I Am the Enemy: Football, Authenticity, and the Internet
OVERTURE
A television commercial in which the burden of meaning is carried by a shot of a large silver and black map of the world on which the land is full of tiny holes of slightly varying diameters as though it had been stuck with pins only there are beams of brilliant light shining up through the holes and as the map turns in the shot they shine up through the holes more and more brilliantly until the map itself disappears and all you see is a plane of white light upon which a corporate logo fades into view and that's how you know that a cell phone could help your life mean something.
"YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE"
We'll start with this, because we've all heard it and seen it. A man in a red shirt running toward his team with a grin and a clenched fist; and then, all around him, that candycane sea, banners high and scarves waving, raising its voice in song. It fills the whole area of the screen in your living room, and you (you: who have never been to Anfield, who are not a Liverpool fan) feel chills pass across your body. Not because of the goal, but because of the joy, the beauty, and (though you perceive the essential sentimentality of this; you suspect it of a certain falseness) the solidarity of the crowd in its singing. You,
sitting alone in your house, watching the crowd like a painting.
SILVERY CITIBANK
The game assumes certain proportions. It crosses different thresholds as it grows. One of them is the moment at which the crowd's creation of an atmosphere—the colors, the chanting, the song—can be understood not as the experience of the people who are watching the match but as an aesthetic element to be consumed by the people who are watching the match: that is, by millions of people around the world who are looking at the match on a screen. Who are not implicated in the crowd's behavior, but are simply free to enjoy it or to ignore it, without commitment, like any other aspect of the match. This is the moment when the game has exported itself so successfully, to an audience so diffuse, that the impromptu culture created in the stands ceases to retain its original significance and becomes, to anyone watching from the outside, another selling point.
MACHINES FOR BINOCULARS
Fragments of digital information that can be unscrambled by software into pictures resembling a stadium are requested simultaneously from computers all over the world. Tiny points around the world light up. I listen to commentary in languages I don't understand, watching inch-high, pixellated players crackle and jump around a flicker I think is the ball. I watch matches alone, most of the time, sometimes with the sound on, sometimes while listening to music.
WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
The game changes—even more, the context of the game changes—as the world changes, and at the moment the direction of change in the world is one in which we (we: who are reading the internet; who are writing this) are disappearing into anonymous soft-focus cityscapes,
behind blurred apartment windows, down ribbon neon streets. Rain is distorting the camera lens and on the sixty-seventh floor a light goes out. It would be useless to try to stop history, or to say the game should be what it was in 1974. Useless, especially, for those of us whose connection to the game is only what it is because a truck which is rolling over a pool of water near a manhole cover speaks sixteen languages and knows the diameter of the world.
THE BILLIONAIRE WITH WHITE HAIR AND BLACK EYEBROWS
He has raised prices (reclining in the clouds, sipping from a shard of crystal, with his shirt sleeves rolled up) to help the club meet its interest payments. He has brought the club interest payments because he borrowed money to buy the club and then saddled the club with the debt. The difference between this and forcing other people to buy the club for him is chronological. The motive that has compelled him to act this way is
the belief that the vast soft-focus world is full of vast soft-focus crowds who are about to discover the game and bring huge new profits to it. He has created a model in the minds of many observers in which the club is a smoking black mountain of money down which flow hot bright rivers of its own supporters' rage. The motive that has compelled him to act this way is us.
DC-10 TONIGHT
The red flares light up the crowd, the smoke drifts down over the lower sections, and the camera shakes with the roar, as Riquelme leads Boca through the Copa Libertadores. Murmured conversations in Catalan sound throughout the Camp Nou while the Guardia Civil tensely lounge outside. Hughie Gallacher lies down on the railway tracks. The faint romantic thrill we feel when when we think about these things will change what these things mean. The crowd sing and raise their scarves to say to each other: You're here. You're one of us. And we say, louder and louder each time, until even they can hear us: You're only where we are. And we're nowhere.
EVER FALLEN IN LOVE
The game changes as the world changes. As I write this, the African Cup of Nations is underway and is being watched—this tournament, which five or six years ago was of no great interest outside Africa—by people all over the world. It's being discussed with excitement by bloggers and readers online. This doesn't feel like cheapening someone else's stories (although it might, five or six years from now); it feels like discovering new ones of our own. I don't know what's about to happen in football. Old ways of relating to the game are fading, in part because of us, even as new ways open up all around us. Is that a cause for hope? Is it possible that football will be saved not by remembering an old meaning, but by creating a new meaning out of what we make of the one we're about to forget? Are we a cause for hope (we: who are watching the game from a distance; who have no blood ties to a team; who are lights on a map; who are strangers) or only for more desperation?
Wow. A "massive" topic (in the actual sense of the word), handled with your usual aplomb.
I will take the coward's way out and say that it is too early to tell what this all means. One thing that is clear, however, is that the qualifications for being a "supporter/fan" are evolving, and that such changes are far from being without controversy.
As anyone who has participated in the at-time endless debates (whether in a pub, an Italian "bar" or on the internet) as to whether someone who only sees "their" team live once a year (or less) can be considered a true supporter can attest; the question can be extremely contentious, and bring to the surface many of the frustrations of the long-standing supporter with "calcio moderno" (whether or not he or she is familiar with that particular term).
One thing I can say with some certainty is that it seems almost impossible that the trend will reverse itself in the short-term, at least with respect to top flight teams in major footballing countries. Increasing ticket prices, the "corporatisation" of the "match day experience", the ever-increasing weight given to television, the increasing mobility (both geographical and social) of traditional sources of support and the explosion of "new media" all will contribute to making your query ever more relevant as time passes.
