It’s a dark dark day in any young adult’s life when they are finally forced to accept they aren’t going to make it as a professional footballer. The pain is made all the more acute by it being a drawn out process – usually taking place between the years of 15 and 18 – of waiting, largely in vain, for the sparks of skill to appear and propel you into superstardom. The proverbial nail in the coffin is watching your team fill up with players who are just a few years older than you; only a year your senior; share your year of birth; were born a few months after you; could’ve been three years below you at school…
As hard as it is, it’s undeniably easy on the eye watching these prodigious talents bloom, and our inner mystics, sensing they have the beating of any conservative rationality our brains possess (ha!), run amok waxing lyrical about just how good these kids are going to be and exactly which qualities they display in abundance unseen since Zidane, Cruff, Best, Eusébio et al.
With all the oohing and aahing that soundtrack Arsenal’s starting Carling Cup 11, it’s hard to see these starlets as anything other than flamboyant zoo animals; yet the creative freedom exhibited on the pitch can sometimes be in tragic contrast with the shackles off it, the bonds and demands from contracts, agents and the press. This is something I feel needs addressed for the good of the players, the national team and the game of football in general.
Before continuing it is worth pointing out now that as I write this I am currently unemployed and in a substantial amount of debt to various persons, so I’m not painting the ‘I-get-paid-£70,000-a-week-why-do-people-get-so-pissed-when-I-act-like-a-twat-and-then-moan-about-the-exposure’ picture; I’d happily accept one-hundredth of that amount to play football for a living (I’d even wear sensible black boots and do my damndest not to shag any whores into the bargain). This is not about the money, but the manner in which it is offered.
When it comes to dealing with hot young prospects, the clubs just as often end up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop, but in discussions about the darker side of being the next Maradona, first port of call should always be the player. It’s now not uncommon for Premier League appearances to be handed to 15/16 year-olds, and a boy can be a first-team regular by the time of his 18th birthday. Good times, this bodes well for the future.
When I was that age all I needed for a good time was an irresponsible adult to overlook certain moral obligations and turn a blind eye while I made my own mistakes, and even from my position of almost complete ignorance, it seems like it’s a similar case for these multimillionaire teenagers. Only difference is, the negligent adults in my case were the ‘cool’ uncles or sketchy homeless guys who bought us cider and the ethically spurious shopkeepers who accepted horrendous fake IDs.
For young footballers it’s the agents who limpet on to their talent and offer them salaries their Standard Grade Maths can’t even begin to process (and that’s before we’ve started talking about bonuses, clauses, sponsorship or advertisements). It’s the big teams who sign them and root their potential to the reserve team bench; or the hometown clubs who put themselves in a position where they have to cash-in on their assets because of boardroom incompetence.
These are kids who weren’t alive when Nirvana split-up; you can’t offer them obscene amounts of money and then expect them to concentrate on football, and get pissy when they don’t fulfil their potential. There is a responsibility of agents and clubs to take into account the human being, not just the ability.
Of course, this wishy-washy, ‘love thy neighbour’ crap doesn’t actually work in real life. Football is a multi-trillion pound industry and it certainly didn’t get there without leaving a few stragglers by the wayside. Those in positions of power will say that it’s always been a performance-based industry – a buyer’s market – and charity will dilute the quality of the game. Emerging young talents are going to have to be exposed to the ‘real world’ sooner or later and the fact is, if they’re good enough to get paid as much as 20/30 year-olds, they should be expected to put up with the some pressures and constraints.
Fair enough, can’t really argue with that. Footballers’ wages are offered in direct relation to their perceived value, and if Hess…I mean Messi, is the best player in the world at 21, pay him accordingly. Attention however, has to be paid lower down the spectrum. Not everyone’s situation if different, and the Argentine maestro is quite clearly an exception in terms of talent. Not everyone is going to be as talented, lucky or, personality-wise, as down to earth. Some kind of structure therefore has to be set up.
Messi’s legend is well-known: brought over to Spain after being rejected by homeland-giants River Plate as being too weak, Barcelona paid for him to have hormone injections and next thing you know he’s up like a salmon, merkin’ Rio to head past Van der Sar in the Stadio Olympico. At five years old however, he started played for a team his dad managed, and when Rijkaard & co. came calling, his family relocated to Catalonia with him. He has thus always had people around him to keep his featherweight frame grounded and this is something that his humble demeanour and media-shyness is directly credited to.
Not every player is so lucky (or so naturally shy) however, and so at some point a ‘guardian’ has to be appointed to advise the player and (in theory) look out for their best interests. If not, less talented but more astute predators will begin to prey. This is where the problems start.
If you’ve never heard of him before, all you need to know about Kia Joorabchian is that he has two passports, each with a different name and different date of birth on it. He’s not actually a qualified football agent – describing himself (somewhat reluctantly you would feel) as an ‘advisor’ to players – and yet has been the lynchpin in some of the most lucrative and high-profile transfers in world football. He basically legally collects footballers.
Not in the sense of having a meticulously above-board Subbuteo hobby; but rather he goes around, like a cross between the Childcatcher and Rasputin, offering talented but impoverished footballers a seemingly princely, but in actual fact nominal, fee in return for their freedom of contract. He then ‘loans’ them out to clubs (and demands that 100% of their substantial wage demands to be paid) where they then make their name, and when the big boys come in with £30 mil, he pockets the transfer fee.
