about why the game is, beneath the glittering surface, in a pretty troubling state.
Very few people seem to ever say anything like: 'Good question Alan: The reason why clubs like Charlton, Oldham, Southend, Wigan and so many others are desperately scrabbling from day to day, the reason why loads of Championship clubs, even big ones, even reasonably successful ones like Derby, Sheffield Wednesday and even, in the non too distant past Leeds United are saddled with creaking finances and teetering on the brink of calamity, playing chicken with creditors catching up with them or selling their assets because their spending is vastly outstripping income and become a millstone of obligation and debt isn't simply 'bad ownership' alone."
'The reason is something like this Alan - we've collectively waived any sense of governance or oversight in favour of a model where everything is ok as long as there's enough money to generate a buzz around a select few teams. And we in the media (that's me and you Alan) feed that model by generating that buzz, cooing and fawning over it because it pays our wages. We've never really gone to task over the slow but steady diversion of the funds towards the top and every time a club goes to pieces, we treat it like a two day story, feign some tears and then get on with churning out crap about Paul Pogba's fucking agent or shitty graphics about what bit of the pitch Gareth Bale runs about on, as if showing people what they can already see in infrared was insight akin to the latest picture from the Hubble telescope"
"All of this apathy and tutting helplessness feeds into the false belief that football is beyond management, that somehow it has just 'become' this way. As if nature itself has formed the circumstances in the manner of a river carving rock to make a channel. This in turn creates supporter apathy and a general belief that things are just the way they are because that's the way they are, even though it's actually relatively easy to see that's not actually true and demonstrate that far from natural forces, the water of progress has flowed in man made channels"
"It's actually very easy to trace the development of the Premier League back to individuals and to see the various human decisions that were taken, first to form it, then to give ever less of the ever growing TV cake out to the wider football party, whilst choosing to collude with Uefa to make European competition favour the sort of self created 'elite leagues' and to cram the fixture list full of the kind fixtures that suit TV companies and sponsors alike."
"That's what happened and it's still happening now. In fact Alan, those driving the game at the top are only going further in that direction and there's no reason why, if we actually care about football as a competition and a social spectacle (and what other reasons are there to care about it if it's not those Alan?) we should be putting rocks through their windows and making their lives hell because they don't give a shit about football, they don't give a shit about supporters and the game is a mere platform for their ambitions, egos and a canvas upon which to paint the names of whoever gives them the most money"
"To be quite honest Alan, Football has become an allegory for the general hands off liberal governance of the world which actively propagates multinational monopolies which in turn strangles localism and disempowers individuals by removing their choices from them as local markets wither, reducing their consumer and employment choices alike forcing them to engage with global forces for their needs, whether they wish to or not. In case you didn't follow that Alan, the big clubs are the monopolies and the little clubs are the local shops and businesses that fold as a result of trying to compete with them"
"Whilst we may not be empowered as individuals to dismantle the systems that govern us as a nation or species, it should be entirely possible to disentangle football from this situation, for it is ultimately ONLY A GAME and one that regardless of the scale of financial rewards many millions wish to play and watch. A game is an escape from the rules of daily life, not something that should serve to magnify and re enforce them. Maybe global finance is an inevitability and maybe it's not. But football does not inevitably have to be global finance and the only reason it feels inevitable is because people tell you it is. It's merely a sport and requires only a pitch and a ball and two goal frames. To envisage and thus create a better game, should not be so hard."
3) The nuclear option. Change nothing. Accept it can't be changed. Start a new game.
If you want what there is, there's a veritable feast of overpaid talent sponsored, pampered, primped and preening. Hyped up and juiced. Ready to go. Have them breathlessly forced down your neck by sycophants whose careers depend on the circus they've hitched their wagon too. It's all yours for a flat monthly fee. Go for it. Fill your boots. I'm not judging.
But you could have the football itself. You could have the game, the sport, the competition. Simple and magnificent. Run according to simple rules that create stability, With money spread in such a way that creates competition and marketed for the masses via free to air TV. A simple structure where it isn't the end of the world to be relegated. Where the difference between 20th and 21st or 43rd and 44th didn't mean an entire restructure of the club and finances. I reckon we could put it together in a few days and it would work, at least on paper.
We could literally just walk away and create a new football. If the FA don't care, the EFL are just incapable of a decision or consistency and the EPL just a global brand with the morals of the kind of cunt who justifies offshore tax havens and putting the competitors out of business by fair means or foul then...
Why don't we just make a new football league?
A better one. If costs are controlled then investment by sane people is thus more attractive. Where the football is unpredictable and we put it there for anyone to see, where it is part of a national routine, maybe a game on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon but not dominating TV channels and eating up lives like a fucking freakish inward looking cult of obsession.
A league where windfalls (let's imagine we get a sponsor or two) are reinvested in savings for supporters, grass roots, and community and players wages are fair, reflecting their skill but not costing clubs their very existence.
A league where, yes, perhaps the absolute superstars will go abroad and the very elite players choose other options but is that so bad? If you want that, (and who wouldn't wish to see great players play football sometimes?) then it's there. You'll be able to see them. They're just moving leagues, not being sent to Pluto or the Gulag and being erased from history.