Ursus, your lucid catalog of the issues that swirl around this topic is the perfect appendix to my impressionistic post. Many thanks.
One of the reasons I framed the post as I did was to avoid having to wade into the "endless debates" you describe. The for-or-against "modern football" argument seems doomed to me from the start, since the "for" side (is there a "for" side?) is required to defend a concept that was essentially invented by its own critics, as well as to endorse all sorts of corporate excess; while the "against" side is a reactionary position that, as a matter of sheer practicality, is already doomed.
My feeling is that football is changing along with the rest of the world (ultras groups who rely on message boards for organization are just one example), in a way that means you won't be able to stop the changes by addressing them as issues specific to football. More interesting to me than trying to stop them at all is figuring out how to live with them, what to make of them, and how to preserve the best parts of the game (which at the moment seem to be defended neither by modern football's enemies nor by its proponents) in a new context.
I'm really interested, for instance, in what you call the "increasing mobility" of sources of support and the increasingly wide distribution of fans of top teams and leagues. I'm curious about what it might mean for the game to have an influx of fans who don't have a connection to any particular team (but are watching for love of the game itself) and who can't effectively travel to see matches in person. This sort of fan is completely to one side of the debate over what it means to be a real supporter, and is also largely exempt from the frustration and hostility that many real supporters increasingly seem to feel toward their own clubs. Is this sort of fan now in the best position to appreciate the "good" parts of the game in a climate of attention that seems continually more focused on the bad ones? And is that in itself a good thing, or is the long-distance fan's indifference to ticket prices at Old Trafford simply an obstacle to necessary change?
The Internet is not a truck! It's a series of tubes! =^P
[...] Football fandom and the internet. (The Run of Play) [...]
Dave, I see no reason at all why it can't be both.
But, as the extension of the debate in the comments show, you're speaking here exclusively of top-flight football. Most football isn't about SkyPrem. And if you look around Europe, you'll see that what is most striking is the increase of fans "downsizing", and building affinities - by going to watch - their local, non-league or lower lower team. Couple with the increase in mass fan ownership of clubs (of which the myfootballclub.com takeover of Ebbsfleet United is just an extreme example) and what you have is a rejection of the corporate bloatfest that is top-flight football by the, if you will, grassroots fans. No wonder there's no atmosphere at Arsenal anymore - it's all City boys on corporate jollies and starry-eyed tourists.
And sorry, but watching football without any especial emotion involved other than to appreciate the aesthetic is to miss the point. Football is emotion or it's just a bizarre hybrid of ballet and wrestling. You might as well get engaged in the intricacies of Kabbaddi.
"And sorry, but watching football without any especial emotion involved other than to appreciate the aesthetic is to miss the point."
If I don't play the game for any special emotional stimulus, why should I watch it for some?
I'm not suggesting you should. I'm saying, if there isn't an emotional relationship involved, football loses any meaning it could possibly have.
Emotion give football its history, its context, its atmosphere and its point. Watching it in some neutral, arts-appreciation mode reduces it to something less than the sporting equivalent of cyber-sex.
You are the enemy. And the best friend that the game has.
"Watching it in some neutral, arts-appreciation mode reduces it to something less than the sporting equivalent of cyber-sex."
But there is the rub. I don't think the 'arts-appreciation mode' is necessarily a neutral or 'emotionless' state of mind.
One can start off as a 'neutral' but end up with a myriad of differing emotions and biases as the game progresses.
I watched Real v Villarreal the other day. Coming into the game I did not support either team but just hoped for an exciting, highly technical game. The football on display didn't disappoint and at various stages of the game I was barracking for either team depending on how well they were playing.
Conversely, dissatisfaction with the style of play of a team has been enough to put me off watching them, in the past, even teams that I had supported for a very long time.
Juventus is a case in point.
Milan, Juve's arch rivals for so much of that time is now one of my favourite teams mostly based on their style of play.
I'm not saying here that I'm completely averse to the 'theater' and emotional contexts of supporting who you support but I now find myself more interested in how good teams play rather than who beats whom.
I think we understand the concept of "support" rather differently. If I didn't have an enduring emotional relationship with the game and with Argyle in particular, I would have nothing to do with the sham spectacular of it all. And reducing football to a consumerist selection box, all shiny and pretty and arty is so profoundly depressing that I need to lie down for a while.
With Argyle you would have to, wouldn't you?
I don't have an Argyle. Never had. I come from from a rather nascent football culture than you do. Australia is a place where football was/is not mainstream. To be a soccer fan was to be a bit of an outsider. Growing up, I supported various teams from around the world in remote. Does this make my appreciation of the game any less valid or less satisfying?
I know what you are getting at and I certainly have those types of emotional attachments to teams but we differ in how we project them.
Your support and emotional attachment to Argyle is of cultural reasons.
Mine on teams based on the players they have.
Jim — Woah, sorry to have upset you. Let me assure you that the game is in no way lacking in emotional force for me. But I can't agree with you when you suggest that "the only meaning [football] could possibly have" comes from one's emotional relationship to a team. Surely you have occasionally watched matches as a neutral? Maybe occasionally matches set in cultures that were not your own? And have you never felt emotion from a match like that that wasn't based on a long-standing relationship to a particular team?
For that matter, how is someone supposed to discover the game if the only possible meaning football can have is a function of one's emotional relationship to a team? You can inherit an emotional allegiance from a parent or a city, I guess, but what if those things don't lead you to football? There must be some meaning in the game that precedes the emotional connection to a team, or in a lot of cases the connection would never form in the first place.