Clearly it’s not in anyone apart from these so-called agents’ best interest for players to be traded like shares in the City of London, and for me, this problem is best solved at its source. Make it illegal for an individual to be bought by another individual, and introducing a EU-wide ban on ‘advisors’ like Joorabchian. The big-money moves are to European football, so even if this law can’t be passed or realistically implicated on other continents, make it impossible to find anyone offering the money these people are looking for. If Platini only does one useful thing during his time in office, I really hope this is it (I also wonder if he’s even thought of having a camera on the goal line?).
The aforementioned ‘advisor’-types will undoubtedly point out that if this happens, the players will remain undiscovered or undeveloped because they will be forced to stay at their hometown clubs and never get an opportunity on the bigger stages. Big problem, with a simply answer: make their hometown clubs better.
Not by putting ads on the Middle Eastern Gumtree trying to find investors for Scunthorpe United and Elephant & Castle’s pub team, but spending the money constantly promised for youth development, on youth development, and getting the (minimal) existing infrastructure to communicate internally. Nationalise youth development in Home Nations and structure them more like France – who won the World Cup in 1998 & the Euros in 2000 – and Spain – who won the Euros in 2006 & and the World Cup in 2010. True, the former may have had a spot of bother in South Africa, but that was probably down to the fact they had a coach who couldn’t decide if he was Copernicus or Casanova; either way he was definitely more Chaplin than Clough.
Before that however, Les Bleus produced some of the finest world footballers of the last 30 years. This is partly because they can still poach players from their former colonies, but also because of the national football association’s infrastructure. And I don’t even need to talk about Spain’s youth set-up.
In France, youth players train at one of seven, well-funded, national academies during the week before returning to their local clubs at the weekend; in Spain it’s alternate weekends between representing their school team and their academy side. The emphasis is on plucking talent and training them at a higher level, but also letting the player return to their local teams so that the lower leagues’ standard is continually improving by having quality footballers playing in it. The academy communicates with the local teams to make sure their pupils are putting in a shift at the weekend, and also advises the managers which areas of the star player’s game could be improved, and also how the rest of the team could learn from/develop by playing with him.
Britain’s smaller than both France and Spain so it would be fairly easy to ensure all parts of the country had access to the academies, transport would be paid for, and if 14/15/16 year olds spent more time playing football and in a learning environment, not only will they become better players, they might not grow up to be the kind of guy who cheats on his missus with genks.
At the moment, unless a hot prospect is born near a nationally recognised academy (West Ham for example), someone ends up getting hurt as one of two scenarios play out. Either they sign for their local academy, who then train them but lose them to a bigger club on a free before they turn 17 and are eligible to sign a professional contract; or they sign a professional contract at their local team or another smaller side, show potential after a few first team appearances, and are snapped up for a nominal fee by a Premiership outfit, before rotting on the bench or being loaned out to a lower league than they initially started in.
The first instance seems grossly unfair: a team, with limited income, has invested time and money developing a talent, and received zero compensation for them. Understandably, the likes of Man U and Arsenal want to bring hot prospects in at an age where they can still significantly influence their development. The player is relatively unproven so they aren’t going to pay millions (unless it’s a Rooney or a Ramsey we’re talking about) and the youngster isn’t exactly going to turn down a chance to play for these teams. But because they’re under 17, their initial mentors, the smaller club, get paid zilch.
The second case harms both the youngster most because they don’t play anything like as much first-team football, and their talent therefore, unless exceptional, is squandered. Obviously there is an element of ‘if they’re good enough they’ll play’, but the focus can’t just be on producing exceptional footballers; England and Scotland need good 21 year olds just as much as they need exceptional ones. There’s not point in only bringing 11 world-class superstars through the ranks because, who are they going to play with/against? What’s going to happen when they get injured?
Also, not everyone develops into an outstanding player until later in life. Ian Wright didn’t sign professionally until he was nearly 22 (hope for yours truly, who obviously only hasn’t been called up by Fabio yet because the England scouts haven’t been down the Meadows recently), and without a decent standard of league, the exceptional footballers aren’t going to fulfil their full potential, because they’ll never come up against anyone who can really stretch their ability.
If a quality national academy could set-up, then players would be developed regionally with tabs being kept on exactly which youngsters came from which club. This would allow an element of parity to be maintained when professional contracts were offered because the original parent club would be given priority. The academy could also oversee contract negotiations, ensuring the inclusion of clauses stating a minimum number of appearances, to stop big clubs stockpiling and wasting youth prospects, whilst also ensuring the Rasputin-Childcatchers out there are completely excluded from British football.
The future of football is in having a world-class youth system – Spain and Germany taught us as much in South Africa this summer – and not just looking for the diamonds, but filtering out the slightly less precious (but no less useful) elements as well, in order to allow late developers to bloom and keep the young hot-shots constantly on their toes.
We need to be developing a Golden Generation, not a Golden 11 – look where having two world-class attacking midfielders has left England; we can’t bloody play both of them. Introducing a properly run, properly funded, nationwide footballing body, primarily devoted to ensuring what’s best for the youngsters (and by extension their national side), but who also seek to improve the standard of lower leagues, is essential if England (or Scotland) are ever going to make waves in internationally football again. That, and getting a few scouts up to Edinburgh ASAP, because I turn 22 soon and my ambitions will then turn to management.
Howard Webb: he’s not from New York City; he’s from Rotheram. Over the summer he officiated the dirtiest World Cup final in recent memory and was roundly criticised for his over-lenience (despite showing thirteen yellow cards and a red), especially for failing to spot Nigel De Jong’s ‘sweet chin music’ on Xavi Alonso. At Old Trafford on Sunday however, he managed to keep one of the most historically tempestuous fixtures in the Premier League almost entirely above board and got most of the big decisions right. Well-done Howard.