If you want to watch Mbappe or KDB or whoever is en vogue that year, then you can subscribe to it should you wish to. If you want to see superstars, does it really matter if the team of global mercenaries are badged with 'Man City' 'New York' or Guangzhou Evergrande? If the answer is 'but Man City feel more 'real'' then it's just evidence that the emotional appeal of the Premier League is down to the history of the English league. The team who plays for Manchester City or whoever it maybe has, with a few notable exceptions, very little to do with any tradition within the club. There's precious little lineage or local identity at play now. Yes, Foden, Yes Trent, Yes, maybe even Ole and a couple of kids, but mostly, it's a shopping basket full of star players, star coaches, star kids poached from other youth systems and paid for by finance that has little or no relation to the place. So, really, does it matter that much where that match takes place?
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| A football stadium. Does it matter where? |
Was it that awful in the 90s when we watched Italian football and noted that they had a few more superstars than we did? Why do we have to gather them all here? What's so worthy about that? When did 'beating other leagues in international TV rights' become the sole goal and why? Who thought that up and how did they make us all complicit?
Is having 'the Premier global sporting brand and most marketable league on Earth' worth sacrificing the rest of English football for? That might be hyperbole, but when you list the number of clubs who are in worrying amounts of debt, then it seems less so. The reason for that is simply that the above ambition has been the driving force of the dominant institution in English football for 28 years.
Football couldn't have stayed in a late 80's timewarp. The Premier League and investment has brought a faster pace, it's brought players who have thrilled and it's made stadiums safer. All of that is fine and good. That doesn't mean we should forever accept that the only way for football to be managed as a sport is thus.
To repeat again. The success of the Premier League is largely down to what it was borne of. Not the machinations of chairmen or TV executives, but that it took a product that already had immense cachet and gave it a sheen of glamour and monetised it in a way that no one had previously considered.
The global appeal is based in the fact that English football is the ultimate in 'authentic football.' It's reputation comes from it being the mould from which all other competitive football was formed and it's depth and history gives it a presence on the global stage that no league can compete with.
The marketing and monetisation has led us to a point where precisely what give the English game it's unique position is in danger. That should lead us to stop and think about whether we're at a point where once again, we need to carefully think about the structure of the game and the rules that underpin it financially. It's had nearly 30 years 'as is' and if they continue in the same direction, the outcomes are starkly obvious.
What would some competition do to a marketplace where the main product is used to being literally the only game in town? What if there was a more authentic experience? What if it turned heads? What if supporters actually looked at it and said 'why aren't we in that league, this one is shit?'
I wrote an article recently about player wages. It was illuminating to research it and one stat in particular seems a good place to end. I want you to think in business terms here. I want you to think about efficiency and 'bang for your buck' and all the sorts of phrases that are used by the people who tell you football has to be this way because that's the way it is. If you are my age or older, think back to the old days. If you are younger, go and look up some late 80's football. Choose a decent game to watch or remember, cos there were some. Maybe watch the highlights of Arsenal vs Liverpool in 1989 or Everton 4-4 Liverpool in the FA Cup or whatever floats your boat. Perhaps Liam Brady, Glen Hoddle, David Rocastle, Kevin Sheedy in midfield. Maybe watch the way Alan Hansen linked the midfield and defence or a highlight's clip of Neville Southall being possibly the best keeper who has ever, ever lived. Watch a young Gazza or Chris Waddle. You get the idea. Don't choose Wimbledon and go 'Oh look, football was shit lol'
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| How much better is modern football than Chris Waddle? (5 marks, show your working out) |
Ok, you've done that. Now, having pictured that think about how much better the game is. It's clearly got more technically skilled players but it certainly had plenty then. English clubs ruled Europe in the early to mid 80s. It wasn't as if the English game was complete shite but we'll accept there has been an improvement because if nothing else, progress to the future usually improves the sport.
Is it a bit better, a lot better, marginally better or infinitely better?
What number would you put on it?
Is it 50% better? 17% better? 123% better? Twice as good? Three times? Maybe even some of you will prefer it as it was? I don't know.
What I'm willing to bet is that you won't say it's 3714% better.
Why that number? That is the inflation rate that has applied to top flight wages since the dawn of the Premier League. Just ask yourself. Is that a good use of money? Apply the logic of business and question that model.
If production costs increased by 3714% and the product wasn't unrecognisably better then you'd ask questions.
The IPL in cricket is an example of what is coming to football. To service the levels of inflation, sooner or later the game will have to find a further new market. It will have to ramp up the drinks breaks, the sponsorship, the constructed narratives and the control over the media. People will watch the global franchise tournament that is the end game of where we're heading. We probably can't stop that and maybe, why should we even try. It's not what I want and I think it's not what millions want either. Unless we stop believing in the authorities that let us down, time and time again, then there's a real danger that's all there is going to be left. The cricket authorities have done little for test cricket or long format domestic cricket. They've just bowed to the money and the broader game is looking exceptionally anaemic. Sometimes it looks as if the cricket bodies treat long form cricket as an irritant in the way of more franchise matches and global short form tournaments.
Would football really be that different and are we that far away from the sort of invitational super league or FIFA 'ultimate team' style franchise tournament that I can't but feel that the sort of global money that influences football would see as a new golden egg.
The game doesn't belong to them. It's not their goose. It belongs to us.
We could make it literally so. Hand wringing won't get us there as it's only got us here so far. Why do we need the FA anyway? We all know the rules by now.
RIP Macc once again. You had a bad owner but so have so many of us. It's weird how they keep cropping up. Almost as if football attracts them above decent people because it's a hollow, moral free, empty vacuum of greed.
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