You're absolutely right that I'm speaking exclusively about top-flight football. That's because I'm writing about an audience for whom top-flight football is largely the only kind of football to which they have access. The movement of some "grassroots fans" back to lower-league clubs is really interesting and has been well-documented (even if I don't think it's quite as large a movement as you imply). But there are other kinds of fans out there—I'm one of them—and other ways of being passionate about the game, and it seems important to deal with the implications of that beyond offering a simple purist rejection.
"And have you never felt emotion from a match like that that wasn’t based on a long-standing relationship to a particular team?
There must be some meaing in the game that precedes the emtional connection to a team, or in a lot of cases the connection would never form in the first place."
Exactly. How can a football fan fail to be moved by the play of Brazil '82 for example, regardless of where they come from? How is it that that team is almost universally recognised as one of the greatest ever when most have no allegiance to Brazil? Why has Brazil earned itself the sobriquet of 'everyone's second favourite team'?
I'm making several points in a hurry, s I apologise if I'm less than coherent.
1) I don't think you can have anything other than an extremely limited appreciation of the game unless you watch it regularly in the flesh. TV doesn't and can't count. Or, rather, it's just a completely different experience - more like American Gladiators or WWF.
2) An attachment to a team based on players is an attachment to players, not a team.
3) I don't understand how people come to the game these days, unless it's through a historical or cultural connection. It's just too hideous. Watching Premiership football is the equivalent of being sodomised with a red-hot poker. Who would voluntarily submit to it, unless it's a part of being Scouse or whatever?
4) Please show me where Brazil 82 are recognised as one of the greatest ever? Brazil 70 perhaps. Not Brazil 82. And they certainly aren't my second favourite team. I don't HAVE a 'second favourite team' - I don't understand how anyone could.
5) These other fans are accessories after the fact to the corporate stitch-up of the game. It's their demand for televised matches at the drop of the hat that has caused the bulk of the game' problems and its metamorphosis from a cultural experience to a plastic corporate whorefest. They helped and inspired the theft of the game from ordinary working people. Forgive me if I seem a little reluctant to "validate their experience".
Jim — You're taking an extremely hard line here (no one who doesn't follow a team in the flesh can appreciate the game; modern-day football is "hideous"; fans who come to the game through television or from other parts of the world are part of a "plastic corporate whorefest") and essentially arguing that I and many people who read this blog can't understand, and aren't real fans of, the game. So allow me to retort.
So much of what I hear from self-described "grass-roots" fans or "traditional supporters" today is complaining and self-pity. There's so much resentment, so much hostility—and so much of it expressed in hysterical terms, whether it's screaming about player salaries, crying about ticket prices, or lashing out at any fan who doesn't approach the game in exactly the same way you do. There's so much of all of this that it's hard to see how this sort of fan has any room left to enjoy the game, to appreciate the beauty of it, to admire what happens on the pitch. You yourself fit this bill perfectly when you describe the experience of watching the Premier League as "being sodomised with a red-hot poker". You seem to approach the game as a sort of masochistic duty that unites you with other people (sorry, "ordinary working people," cough) from your community.
It's fine with me if that's how you want to approach football. But on the other side I see a lot of fans whom you would deride for being "casual" and "unable to appreciate the game" who are not overwhelmed with the bitterness of traditional supporters, who love watching matches, who find that the way Lionel Messi dribbles the ball or the way Fabregas moves in space says something important to them, something that makes their lives better. While you're obsessing over what are really just changes to the context of the game, they're appreciating what they see on the pitch.
Now, maybe this sort of fan is wrong for not worrying more about the effects of corporatization (I'm not sure if you read my original post, but it was about 80% focused on the negative aspects of the new status quo in football) but it seems dogmatic and unreasonable to me to say that they don't love or can't understand the game. I'd even go so far as to say that they're closer in spirit to the original crowds on the terraces who went to see football not out of some grim communal duty but because—madly enough—they took pleasure in watching the game.
I realize, Jim, that you're not going to be brought around on this point, and I do understand where you're coming from (again, the frustrations of grass-roots fans are an important part of my post). But I'd ask you to try to see, at least, that football contains many mansions, as someone once said about God, and there's more than one valid way to experience it. I don't know how we've gotten to the point where hating the game is the only way to prove that you love it. Personally I just love it, and honestly I'm glad I'm not alone.
By the way, Brazil were fantastic in 1982—a freewheeling attacking team that gets overshadowed because 1) they didn't win the World Cup and 2) they didn't have Pele. They had Socrates (why does no one remember Socrates, by the way?), Falcao, Oscar, Zico—the list goes on—and a coach that wanted to make every match a carnival. They destroyed Maradona and Argentina in the World Cup, and were only knocked out by Italy (the eventual winners) in one of the greatest WC matches of all time.
Brazil 1982, man. Look it up.
Thank you, Brian, for articulating so clearly the chasm that lies between us.
I reiterate that simply "appreciating what you see on the pitch" has caused the decline and collapse of the game I love. Stuff the context, give me the product. That's where sweatshops come from - that's where Sky and the eleventh circle of hell that is the Prem come from. And I'm sure, in your sitting-room, on the plasma screen, seduced by Fabregas's movement in space (no mention of his rolling around getting players sent off though? Odd), that is all that matters. You as individual, getting off on the men and their skill. It is cyber-sex.