In general, Lee Catermole aside, this season has been a largely well-disciplined one, with even the high profile red cards – Joe Cole’s against Arsenal for example – being badly timed rather than malicious. While the reverse could be said for the penalty-taking so far, this doesn’t come as a massive surprise to me (Graham Alexander isn’t around to bring up everyone else’s average and the ball’s probably too white to hit properly); I just can’t understand how Manchester United have forgotten to defend.
Don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on me: after crafting a reputation and filling a multitude of trophy cabinets with the ability to score late, late, late goals, United have finally been getting a taste of their own medicine at Craven Cottage and Goodison Park in recent weeks. And all credit has to go Fulham and Everton for having the belief and drive to fight right to the end when it looked, in both instances, as if all was lost. But the harsh reality for Ferguson is that Chelsea’s four-point lead at the top of the table has been gifted to them, not by the Blues’ early season fixtures, but by his team’s inability to keep their discipline and close out the games for those two extra wins.
There are of course those who put United’s slow start down to the fact that they are finally losing their stranglehold on the English game. These people may yet be proved right, but if they are it will be through luck, now because of their knowledge of football. Man U always start slowly, and build momentum, make-up impossible points deficits and generally surmount the insurmountable (usually, even I have to say with a fair bit of luck and the odd refereeing decision here and there). Just because we’ve dropped four sloppy points it doesn’t suddenly make us Liverpool circa 1990 under Graham Souness.
It’s just difficult to understand. It’s not through lack of experience at the back that this indiscipline had developed. Johnny Evans is young but this is his third season in or around the first-team. Stalwarts Vidic and Evra are becoming as much a part of United as Mike Phelan doing Match of the Day interviews, while at right-back O’Shea or Neville have been the regular starters: not exactly the greenest of full-backs. They’ve been playing as a unit – with Evans deputising for Ferdinand more and more as the latter’s injury tendencies proliferate – for three or four seasons now, and the three homegrown players are products of the club’s youth system.
And it’s sure as hell not through lack of ability that these late goals are being leaked. Sloppiness is what it is, pure and simple. Not doing the basics properly. If you’ve made it as a professional footballer it stands to reason that you will have worked under scores of trainers, coaches and managers; the sum total of clichés must be massive and they should be as imbedded in your psyche as the need to wear florescent boots or cheat on your missus: keep the ball, it’s your friend, if you have it then the opposition can’t score ECT. So why have United forgotten them (the basics not the boots or infidelity clauses)?
Berbatov’s strike against Everton may have started with a backheel from Gary Neville (in his own half no less), but Arteta’s thundering leveller deep in injury time came about because, almost directly from the 3-2 restart: G Funk received the ball and lofted a nothing ball towards the opposition’s corner-flag; it was promptly launched back to Baines, he whipped it in the United area, Timmy Cahill inevitably won the header and the Spanglish midfielder was there to drive home.
Any one who has ever played football – or even had a bash on Fifa or Pro Evo – knows that if you’re seconds away from winning a match and the other team pull one back, the last thing you do is boot it back to them and give them a chance to launch one more attack. You play it square between the defence and midfield and the only time it ever goes into the corner is if someone runs it there. Where was Neville’s – the most experienced player on the pitch – composure and discipline?
Equally, what was the thinking behind putting Nani, arguably Man U’s least consistent performer in recent seasons (especially now Berbatov’s started banging them in this season) on a crucial penalty that could have put the game beyond a Fulham side who rarely lose at home? Why not put one of the more experienced or levelheaded players on it – Giggs or Owen for example – rather than cater to the ego of the erratic Portuguese winger?
Three points at Craven Cottage is not something that comes easily but if you’re going to win the Premiership it’s not exactly mission impossible. The spot-kick goes in and you’d think it’s game, set and match (although, in hindsight events at Goodison cast doubts over this assumption). Instead, Nani stepped up, Nani missed and United dropped points.
These aren’t difficult things to address: the gaffer’s surely spotted them and from now on I’d be surprised if any more late collapses or sloppy mistakes didn’t result in a few games on those moulder barker loungers they have in the Old Trafford dugout. The puzzle is why they haven’t already.
This is manager who, as legend has it, sent home Paul Ince from his first United training session after the midfielder, newly signed from Inter Milan, turned up at Carrington with a personalised number plate reading: ‘TH3 GUVN0R’ (“there’s only one governor around here” was the growled Glaswegian reply); he’ll have been livid the discipline he’s spent 20+ years developing is being blatantly ignored. Blatently he chews so much Wriggly’s Extra to stop him grinding his teeth down to his gums and looking like Mr. Herbert by the time his death and subsequent retirement are announced.
Lack of quality is never going to be an issue at Old Trafford; nor are we ever going to be short of a balance between youthful exuberance and senior experience. And all but the most ignorant United fans (so at least a few London burghs aside) will admit we are one of ‘luckier’ teams in the league at the moment. However, without the discipline to see out games we’re not going to win the league back. Simple as.
Teams who try to buy success often fail because of a lack of order amongst the Rolexed-multimillionaires, whilst teams like Stoke and Wolves become part of the Premiership furniture by being organised, committed and concentrating for 95 minutes. With Man U it’s as much a case of pulling the finger out as putting a stick a bit further up, and keeping it there until the final whistle. Shotgun not being the one who does Nani though.
