Played well, football (or soccer for our American cousins) is simply gorgeous. From an unseemly fracas over the movement of a pig’s bladder from one end of a patch of dirt to another, it has evolved into something sublime. Athletes as honed, pampered and highly strung as race horses use all their grace and grit to transport that elusive ball into the goal and their fans into a state of rapture.
For good or ill, all of a player’s strengths and weaknesses are on show. He has no body armour to hide his blushes and cushion the blows. The contest doesn’t grind to a halt every 30 seconds for him to gather his thoughts while the audience endures another word from the sponsors. However he performs, he knows that the football fan has an endless appetite for glory when things go well, and a bottomless reservoir of vitriol when things don’t. As legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly famously quipped, “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death......I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
I can’t maintain this tone. I’ve tried to see the best in the sport but I can’t get past the fact that football is a great game tarnished by greed, cynicism and violence. Speaking as an Englishman, I believe football showcases some of the worst my society has to offer.
The rot starts early. Children play in junior leagues where they learn teamwork and coordination and improve their fitness. This is all very laudable until match day, when they are taught the rudiments of football culture by their spectating parents. First, the decision of the referee or any other authority figure is never final, and attempts should be made to overturn that decision by phlegm, threats, intimidation and, if you can get away with it, violence. Second, you should never foul an opponent unless you can get away with it. Third, you should take any opportunity to collapse in screaming agony if it might appear to a distracted referee that an opponent might have fouled you, assuming of course that you can get away with it.
This behaviour is legitimised from on high. Gamesmanship of the most brazen order is an accepted feature of the professional game at all levels. It is not just accepted, it is expected and admired. Tackles that amount to criminal assault and feigned injuries good enough for the Oscars are common. For a fine tableau, refer to the Rooney groin stamp and Ronaldo wink from the 2006 World Cup, still available on YouTube.
Once upon a time, it would have been hard to prove intentional cheating after the fact; but given that we’ve had video recording for decades, it seems that nobody’s interested in cleaning up the game. It might be argued that such measures would disrupt the flow and timing of a complex event; yet in international rugby, the referee won’t hesitate to stop the clock to make sure any dubious call or thrown punch can be investigated by his counterpart in the video booth.
Many young, top-flight footballers were spotted early, tipped for greatness and raised in a rarefied environment where money was easy and winning was everything. It would therefore be surprising if testosterone-fuelled spats didn’t occur, both on and off the pitch. What does surprise is how little social responsibility the sport accepts.
In 2001, Leeds United players including Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate were tried for their involvement in a serious racist assault. Bowyer was acquitted and Woodgate given community sentence for a lesser offence. The jurors put their loyalty to their favourite team above their duty to justice and saw to it that the lads were looked after. The club itself neither punished nor disavowed their players, both of whom were able to resume their lucrative careers unimpeded. What would a premiership footballer have to do to harm his career? Would a policeman, teacher, children’s TV presenter or other role model have kept their job in similar circumstances?
The truth is that public or private morality doesn’t matter to the clubs because the money will keep rolling in. They will remain in clover as long as the unthinkingly loyal fans keep buying the product; the tribal brand, the pay-per-view channel, the £50 seat behind a pillar, yet another replica away-kit, a feeling of belonging, a righteous excuse for a punch-up.
I rarely join in with football conversations and was chastised by a former boss for this lack of an essential social skill. Everywhere, perfectly rational people treat a passion for football as a social lingua franca. Seemingly nowhere is that seen as ludicrous. It’s as if the sport is so intertwined with our culture it can do no wrong and, like a baby or an alcoholic uncle, must be embraced with all its blemishes and bad habits. Should I just accept that we get the sport we deserve?