But, if you travel, as I do, 100 miles a Saturday to watch the Greens; if you do so in the company of people with whom you spend your everyday lives; if you've grown up with a ground, with the smells, sights and sounds of PL2 3DQ; if the history,as unimpressive as it may be is burned on your consciousness; if you've wept tears of despair at Burnley and tears of utter, utter delight at Rochdale; if you've spent 13 hours on a coach to watch us lose 5-0 and still gone again next week - it actually means something else. It's not about me and wanking over Lionel Messi. It's about something much, much more important than that.
I dont hate the game. How could I? If I did, I'd just ignore it. And your comments about supporters whinging about ticket prices and salaries do you no credit. Because the cost of football, to the people where I live, work and breathe, costs them, on average 10% of their annual budget. How much does it cost you? And,as I said last time, all those who demand their football from Scudamore, Murdoch and the gang contribute to its theft from those who actually go. Which is why I feel somewhat strongly on the subject.
Seriously, stop writing about football on the telly. Tell us about your local team, down the road. Pay money and go and watch them. I don't know who they are, but I bet they'd appreciate it. Forget the glitz, the celebrity and the bullshit - hell, come for a visit to Cornwall, you can stay with me, I'll take you, on the bus, to Argyle. We've got some players too, y'know. I'll tell you about 'em some day.
Oh, and Brazil 82? I was there at the time. France were better by streets, suburbs, whole freaking TOWNS. Were it not for Schumacher (who should STILL be serving time), they would have won that World Cup. But still not the best team in history - please see Hungary '54 or Holland '74 for that.
…gotta agree with Jim there. That French team in 82 were a bit special. And I've been looking for Schumacher ever since.
You say you don't hate the game, Jim, but really, what do you like about it? Because it sounds like the only things you like about it are the fans you travel with and your communal experience in the stands. I mean, if you think any appreciation of a player's style or skill boils down to "wanking over Lionel Messi", what are you getting out of a match except the feeling of belonging to a tradition and the catharsis of seeing your team win or lose? Those are good things, important things, and I'm glad you have them in your life, but football isn't the only place you can get them. Surely you can at least imagine a way of admiring the game that isn't masturbatory (it's hard for me to see where the sexual element is coming into it in your mind, honestly) but that's based on a love for the game that's separate from a love of community.
Anyway, as we move into the cyber-sex and you-telling-me-to-stop- writing-my-blog phase of the debate, I think we might be moving past the point at which the argument is useful. Maybe someone else can weigh in; in any case, thanks for articulating your position. If you weren't so exclusionary about it, I would have a lot more sympathy for where you're coming from. But even still, it's helped to clarify some of the issues at hand.
Oh, and you won't hear me say a word against France 82. They had some questionable results (lost to England, for one, and lost to Poland in the third-place game) but what a sensational team. I'd have loved to see them play that Brazil team in the World Cup, actually. Sadly, we'd need four more years before that would come to pass.
That's a shame. I thought we were making progress.
But I think it brings me back to where I came in, which is essentially that what you call the game and what I call the game are two fundamentally different things. The game I mean cannot be divorced from its tradition, its context and the people to whom it belongs. The game you describe is, I say again, all product. Of course I can imagine a way of admiring the game that's separate from a love of community: I just think it's wrong. And pointless. Because it's all about the individual and what THEY want. It's self-regarding (see Quentin Crisp). Which is wrong. Life isn't meant to be like that. Neither is football.
As for "what else are you getting out of a match except the feeling of belonging to a tradition and the catharsis..", if the answer isnt, "what else could there possibly be", then I guess it's humour, camaraderie, togetherness, understanding - I could go on. But then, I could equally well ask, 'what do you get out of a match other than appreciating the skill of the players?'. If that's all there is to it, you can get that plenty other places as well - again, as I said from the off, you might as well engage with Kabbaddi.
Do you go to games?
Jim, I live hundreds of miles away from where there are any games to go to. That's the entire point. Not everyone has a local team, and you're rather insultingly telling all such people that the connection they feel to football is invalid and wrong. As though they don't know better.
There are millions of people in the world who weren't born in footballing cultures, who are discovering the game through technology. I think that's a fascinating development. You think it's a cause for lamentation. But one thing I know is that it isn't going to change, no matter how much you wish otherwise.
Anyway, you still haven't listed a single thing you like about football that doesn't come down to treating the game as a sort of highly charged aspect of your social life ("humour, camaraderie, togetherness…") What I get out of the game that isn't "appreciating the skill of the players" (since you seem determined never to do so) is an entire world of drama, suspense, comedy, and struggle; I get great stories; and interestingly, I get a lot of compelling discussion—even humor, camaraderie, etc.—with people online whose existence I would never have known about otherwise.
You seem to have some strange feelings about how things "the individual" enjoys by himself or herself are autmatically wrong. (Do you read a book with other people?) So if football online manages to bring strangers together in a shared love of the sport, do you see that as a good thing? Or should those of us who weren't born in Plymouth just clear out and leave the game to the people who truly understand it?
Really? No football of *any description? Not even parks standard? Not even a school team? Where on earth do you live?
What is a cause for lamentation is the belief that [i]the football we see on the telly is all there is[/i]. That it is the be-all and end-all. When in fact it is the tip of iceberg. And I am simply saying that the demand all of you make for TV football has had and will continue to have a massively detrimental effect on the game, in well-documented ways. And will you please stand up and take your share of the responsibility?
Maybe community isn't important to you. Maybe the sense of shared identity, the notion that we are more than individuals is alien. But it is central to my life, my faith, my family and my football. Social life? Damn it, it's part of my *working life - I marry these people, baptise their children, bury their parents. All because we belong together. And football - not just Argyle, but the local side, playing in SW Peninsula League Division 1 - is an integral part of that community. It is a major tie that binds us together.