You know what Scottish people hate most about the English? Our apathy towards their nation. The fact that their hatred of us, which burns everlasting, is largely unreciprocated.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a purely Scottish trait by any means; the English are just as bad. We’ll go on for hours about the times we’ve got one up on the Krauts, and how it’s the rivalry to end all rivalries, but if you talk to Germans about who they’d most cherish beating in a World Cup final, ‘ze Niederländisch’ (the Dutch) would be ze answer.
So while the Three Lions struggling against lowly opposition they should hammer every day of the week (like Algeria, say) would be met with howls of derision north of the border, the fact that Craig Levin’s men were seconds away from dropping points to a country whose entire population is smaller than the Hamden crowd on Tuesday, draws a largely sympathetic grimace from the majority of England fans, myself included.
Scotland doing badly gives me the opportunity to return some small portion of the abuse my ‘mates’ up here have given me over 13 years, but it also makes an already fairly cynical nation utterly depressed and thus lessens my enjoyment of back-to-back England wins. Stephen McManus’s 97th minute header however, left the Tartan Army more jubilant than if they’d won 7-0 so, for the moment at least, a fragile peace exists between Scottish football and myself. Long may it last.
It could have been so different though, because in all honesty Scotland should be well on their way to Poland and Ukraine by now with 6 points. You can only imagine the smirking headlines the Scottish Sun would have come up with had it been England being held in Kaunas, because the fact remains, if you’ve got the world champions Spain in your group, you need three points everywhere else to stand a chance of going through as one of the best runners-up across in qualification.
I couldn’t help but smile as I heard the laments from sections of the press up here and the Tartan Army in general that, ‘we were kicked off the park’, ‘the ref did nothing to protect us’, ‘those boys’re dirty, cheating bastards’ ECT. I’m sorry, but you can’t field a team with savages like Scott Brown and cheats like Alan McGregor in it, and then expect to be ‘protected’ from team that employs the same tactic every team in your domestic league does: if you don’t get the ball, make sure you get the man.
Hasler’s challenge on Alan Hutton on Tuesday was different – it was a disgrace and if ever there was a need for UEFA or FIFA to take retrospective action against a player, this is it – but having played Lithuania in the last four Euro qualification groups, and given that a number of the home side on Friday ply or have plied their trade in the SPL, you’d think Levin would be tactically astute enough to be able to exploit the obvious gulf in class between the two teams. I don’t remember the Lithuanian captain ever winning the Champions League.
And the implications of not beating teams like this stretch further than 2012. There’s no point in beating France home and away if you can’t then consolidate the result with a victory over minnows like Lithuania. In terms of FIFA rankings its one step forward, two steps back, and despite it being widely accepted that these rankings are utterly useless in determining a team’s quality – Gabon for example are currently ranked 34 in the world, one above Sweden, two above Republic of Ireland and seven above Scotland – it is crucial to maintain a good position in them. Otherwise what happens is you get bent over when it comes to the seeded qualifying groups for international tournaments and have to play the world champions. Twice.
Luckily for the English, the draw for qualifying was made before the World Cup, when everyone still regarded Capello as a tactical genius, our midfield as world-class and Wazza as the model professional. As a result, our toughest opponents – on paper anyway, and if there’s ever a nation who should be aware how little this means on the turf, it’s us – are the Swiss.
They, not unlike Scotland, went for the one step forward, two steps back approach by beating Spain in their opening World Cup game and then failing to bag against Hondurus. Their performance on Tuesday night only served to reiterate both how inaccurate those FIFA rankings are – the Swiss are 17th, above the USA who got the last 16 in South Africa, and Ghana who beat them and reached the quarters – and how many substandard teams there were at the World Cup compared with those who didn’t make it (Republic of Ireland for example).
From an England point of view though, you’ve got the focus on the positives. You can only beat what’s put in front of you and say that, so far, England have done pretty well. Not brilliantly, but expectations have been matched and the team took competatent, and if you offered me this description as a blueprint for the next two years, I’d definitely take it.
Having just said the positives need to be the focus however, I’m going to start with the negatives, because there’s actually only one: Shawn Wright-Philips still being selected. GET SWP OUT OF THE GODDAM SQUAD. Get him out of the country, revoke his passport, introduce a height restriction to playing for your country that includes Aaron Lennon but excludes him, whatever; just get him out of the squad.
The man is useless. He looks dyspraxic whenever he touches the ball, can’t pick a ten-yard pass to Darren Bent (who let’s face it, isn’t exactly inconspicuous) and yet continues to be picked alongside Lennon, Theo Walcott and Adam Johnson. Why? The only thing he's got is pace and it’s not like any of the above can’t shift. Difference is, they can shift with the ball rather than just buzzing around distracting everyone, like the visiting relative that your mum’s made you include in your mates’ kickabout despite the fact even she knows he’s shite.
It’s not like he’s in sparkling club form either. The lad Albrighton’s making waves at Villa and Rodwell’s breaking into the Everton 11, whilst Shawn’s floundering around at Eastlands trying to convince everyone (or anyone) that getting a start and bagging against FC Timisoara means he’s gonna be getting a regular game this season. It’s yet another reason to wonder whether Capello’s translator and English tutors a) exist at all, and b) don’t sometimes like to tell him to say exactly the opposite of what he actually intends to do.
