Football.. what has gone wrong?

OK, I admit it, I’m a football fan. Support my home town team, Leicester City. (I’m not looking for sympathy by saying that) and have a strong liking for the Spurs. Everyone should support their home town team, even if they move away and watch someone else their team should be the home town team, Y’know the old saying, first love never dies.

My first memories of football are going to a second eleven match in the 57/58 season, I then remember the Munich air disaster, and the United’s incredible rise to reach the cup final that same season.

After that I was a regular at Filbert Street, supporting the City, but so impressed by the wonderful Spurs team of the early 60’s… one of the two greatest sides ever to play in the football league. I was a regular at Filbert Street for the next 16 years, during which time I was privileged to see the other of the two greatest sides… Manchester United circa 1969 with George Best, Dennis Law, Bobby Charlton and the rest.

You can’t compare teams across generations, too many things change, the ball, the footwear, even the rules… so we cannot say that either of these sides were the best… both stood head and shoulders above everything else at the time, or whether Barcelona’s current side is the greatest… all three were magnificent sides and played glorious flowing football, with a smile, and entertained.

I became an armchair fan in the mid 70’s because I was spending most of my weekends in a city that didn’t have a professional team, and lost the habit of going. It corresponded with the break-up of the best Leicester team I’ve seen, that built by Jimmy Bloomfield in the early seventies. The fact that I had seen friends badly hurt in the endemic football violence at the time didn’t help.

I was still a keen television, armchair, fan, kept on top of everything, and was thrilled when my boyhood hero’s, Spurs, started the trend of importing players, starting with the great Ricky Villa and Ossie Ardiles.

I still watch football, still get passionate about it sometimes, but it doesn’t move me like it used to. There are many reasons for this… I’m older… have more interests, have worked weekends… but the two things that have disillusioned me and driven me away from football are Sky TV and the obscene amounts of money they have poured into the game.

I said earlier you can’t judge if the current players are better than those I grew up watching. You can’t doubt the ability of the likes of Renaldo, Drogba, Rooney, Giggs and the rest, you can admire them as players, but you can’t love them! They are not people to look up to… I would rather see a George Best, Tony Currie, Rodney Marsh, Charlie Cooke, Charlie George any day… gifted players with terrific flair, but never afraid to smile, express themselves and really enjoy themselves on the pitch. I miss that.

I recall a story a friend told me in the mid-sixties… around the time England were winning the World Cup… he used to leave the ground, walk into town for his Sports Mercury, and catch a bus home. His bus happened to go by the ground, and most weeks the City Left Winger (Stringy) would get on the bus, carrying a kit bag, and would always talk to other punters who wanted to ask him about the game. At that time football was a working mans’ game for a working man to play.

Anyway, football was played on a Saturday at 3.00 in the afternoon, an ideal time, cos you could have a beer and lunch, go to the match and get home at a reasonable time, relatively… Sunderland fans going to Plymouth would still be late home of course. But all the games kicked off at the same time, we saw edited highlights at night, and there were midweek games at each end of the season.

The introduction of all-seater stadia is a different debate, not for here, but of course it cost money to do it, and of course the fans paid it ultimately.

With the introduction of the premier league and Sky TV, everything was to change. For Sky to cover their costs and make money, they have to show games live to attract advertising revenue, several games, each week. This led to games being played at different times throughout the Saturday and Sunday, as well as Monday night. This of course leads to being able to watch several games every weekend. Much as I loved football I cannot watch that much, it is wasted, sure you can pick you games, but it means now that whenever you go to a pub or many restaurants over the weekend there is football playing on a multitude of screens around the place. Most people ignore it, but it is intrusive and for most, unwelcome.

The worst thing about this is that the tail is wagging the dog… the football league will rearrange matches, hold back kick-offs, play at all sorts of times to accommodate Sky’s scheduling. Some games are rescheduled for security reasons, which I think is a bit doubtful as a concept, but at least can be understood.

Sky has encouraged the ballyhoo around the teams lining up with countless mascots, flags and banners and doing the ritual handshake. To me that is a farce, just pointless in my view.