And you may well get this world of suspense and drama - though Dostoevsky or Hal Hartley's better - but it's always someone else's view. You can only see what the TV director wants you to see. And when the game starts clamouring for technology, that's not irrelevant. All of a sudden, Sky don't simply show the game - they control it. How long before we have interactive votes on whether Messi was offside or not - which actually decide a match, a title, a World Cup?
And of course it's going to change. Football hasn't stopped changing since 1872 - why on earth would you think it's going to now? Discover the game through technology, by all means. But understand, please, that it's more than art; that football isn't something you watch, it's something you participate in.
What I think is wrong is when the wishes of the individual override and damage the community. When product comes at the expense of context. When what you want damages what I and many others want. We all have responsibilities that extend beyond ourselves, and football is no different in that regard than anything else.
Look at your initial post again. Your last sentence is a question. Why ask it, if you don't want people to answer: "The latter. And here's why"?
This is only tangentially related, but in my mind it is related.
I went to the France-Scotland game in Paris in September. I have wanted to do this — attend a France match in Paris — for ages. I may do it again soon. But if not for the passionate Scottish fans, it would have been a disappointment.
There is more passion directed toward the France team when I watch on the internet, communicating with other English-speaking (or bilingual) fans who feel the same passion for the team that I do. That passion wasn't there in the Parisian fans, and it wasn't due to the fact that the France team lost the game.
It was after this game that I realized that much of my love for the team is due to the fact that it is NOT a reflection of French society, particularly racially. Many of my readers of my France blog say the same thing. And my France page is where they go to enjoy and experience that. Rather than going to a Parisian stadium, where the view of the team is filtered through the prism of French society, they go to an American blog. They go to a place completely outside of French society, where all that remains are the players and the team.
If there is a positive side to the phenomenon you describe, it is this.
"What I think is wrong is when the wishes of the individual override and damage the community. When product comes at the expense of context. When what you want damages what I and many others want. We all have responsibilities that extend beyond ourselves, and football is no different in that regard than anything else."
This is why there are the Argyles and the Arsenals in the world. Argyle for the context seekers, the people with responsibilities and a sense of community, and Arsenal for the wankers.
They both have a place in the world. Let's just leave it at that.
"Oh, and Brazil 82? I was there at the time. France were better by streets, suburbs, whole freaking TOWNS."
Everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess but this is the first time I have heard someone speak of France '82 in the same breath as that Brazil side.
France played a few lousy games, Brazil did not.
Wow. Quite a bit has happened since I last checked in.
Brian, to address your point first, the "mobility" I was thinking of was more tangible than the virtual variety you evoke. I was thinking of an increasing trend towards geographic mobility in Europe and Latin America that brings with it strains on the traditional sense of the football community that Jim so passionately invokes. To cite just one older example, the massive internal migration of workers from the impoverished Sud to the factories of the North is largely responsible for the fact that Juventus is by some distance the most popular team in the country south of Napoli. For the emigrants that were working in and around Torino, Juve were the obvious choice, especially if they were economically reliant on Fiat. For those working closer to Milano, Juve provided a means of identification that could rival those of the two Milano clubs and the exploitative Milanese power structure they represented.
As to what I read as the core of Jim's argument, I understand, appreciate and agree with much of it, but wonder if his aim is slightly off, at least as applied to you and to other North Americans. From the perspective of someone who has lived in five European countries and visited virtually all of them, I would say that the British football culture he invokes can justifiably be described as unique. It is recognised as being so by the vast majority of supporters from the rest of Europe, which is why Britain has always been seen by many of them as a place of pligrimmage. Though the "Sky revolution" came first to Britain, the concentration of support among a relatively handful of "big" clubs has characterised football allegiances in most of the rest of the continent predates Sky by decades. Even Germany, which is probably the country closest to Britain in terms of the dispersal of support and the primacy of local identity, finds it difficult to support more than 40 professional clubs, with teams one level below Plymouth Argyle's being thrilled if they can get "crowds" in the low four figures. A number of teams on Argyle's level here in Italy draw similar numbers of fans.
I would argue that the true commercial imptetus for the developments Jim decries hasn't come from internet devotees, overseas fans and new media junkies, but rather from domestic punters when it comes to the Premier League (though for these purposes the Republic of Ireland qualifies as a "domestic" part of Britain) and from them and their counterparts in other European nations when it comes to the Champions League. For all of the hype about global branding, shirt sales, foreign tours and the wave of new foreign owners in the Premier League, the actual commercial impact of any of those initiatives to date is dwarfed by the domestic impact. To put it crudely, Brian's interest in watching football on television and the internet has virtually nothing to do with the fact that kids where Jim lives are more likely to be wearing Arsenal or Chelsea shirts than Argyle ones.
This isn't at all meant to be antagonistic to Jim, who has argued his point with great skill and passion. It is just intended to provide what I think is some helpful context, and it is worth noting in that respect that I have always found it difficult for Brits who are steeped in their own football culture to understand how different things are on the other side of the Channel, let alone ocean.
I don't know where Brian lives, but I am sure that there is no professional or semi-professional football within hundreds of miles, that "parks standard" means U-12s (and perhaps pickup teams in immigrant communities), and that the highest standard of "organized" football in the vicinity is high school soccer played a few months a year in the middle of weekend afternoons by kids who consider it the second or third most important they play.
This is almost certainly too much to try to squeeze into one comment while remaining coherent. I hope the dialogue continues.
A very lucid and truthful analysis by ursus. I also think Jim's scorn is a little misplaced, after all, it wasn't we who created the Premier League but your clubs themselves.