If he’s rebuilding the team around youth, why’s a 28-year old who’s been there or there abouts, not done it, and couldn’t find a t-shirt small enough getting his game over some of the under 21s – Rodwell, Albrighton or Wilshere to name but three – who got to the final of their Euro tournament last year, and got beaten by, guess who, ze Germans (and what did they amount to anyway?).
Maybe it’s going to be one of those things that seems blindingly obvious in hindsight but, for whatever reason wasn’t clear at the time: a bit like no one clocking Freddy Mercury was gay (the cross-dressing videos; the leather and biker moustache; Queen? No? No one put two and two together?). Perhaps in 20 years it’ll be on Eggheads: who did Adam Johnson succeed as England’s right-mid? Must have been good if he was keeping our hottest youngster out of the team. Oh…
Right, now I’ve got that off my chest we can move onto the positives. All of the four who scored over the international break needed goals, for different reasons: Rooney to try and get himself off the country’s collective darts board; Defoe to continue to cement his place as the nations number 9; Bent to try and shake his potential tag as the next Emile Heskey (apparently the his goal against the Swiss on Tuesday was the first time he’d hit the target, let alone the net, in 9 appearances for England); and Johnson to make sure that even amoebas on Saturn realise he is the best right-midfielder we have, so that Fabio will hopefully cotton on soon.
Joe Hart too had two very important games, the first in which he sowed himself into the number 1 jersey for the foreseeable future, and second in which he fulfilled that intuitive instinct all English keepers have, the need to something inexplicably stupid at crucial points of a match. The subsequent backlash (although fairly minimal due to the nature and consequences of the ‘mistakes’) will hopefully remind him not to be a twat, to leave the keepy-uppies for when United next visit Eastlands, and remember to always check the pitch for divots, and the ball in case it’s too round to catch. Apart from that, he’s looking good.
All I can hope is that when October comes round and the next squad is picked, Mr Capello remembers these performances and doesn’t just revert to picking according to who’s paid most at club level. The squad’s actually looking like it might be gelling and the gaffer’s started picking people because they can play together – Jags and Lescott for example who were a makeshift pairing chosen because of their Everton days together – and putting folk in their right positions (starting with the captain); the last thing we need at this stage is fat-cats back amongst the birds. They’re struggling enough trying to understand Capello’s pigeon English.
Right, let’s get this out the way: I’m a Manchester United fan with no connections to Manchester. I know I know we were getting on so well; you’re not angry you’re just disappointed; I represent everything that’s wrong with football; how can I have any valid opinions seeing as I’m a just a glory-hunter, so on and so forth.
The short answer to these accusations is usually two cold fingers: jog on; it’s been fourteen years I’ve heard them all before. You support your team, I’ll support mine and we’ll just agree to disagree (or not to discuss it). This argument however it somewhat at odds with the spirit of rational discussion this blog tries to evoke, so let’s try again.
I support Manchester United because as long as I’ve liked football, I’ve been drawn to them. This isn’t to say some divine voice came to me and just happened recommend the most successful team in Premier League history; just that as an impressionable seven year old with no family history of football fanaticism, I chose the team who looked best to me. This ‘monkey-see, monkey-like, monkey-follow’ approach is one I suspect many others have adopted (whether or not they admit it) and this logic, or lack thereof, is, in an increasingly fickle footballing world, one guaranteed constant.
In today’s cosmopolitan society, being a lifelong resident of any one place is becoming increasingly uncommon, and while there always will be those who are able to call one place home their entire life, and therefore have the option of a simple decision as to what team to follow, others with slightly more nomadic residency patterns will not be so lucky.
It has since been suggested, once or twice, that I should ditch the Red Devils and support my local team, ‘cos that’s wot real fans do’. Well I was born in Hackney, so presumably West Ham would be the obvious option. But I only lived in London for a year before moving to Senegal, West Africa, and at 12 months old, I didn’t really feel like a die-hard Hammer (though I was forever blowing bubbles).
After six years in Dakar, however, my passion for football had definitely blossomed. So presumably I should devote my allegiance to ASC Diaraf? But while season tickets are probably easier to come by than at Old Trafford, getting to away games is a bit of a ball-ache, and The Football League Show’s coverage from the Stade de Diaraf is notoriously poor. And at that age, I was content just to play football, spending what TV time I was allowed in front of Wacky Races and Captain Caveman.
It wasn’t until I moved back to the UK and deepest Oxfordshire that I was exposed the phenomenon that is the Premier League. For someone who has spent their boyhood playing barefoot on arid scrubland and whose only experience of watching football as a five-year old casual viewer of USA ’94, the transition to ten games a week, long balls to the big man up front, derby, and pies and Bovril at half-time was quite a culture shock. Now I had found footballing Mecca, a country in which I could watch matches weekly and play daily, I needed a team.
A lack of parental guidance in this critical decision inevitably led to my peers being the decisive factor, and no one wanted to follow Chipping Norton Town F.C. We wanted someone on Match of the Day (the only place to watch decent football in the Cotswolds), with stars whose faces shone from Panini shinies. In 1996 there was only one option: David Beckham & co., and once the decision had been made, that was it, monkey-see, monkey-like, monkey-follow.
Football fans are masochists: we like to suffer because the more we lose, the better it feels when we win. The worse the club perform on the pitch, the better their fans are considered to be because they put up with more and therefore are more acutely aware of both sides of the emotional spectrum, enduring relegation battles, financial uncertainty and their best players leaving for pastures new when bigger clubs come calling; but also the odd Cup run, derby day victory and title top-ten finish.