Of course Sky also started the “treat” of having cameras at every angle and point around the pitch, we can see every tackle, goal, foul, pass, offside and the rest about 15 times. All that does it disrupts the flow of the match (on TV) and gives pompous pundits the chance to pillory referees, who have a bloody hard job refereeing a bunch of prima donnas who fall down and writhe in agony if a hair comes out of place, without being castigated every weekend by every TV pundit. In the days before trial by television, half the fun was that you only saw it as the ref saw it… and the debates were part of the fans ritual. Having said that, the one piece of technology we do need doesn’t yet exist… goal-line technology.

With the huge amount of money the clubs get from Sky for selling their birth-right to be on wall to wall TV, I would like to see them use the money to subsidise admission, especially in these days of austerity, so as in my youth, families could all go together to watch the match without having to sell the car to get in.

Instead the money goes on multi million pound transfer fees, telephone number salaries and teams of hangers on, psychologists, dieticians and the rest reducing the beautiful game to a clinical science.

It is then the fans who pay… £60, £70 per ticket is not unusual, what does that mean for a family… potentially £240 for admission? In the 60’s and 70’s in the ground you could buy a beer, a hotdog, a burger, pie, Bovril coffee or whatever, I don’t recall the prices, but they were comfortably affordable… these days burgers at £6… how can that be justified?

Ever been to Wembley, or watched a game on the TV? Of course you have, what do you notice, half of the crowd are missing for the first ten minutes of second half… they are munching their prawn sandwiches and drinking champagne in a plush corporate hospitality suite. Are these people football fans… no. They are corporate guests, there for the event, the business opportunities not the football. So, what about the loyal fans?

Then we have the players, I don’t know where to start… I can’t blame Sky for the international employment agreements, but without the Sky money we wouldn’t have our football clubs employing so many imported mercenaries. Of course not every non-British player in the league is a Tevez, but many are, also many are more like a Zola, who was an old school professional, and indeed a credit.

The problem with so many imports in the league is of course that there are less British players, which restricts the number of players available for international selection for the home nations, which means that average players can establish themselves in the international teams because the only competition for their place is not British, this often leads the players to become arrogant, complacent and treat the international games lightly… I can see no other explanation for some of their miserable performances. Please think of your own names here… I will refrain from putting them.

Another thing I want to mention is the oligarchs at Chelsea and Manchester City…men who apparently love the game, but you feel are motivated by the huge profits available from TV deals and from the merchandising. In these cases, they have used their money to attract what they consider to be the cream of world football to their clubs and paid them such unimaginable amounts of money to do it. They have an injury, don’t worry, we’ll pay £40 million for a replacement for a few weeks… it upends the playing field. With these oligarchs the other clubs can’t compete.

You have to admire Manchester United and Arsenal (even if grudgingly) because both clubs have built up their success by shrewd purchases, high quality academies and bringing their own players through. They both now have the status to attract top players without being blackmailed into paying telephone number salaries, the shirt is reward enough for most (not all, of course, but probably the majority)

The final thing is that these clubs now have such huge squads, top teams squads of 25 can all be current internationals, many of them commanding transfer fees in excess of the cost of other whole teams, many of them commanding salaries in excess of other clubs entire salary bills.

Finally, the squad system, also a product of the way the game has been driven by the Sky billions, means that when you pay your kings ransom for your ticket, you are not going to get to see half of the players you want to, half will be on the bench, others not even In the match-day squad. This, I believe, short-changes fans who want to see the players that they have heard about and admire.

I am probably a curmudgeonly old luddite, especially in this, but I yearn for the days when a football club represented the people of the town, the players had a real connection with the club and supporters, a pride in the shirt, and if they were playing well, they played, if they lost form, they were replaced by a reserve, often a youngster looking to start his career.

In 1967 Glasgow Celtic became the first British side to win the European Cup, and every player was born within 25 miles of their stadium. These days most of the players don’t live within 25 miles of the ground… they live in wealthy enclaves and commute… they know they will probably be playing elsewhere in a couple of years!

OK, I’ve done, and most will think bloody old fart, always wants the old days back, it was much better when I was a youth…  for the most part I don’t and it wasn’t… but in this, yes, I do want to see football go back to it’s roots, but I also know there is no way it ever can.

I think the potential demise of Rangers could be optimistic… maybe it will lead to similar events in some English clubs which could herald a return to sensible business models, sustainable salaries, and make the game once again a working mans’ game not a corporate business opportunity. I know it cannot happen, not only because there are so few working men now… but I can dream