Laurie — I think your point is deeply relevant. One of the most interesting things to me about football on the internet is the possibility it brings of building ad hoc "communities" (I'm putting the word in quotes to acknowledge that they aren't replacements for actual, flesh-and-blood communities) around matches, teams, or the sport itself. Without getting too Cingular-commercial about it, this seems to me to be a way that the game really can bring people together in new and encouraging way.
Some of my favorite football writers in the world these days are fans from thousands of miles away whose existence I only know about because of the internet and our shared love of this sport. Roswitha, for instance, is a woman in India who is most likely not attending many live matches in the San Siro. And yet her writing on Milan and calcio is as incisive and subtle as anything in the professional press, not just as sportswriting but also as cultural criticism. I'm not sure whether it justifies the way the game is changing for local supporters (I'm also not sure that it has to) but it's a good thing to have in the world.
Ursus — A series of great points. I'm particularly interested in your argument that shifts in domestic support bear the brunt of the responsibility for weakening traditional football communities. I guess a traditional supporter could argue that the Sky revolution has always been driven at least by the idea of overseas markets, and thus the Chelsea-loving English 12-year-old could be seen as a kind of domestic byproduct of the dream of the game's exportation. That seems historically tenuous, though, as I don't think overseas markets were even a twinkle in anyone's eye in 1991.
In any case, at home or abroad, there is not so much honey in this world that I am ever going to call a person wicked for watching a game on television.
Troppo gentile, as always (for one thing, it's full of typos; that penultmate line was supposed to be "high school soccer played a few months a year in the middle of weekDAY afternoons by kids who consider it the second or third most SPORT important they play."
You are of course right that the prospect of significant overseas revenues has been dancing in the minds of football's "money men" since at least the late 90s, but pretty much anyone who actually bet money on their realisation has lost their shirt (see, e.g., the trendline of football share indicies since the floatation boom, which resembles Derby County's "march through the Premiership). Virtual oceans of ink were spilled over the Man United - New York Yankees "strategic partnership" when it was announced, yet its tangible results barely register as a damp spot, let alone a puddle. Even the much vaunted shirt sales are generally restricted to a relative handful of clubs (often those employing East Asian "idols" like D. Beckham) and seriously harmed by virulent counterfeiting.
Interestingly enough, one club that has been rather successful in "monetising" its overseas supporter base is none other than that oft-cited paragon of collective virtue and "people power": FC Barcelona.
In the five or so years that I have been a Barca socio, the number of members has almost doubled, and a very significant portion of that increase has come from supporters who visit Barcelona less than once a year (never mind attending matches regularly). Though the number of clubs that can hope to emulate Barca's success in this respect is incredibly limited.
Your analysis, ursos, is fine, but omits one, fairly significant item - overseas TV revenues. The impact of those on an (admittedly already bloated) Prem is nothing sort of catastrophic for smaller, community-based clubs and for the vitality and competitiveness of the Championship. At a stroke, because of those overseas revenues, monies distributed to the bottom-placed Prem side will more than double this season, distorting the playing field even more and making the likelihood of anyone other than the same handful of clubs going up from the Championship negligible.
And of course the reverberations are felt up and down the League. The effect is to increase the already massive gap between the wealthy few and the rest - and all in the name of feeding the demand for Premiership football around the world. If the demand wasn't there, the revenues wouldn't be so high and the problem would be lessened, though not,as you rightly point out, disappeared altogether.
So you have a responsibility. I ask again: how much do you pay for your football? This game, that you profess to have such a love for, such a passion for, what does it actually cost you? Want to do some good? Want to acknowledge that you owe football, for all the drama, tension and stuff you revel in? Here's a suggestion. Buy a season ticket - not in the club you support, but in a lower-league club somewhere - Mansfield Town, say, or Wrexham. A couple of hundred quid, is what we're talking about - a fraction of the cost of what the fans pay to follow their team. Call it reparation, call it investment, call it whatever you like. At least you'll have a team that you belong to, that you have a tangible connection with. Find out about them. Blog about them. Surely that's much more of a way of "learning to love the game" than simply cherry-picking your favourite international stars and rooting for both sides of (yet another) Madrid/Barca game.
Jim, thanks for engaging, but I really don't think that overseas television revenues are that significant.
Take a look at this (assuming the link works):
graph:http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/business_manchester_united_in_figures/img/1.jpg
The data is from 2003, but what it shows is that for Man United (probably the most "global" British club) overseas television revenues represented less than 5% of their media revenues (which in turn represented less than a third of turnover). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared.....html/1.stm
They will talk until the cows come home about the "potential" (and did again in the latest results release), but the actual numbers are small beer (especially compared to domestic Sky contract and the Champions League).
That said, I hearily endorse everything in your paragraph on responsibility. I bought a season ticket to Albinoleffe (the Serie B team that plays in Bergamo) because they decided to combat the city's reputation for being hostile to non-natives by offering foreigners (like me) a "family" ticket (one adult, one child) for Euro 100. We still haven't used it, but I'm very glad to have been able to add one to their numbers. I also made sure that the first live match my son saw in Italy was at Pro Sesto in C1, not at San Siro. Should you ever make it down to Milano, I'd be happy to take you to both places.
OK. But what percentage are those revenues for clubs like Newcastle or Portsmouth? The difference overseas revenue will make to Derby, for example, is astronomical. They double, at a stroke, the loathsome parachute payments, leading to the distortion in the leagues below I spoke of (via, as I'm sure you can work out, inflated transfer fees and salaries).