Every club has its ups and downs and I’d be the first to admit that Man United fans have probably had the easiest ride in English football over the last twenty years. This doesn’t mean however, we’ve all enjoyed it in equal measure. Those who frequented Old Trafford whilst the Liverpool teams of the Eighties were at their peak are undoubted more entitled to enjoy their team’s success than someone who’s never been to Manchester and associate the name Busby with furniture.
But does coming from Salford or Stretford automatically qualify you as a ‘real fan’? And does the credibility barometer subsequently decrease the further away from the North West you live or have lived at any one time? What trumps what, longevity of personal support or one’s family legacy? Is it better to have randomly picked a team and supported them for twenty odd years; or have followed your local team because season tickets have always been available through the family?
It does my head that people feel the later point is even worth arguing. Why should their elders’ sympathies afford them an unassailable moral high ground? ‘Well my dad supports them so I had no choice…’ ECT. Bollocks. You managed to rebel against everything else your parents told you between the twelfth and nineteenth years of your life, I’m sure you could have summoned the strength of character to defy them on this as well.
It’s the easy way out. British terraces have always been a place where parents and children bond but I asked why you support your team, and ‘because I way told to’ or ‘because my family do’ isn’t really good enough. ‘Because I grew up going to the games’ or ‘because I have great childhood memories of watching [team x] play’, fair play, you’ve had some input into the decision; but don’t lay into other people for who they support and justify your allegiances by saying you were told to do so by your family.
Worse still than those who feel that continuing family tradition trumps the seven-year old logic of pick a team you like and sticking with them, are the fence sitters: those that don’t claim any side as their own but are perfectly happy to tell you what’s wrong with yours. If you just follow football and don’t take sides, that’s fine, no problem; but don’t throw mud at me from your lofty perch, safe in the knowledge I can’t aim any back.
Understand that rationality often takes a backseat when it comes discussions about football, and your point may be both perfectly sensible and logically constructed but that doesn’t necessarily make it valid. Subjective and slanderous comments that can’t be answered in relation to a team of one’s own shouldn’t have to be answered at all. You’re not properly committed to the process and therefore and no right to be involved in it. If the stakes haven’t been matched, you can't play the hand.
Of course there are those who follow any number of teams intermittently depending on which one is winning, but equally there are also fans who support smaller teams simply because they think it will gain them respect among their peers an allow them easy digs at other fans. I chose United because they were winning when I first started watching the Premiership, but I’ve continued to support them when they weren’t.
I’m not from Manchester but I am from England, and when you look at their youth system’s contribution to the national side you have to say that there have been times when the national side has been more or less a United team-sheet. Compare that with the brief stint I had following Hearts when Vladimir Romanov took over, and you’ll see that a ‘local’ team is often entirely international in both its players and backroom staff (for example, Romanov sold the Jambo’s Scottish and replaced it with a cosmopolitan line-up with very few British players or staff). The question needs to be asked, if you follow your local team simply because of regional pride, then what are you doing cheering their foreign players?
I can’t believe that it’s just where the side are from that influenced your decision. Surely there was some aspect of ‘these guys player better football than that lot so I’m gonna follow them’ (because another guaranteed constant in the fickle work of football is that everyone has a ‘local’ rival)?
If you’ve spent enough of your life in one place to feel that a team is really ‘your’ local side, I’m happy and slightly envious of you. You may have harder time watching them on the pitch, but when it comes to talking about football you’ve got by far the easier ride. No justifications needed, you get to have a right old moan and no one can say owt against you. But just because I follow a successful team from a city I’ve never lived in and have no family connections with, doesn’t mean I’m a glory-hunter, doesn’t mean I know nothing about the pain and anguish fans are so keen to wear on their Climacool sleeves, and doesn’t mean I’m a dickhead.
I was a bit late to the supporters’ party, had to make an uninformed choice and have suffered and continue to suffer the consequences (as well as reap the multitude of rewards) of choosing Manchester United. Nothing you say about my choice is going to stop me following them and I would hope the same thing goes for you if you’ve got a team. And if you don’t, stop being such a pussy and get involved! Put your balls on the line and your colours on a mast!
Oscar Wilde wrote, “the cynic knows the price of everything and value of nothing”. Call us what you will, but no football fan should ever be accused of being cynical, because no matter how badly our teams play, how near they came to winning or how close they were to scrapping by; every real fan knows a bright day awaits, and when it comes it will be all the sweeter for past anguishes. That’s what keeps us talking to each other, despite our superficial differences: there’s not really any way you can fully understand or relate to the beautiful game without following a team, no matter who they are.
When tensions run as high as they do in football it’s inevitable that a fully panoramic array of villains will emerge, from the cuddly Robbie Savage to Kyle Lafferty who’s just a cu… completely different kettle of fish. In recent times however, the real baddies aren’t the players but the businessmen; the suited Emperor Palpatines who provide the new money needed to tempt Vader into badge-kissing on the wrong side of the city (three months after signing a new five-year deal with your club).
But far worse than the owners who wade into looking for a quick buck and depart leaving decimated infrastructure and a bloated wage bill, is the true dark side of the force: the far less transient television companies and their ongoing battle over ownership of viewing rights. Does this free-market approach provide us fans with quality through competition or would it just be easier if one person everything? Is the real villain in top-flight football coverage the established companies who seek to extend their monopoly, or the smaller channels trying to cash in by convoluting the system and providing inferior service for their additional cost?
I think you would be incredibly naïve to fall back on the ‘traditional’ football fan’s argument that, ‘they’re my team, who are the big TV companies to charge me to watch them, those big wigs no nothing about football ECT’. The game has developed into a multimillion-pound industry (and has greatly benefited from it) that relies as much on attracting less avid, or ‘part-time’ fans as appeasing the die-hard season ticket holders.
It is unrealistic to expect terrestrial channels to being able to cater for all needs; in actual fact, the BBC has done admirably in keeping Match of the Day running so long (remember the dark, dark season when ITV’s The Premiership took over). It manages to provide that rare mix of extensive coverage and mostly valid opinions (Mark Lawrenson and Martin Keown aside) but lacks the funds to really cover everything. If, like me, you want to be able to watch some form of football every night of the week, and completely exile yourself from work, girlfriends, and responsibility in general on Saturday afternoons the Beeb can’t realistically be expected to invest license-payer’s money in helping you.
So some form of private investment is needed. And for nearly fifteen years Rupert Murdoch’s Sky has provided this admirably. There are always going to gripes from fans of the smaller teams that their needs are not sufficiently services, but the fact is that the vast majority of the big games in club football are covered and covered well. There aren’t any instances of ill-advised ad-breaks cutting off crucial goals either, or the signal cutting out halfway through a match (a problem anyone who has tried to stream international channels on the internet will be well aware of); generally you get to watch most matches in their entirety.
In the spirit of laissez faire though, competition developed, with Setanta the first to try undercutting Sky’s dominance. Dear God it was awful. Apart from lacking the personalities needed to compete with the likes of Jeff Sterling and Andy Gray, they invested their money in the rights to the SPL – a league then (and perhaps still) on the decline – while Sky boasted superior Premier League coverage supplemented with coverage of La Liga, which few would argue was more appealing to the casual fan than Dundee visiting Fir Park. And anyone who ever flicked over to Setanta Sports News will join me in raising a thankful toast to the company’s demise.
ESPN has enjoyed slightly more success since attempting the transition from the all American sports channel to some kind of hybrid that encourages the ‘special relationship’, but when you actual look at their schedule it is difficult avoid the conclusion that they are simply picking a carcass that Sky has pillaged fairly thoroughly. The priority is getting any game involving a ‘big club’ – which to the Americans means Chelsea or Man United – and the result is that Sky get the dog-fights, the derbies and the really important matches (i.e. everything anyone wants to see) while ESPN show teams parking the bus and trying not concede more than three at Old Trafford.
Why not just cap how much a company can charge viewers and put more games across the one network – introducing more channels if need be – instead of causing fans to miss games? That way people could pay one company one price and see their team play more often with better coverage and analysis. Because frankly ESPN is a terrible investment for the average football fan, even at £7 a month.
There is however, I would argue the irrevocable need for some things to remain on terrestrial TV, namely a decent highlights show and European club football, as well as some of the internationals. Here again however, competition has detracted from the quality of service, rather than adding to it.
I think I speak for many when I say the Champions League and ITV are as synonymous as Match of the Day and the BBC: staying up late on a school night and not caring how limiting five channels could be because at least you got the Champions League. In much the same way the BBC dropped the ball by not snapping up what was given to them, and thus allowing The Premiership to run for a long, long season; ITV has blown their budget on luring Adrian Chiles away from MOTD 2, and subsequently has halved the number of CL games on offer, from a pretty measly two to a unacceptable one game (out of eight) a week.
They are obviously unaware that it doesn’t matter how good the pundit it fans want to watch football. And when the ‘expert’ analysis comes from Gareth Southgate, having a witty anchor is useless because all the jokes go over his massively elongated head. Similarly, Channel 5 has, for reasons unbeknown to anyone anywhere, bolstered their all star commentary team this year with the addition of David Pleat, who even ITV rejected.
Why can’t ITV replace X-Factor and Corrie repeats with that second game a week and then you could have all the European games terrestrial TV gets over their four channels? Ditch Southgate, get Marcel Desailly on the couch more often, double viewing figures, and give nine-year boys whose parents don’t have Sky something to talk about at school on Thursday mornings.
The rights to the FA Cup have historically only be sold to one station – either the BBC or ITV – and as a result, the games are spaced out so there’re usually three or four over the weekend, everyone gets to watch it them. Don’t make things more difficult that they need to be: one competition needs one station showing it live across multiple channels with decent coverage and analysis, highlights later on terrestrial TV if necessary.
During the World Cup everyone I know, when they had a choice, watched the BBC coverage rather than ITV, because there weren’t any breaks and Mick McCarthy was commentating. Football fans don’t want choice; we'd rather be able to watch our team play and listen to someone who knows something about the game tell us what’s going on. Most of us accept that to watch all or most of the games we’re going to have to pay: let us pay one company one price for decent coverage instead of having to fork out for extra for substandard service.
The real villain of football as far as I’m concerned is he (or she) who prevents fans from following it and enjoying watching the beautiful game. Let’s move away from the culture of purely pay-per-view coverage – not an impossible eventuality if you consider the Ukraine vs. England match last year and the Utrecht vs. Celtic match this week – and accept that if we’re going to have to pay for it, lets pay someone who knows what they’re doing and can at least give us a good standard of service. It may not be in the spirit of equality but established networks have the experience, the personnel and the funds to do things properly, and that to me is more important than paying some cowboys to do a half-arsed job.