In a sense, and despite my rantings, the Big Four aren't really all that relevant. The branding is embedded and they are almost more than a caricature of themselves. Its the cutting of the ropes to the leagues below that is particularly unpleasant, especially when you remember that the Prem (or "Superleague" as it was going to be called) initially envisaged no promotion or relegation at all, and it was only through hard negotiation (including the negotiating away of virtually all of the TV cut) that kept it in. Now, through the parachute payments, they're doing it by the back door. And the parachute payments are funded by overseas - and new media - TV revenue.
Hat tip for Albinoleffe, though. I'd like to see a blog about them. And Milan for Argyle might not seem much of a trade, but the offer's there…..
Well, that's another part of the problem, isn't it? We don't really know what percentage of revenues they represent for the likes of Derby because there most clubs don't even publish the non-GAAP, spin-doctored figures that Man United does.
I had understood that the increase in Sky revenues was primarily driven by domestic rights fees, but if I'm wrong about that, it would weaken my original assertion.
And of course you are dead right about the invidious influence of parachute payments; Champions League revenues being to the "Big Four" (wretch) what parachute payments are to the likes of Derby.
And I'd actually love to go to Home Park, I'll let you know if I make it to the area anytime soon. Condolences on the Pompey result btw; I thought you had them for a while.
I don't need to 'learn to love' the game as that was done 20 years ago. And why should I pay for season tickets of a team that I will not get to see even if I wanted to see them?
The lower leagues in England are not my concern. You should get off your pedestal and start to get second and third favourite teams by buying multiple season tickets yourself. I attend Sydney FC matches here to support the league and football in this country, not for the play which is at times (most of the time!) even worse than the Championship.
To be honest, A, I'm not sure you've understood a single thing I've said. I wonder if you're confusing loving the game with loving being able to sit at home and watch all the football you like without having to pay properly for it. It's slightly different.
I'm glad you go to watch Sydney, though.
In the three year deal that expired this season, domestic Premier League television revenues were £1.024 billion and international revenues were £320 million.
The new package is worth £1.7 billion domestically and £625 million internationally over three years.
There was a telling quote from David Gold about the growing Premier League/Championship imbalance and parachute payments: "The major issue and the reason to get promoted now is to get relegated."
In general, I think the issue of being a fan of football in places like North America, in terms of televised and local football, is actually very complicated, as ursus has already mentioned.
One could argue that watching and encouraging others to watch Premier League football on television in the U.S. is good for local football here.
I want my local team, the Chicago Fire, to win over more fans so it can survive and thrive — but that means it doesn't just need to win over folks who prefer only to watch on TV, it needs the entire soccer fanbase to expand.
Like it or not, people discover sport via television and the internet these days. Fox Soccer Channel, with its diet of Premier League, Calcio and MLS introduces people to the game. They then often meet in bars to watch the games together, and then some might start attending local MLS or USL games, if their city has such a team.
Soccer in this country is competing in a massively competitive and saturated sports market; the aesthetic appeal of football as a fluid team game (compared to the violence of American football, the statistical appeal of baseball, or the individualist superstar orientated game of basketball) is what draws many people to it in the first place. So yes, its function as art is important. And so is it that people write about it lyrically — such media has always driven faith and love of sport, from baseball to cricket (though less so for football in England, in a perhaps not unrelated tangent).
There are so many other sports options locally (Chicago has four major professional sports teams that draw 99% of the local sports media coverage), and so few parents raising their children to be soccer fans, that an affection for soccer has to start from somewhere else here.
Once they discover it, many Fire fans stick around to follow MLS for the reasons Jim cites. The football, after all, is distinctly not shiny and pretty, so there does need to develop such things as city pride, loyalty, and a sense of community. Our supporters' club is described by many as a family, as the outpourings of collective grief when one of us dies or collective fun and comradeship when we go on a 700 mile away trip shows.
The most devoted fans I know, who do all the activities Jim describes as being those of a real supporter, almost all also watch Premier League football together too.
So what's the verdict on them, Jim? As well as supporting their own local soccer, do they also need to donate their money (and believe me, most of these folks don't have it) to a random English or Italian lower league club as penance for watching the Premier League or Serie A?
Of course, there are tons of "Eurosnobs" obsessed with La Liga who will not watch MLS because the quality of the game is too low (and by not attending and putting their hand in their pocket, they're not helping their local teams grow, and they are also missing out on the positive aspects of supporting a local team). Jim would hate them.
Yet in a way, I wish there were more. I wish soccer was on TV in every bar in the city of Chicago every day, since then I'd know people care enough about the sport for my local club to survive and for professional soccer to flourish, and for the same to be true in every city in America.
And people in those cities without a real option of local football (outside of MLS and a few USL clubs, teams usually don't have their own grounds or any fans, thus making the kind of fellowship extolled by Jim nigh on impossible) but with a love for the game join 'virtual' communities: remember, they probably know almost no-one else locally who cares about Arsenal or Inter or Barcelona. It's not a crime to want to share your appreciation of something with other people on the internet.
Certainly, it would be good if they understood better the consequences of the globalisation of football and television for smaller clubs. I too am concerned about lower level football elsewhere as well as locally; as a Brighton and Hove Albion supporter, I can hardly close my eyes to the economic inequality in English football.
But what is the best way to proceed? We should aim to better explain the economics and culture of local football in England, as the mainstream media won't do it for us.
Perhaps we could use technology to help local clubs, via an international online Clubs in Crisis fund, for example. The odd person turning off the TV because they've been chastised for watching football on it or throwing two hundred quid in to any given team without any real knowledge of how the money will be used isn't a serious solution.