For the casual terrestrial fan, more European games on ITV and ITV alone, and some kind law outlawing the removal of Match of the Day would surely go along way to making sure more can watch and enjoying watching the game. For the more avid fans, if a monopoly over football viewing rights must exist, lets at least make it a proper one. Don’t allow ESPN to spoil one weekend in four, and take your money for the pleasure; if I’m going to have to pay someone, Sky’s the limit thanks.
“Oh, it’s good to have it back!” purrs Sky Sport’s Andy Gray over the first game of the new Premier League season, Tottenham vs. Manchester City. Something about the Scot’s delivery – part assertion, part reassurance – means he could be telling you Marlon Harewood is a decent shout at 6/1 for the golden boot and you would consider a five-pound flutter. This remark however needed no such persuasive power; after three bleak months for all but Spanish and New Zealand football fans, the real show has started.
Despite the perennial clichés (‘it’s a funny old game’, ‘you never can tell in football’, ‘still early doors yet’) the opening day results are furiously scrutinised by overactive fans and pundits alike, more in a flurry of child-like excitement at the PL’s return you sense, than because of real conviction of opinion. But are performances at this early stage a premonition of things to come or simply a case the summer hangover being run off? Most fans will sagely point out minute qualities or flaws that they assure will become the bricks on which success is built or from which ambitions crumble, yet as the dust settles on Gameweek One, what can actually be deduced from the opening results?
The opening at White Hart Lane was the best indication of both the opening-day excitement and the off-field distractions that make any predictions in the middle of August spurious. Spurs were buzzing after their season last year and the Champions League looming tantalizingly round the corner; Man City’s players looked discombobulated having only just emerged from the club’s frantically spinning revolving transfer door – which if anything, will spin faster as a 50 man squad is filtered through £200 million’s worth of new talent – were only communicating by reading each others names off the backs of their shirts. Half the multimillion pound bric-a-brac squad will have to decide whether being surplus to requirements is something better enjoyed on your arse for £70,000 a week in Manchester, or whether actually getting your game is worth going back to minimum wage in the Championship or SPL. Tough times.
The only real conclusion I drew was that both sides will play worse this season and win. The home team played with energy and excitement but after a bright first half seemed to be more focused on Young Boys on Tuesday rather than their Mancunian opposition. The visitors meanwhile relied on the stalwart (in City terms anyway) centre-half partnership of Kolo Toure and Vincent Company augmenting Joe Hart’s gung-ho goalkeeping, leaping around enjoying himself in the sun and riding his luck bit on the way a well-deserved clean sheet. A similar stalemate between Arsenal and Liverpool is reminiscent of a scenario played out multiple times in South Africa – two teams who wanted to not lose more than they wanted to win – and one that, hopefully, will not characterise prospective Champions League 2011 candidates throughout the season.
No such worries for teams vying not to be playing in the Championship next year. Blackpool hitting four past Wigan briefly put them top of the table, but even the omniscient Andy Gray using Jedi mind-tricks would struggle to convince anyone but Ian Holloway that they are going straight back down. Remember when Burnley beat Man United at Turfmoor last season? Their ‘fortress’ wasn’t so impenetrable when West Ham, Wolves, Wigan and Portsmouth won there. Or when Hull were Champions League contenders in October after winning at the Emirates and White Hart Lane? They then lost eight out of their last ten matches and only stayed up because the teams below them were worse, a luxury they were not afforded two seasons in a row. While it’s brilliant that Blackpool can hammer a team on the opening day, Holloway’s promise to play football (because “mountain-climbers take risks”) draws ominous comparisons with Tony Mowbray’s West Brom team of two years ago, who tried to pass like Arsenal but defended like, well, West Brom. It’s all well and good being the underdogs in sunny September, but when you’re away at Blackburn in darkest February you sense the most of the novelty will have worn off (though Holloway’s sound bites remain evergreen).
Aston Villa’s comfortable win over West Ham could be a misleadingly optimistic start to what promises to be a very difficult season for the Brummies. Having a caretaker manager, who if he really wanted the job would have asked for it by now, can only upset the rhythm of a squad who thrived off repetition. For the second season in a row the club’s outstanding English midfielder has been sold to Man City, the money hasn’t been reinvested prudently (or at all in Milner’s case), and now the Irish maverick who masterminded Villa’s ascendancy has upped sticks. Cue the disruption of a teamsheet carved in stone – including arguably the best centre-back pairing in the league last year, Jimmy Collins and Richard Dunne – with fringe players like Curtis Davis entering stage right, players who have yet to realise that the reason they didn’t play much last year is not because the manager didn’t like them, but because they spent more time whining and blinging themselves up than they did getting their heads down and training.
So while Villa won on the opening day but will most likely struggle, Everton lost but still look promising to push on as the perennial dark horses for a top four finish. Mikel Arteta, apart from learning ‘God Save the Queen’ in case Fabio comes calling, has pledged his future to Goodison and will continue to spearhead a formidable midfield there, for the foreseeable future anyway. Arsenal hammered Everton last year yet Moyes’ men still only just missed out on denying Liverpool the last Europa League spot; an uncharacteristic error from Timmy Howard is not nearly enough to suggest that they can't go one step further this year.
Two results that very few would argue flattered to deceive involved the champions and the runners up, Manchester United and Chelsea. Nine goals without reply between them, continuity of personality on and off the pitch over the summer, and an uninspiring World Cup across both squads mean a resignation has sunk in among much of the footballing world that the ‘big two’ will remain unassailable for another season at least. But a little birdie with a thick Scottish accent told me that Marlon Harewood’s going to bag thirty this season so lets see how things pan out.