Trying to use new media at a grassroots level to foment change and inform people is surely a better step in the right direction.
I found Brian's original post helpful in furthering this discussion. For me, he captured the tension of all of this — and I do think there is not a black & white answer — very well.
The problem with you Jim is that you think Plymouth has a monopoly on passion for the game. And frankly, you are mistaking your love for community and club for love of the game.
Furthermore, I think your scorn for the Premier League is misguided and borne of jealousy more than anything else. Tell me, has attendances for Argyle dropped, raised or stayed the same since the inception of the Premier League? If the case is the latter two options, then your arguments have no leg to stand on because that is all that should matter to you.
I do love the game by any definition of the term. Why else would I religiously wake up at ungodly hours every week to watch it year in year out? I pay for my football on TV, $100 a month if you must know. Fate had it that I was not born in Milan, Turin or Buenos Aires so that I may follow my favourite clubs at the ground.
Enthusiasm has driven me to the horrible internet word: Tom ftw. Great, great comment.
I'm thinking about writing a post about this tomorrow, so any thoughts would be appreciated, but I'm wondering why, when we're talking about the problems of the present moment, the prospect of a more robust European revenue-sharing system isn't more seriously discussed. It would be a nightmare to implement, but even given the near-impossibility of convincing Chelsea that their future lies with giving Forest Green Rovers a share of their television revenue, the option has to be worth exploring, right? At a stroke it could ease some of the problems of competitive imbalance and help smaller clubs survive.
If there were enough clamor for something like this among fans, the smaller clubs, and then the game's administrators, would surely press the case. And the fact that the system works pretty well in American sports would be a standing argument in its favor. I realize, again, that it's to some extent naïve even to raise the idea. But if we're looking for a positive use for the grassroots power of new media, it's—arguably, anyway—a worthier cause than some others.
It definitely deserves exploring and to my mind would be very much a good thing.
The three most significant factors working against it, in my view are, in no particular order:
1) the absence of any kind of pan-European (let alone worldwide) regulation in this regard, which leads teams like the English big four to see themselves as competing primarily with the likes of Italian Big Three, Spanish Big Two and German Big One, thereby creating a situation in which any league or country that is the first mover will find itself at a disadvantage vis a vis its competitors.
2) Fierce competition across what the French call the "audio visual landscape" for product, which leads media companies (especially new entrants) to try to break apart collective rights agreements in the hope that they can get a marquee attraction and/or bid beyond their means for other contracts. This is at the root of the mess in Spain at the moment, lay at the root of the Kirch debacle in Germany and its ITV digital counterpart in England and can also be seen in the escalation of fees in France and the emergence of Setanta as a player in Britain.
3) The increasing role of financial investors in football clubs, whose business models (and, more importantly, plans for servicing their often massive debt) are predicated on keeping the lion's share of the revenue they believe that they generate (notwithstanding the fact that they have to play against somebody).
Those factors make the issue a very hard nut to crack, as the Prodi government found when it tried to impose collective bargaining for television rights in Serie A.
…not to mention having to overcome the attitude of clubs like Liverpool who will not even forego their measly share of the gate takings at Luton to help out a club in severe financial trouble.
[...] for fans," we're still much more likely to direct our blame at individual people or general social change than at the financial structures that underlie the [...]
Brian, thanks for a great initial post, and thanks to all the people who have made insightful comments.
One of the difficulties in discussing the economics, politics and institutional structures of football is that for most of us football is primarily an emotional experience. Whether it is an emotional experience rooted in community, family, locality and years of suffering, or one rooted in the exultation of a beautiful move, an improbable goal, a nerve-wracking tip over the bar or a nifty step-over, (and there's no reason it can't be both) it's first and foremost a visceral and instinctive thing, not an intellectual.
And a fundamental aspect of the human condition is the impossibility of experiencing another person's emotions exactly as they do. This is why we explore the emotional world through art & literature not through cold hard factual analysis.
Because what a lot of this comes down to is "I love my club more than you love yours" or, more often and more problematically, "I love my club IN A BETTER WAY than you love yours." Well, none of us are in a position to know how our emotional bond to our club (or to the game as a whole) compares to anyone else's emotional bond. Yet it's apparently a competitive matter.
If I meet someone from Tokyo or Toronto who has never been to Italy but has followed Roma since 1982 and knows every detail of every team since then, and who it was who scored against Juve in 1992, are they more or less of a fan than I am, after only 5 years of regular matchgoing and only 2 as a season-ticket holder? And more to the point, why should it matter? it's not some kind of moral high ground competition.
The economic consequences of that support matter hugely: the effect of overseas TV revenues - or more pertinently, the potential effects of possible future revenues - matter plenty. But that's a separate issue from the emotional basis of what "real" fandom is. Who should presume to look into another's heart?
Very well put, Spangles, and I couldn't agree more. Football is what you make of it, is capacious, and can be loved and enjoyed in many different ways. I'm happy for someone who never goes to a match and watches two games a year on television, if he gets something out of those two games. I'm happy for someone who travels with the team and bases his social life around going to games.
Inevitably, fan interests are going to collide, but I think it's vitally important that we don't start to use our stakes in those collisions to try to define who is and who isn't a real fan, or assert our own exclusive right to football. To do so is to turn what ought to be a discussion about where we find ourselves now into a senselessly polarized debate about who should and who shouldn't be allowed to read Shakespeare or believe in God.
Roswitha has a great post at Pitch Invasion about the flux in which fan identity finds itself today; for anyone who's interested, it makes a good companion piece to this discussion.
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