How Long Before Football Gets A Face-lift?
Apologies to readers that think football already gets far too much coverage. But, football was the biggest sporting news this last week. That big news was however rather nasty and sometimes damned awful. Football seems to need a total face-lift if it is to hold its head up high again. It is no longer the ”beautiful game”. The worst of the worst in this destruction of the beautiful game is England.
As we know Portsmouth are in deep trouble with their mangled accounting systems and mafia style morality. As a few ”special accountants” move to keep the football club as a saleable commodity the same people get buggered and get hurt. That is the football supporters and that is also the everyday working folk that do the less glamerous jobs. Now we hear that about 85 working folk have lost their jobs. Many heard about this through the newspapers first. Portsmouth are one clear example of the legacy of Thatcher and Blair where rich elite players are allowed to do as they want and even get awards for doing such greedy and self-centred schemes that help mainly the few. That hurt the majority. Sick.
We also learn that only two Portsmouth footballers (who a earn thousands and thousands per week) would agree to taking a pay cut so that an attempt cold be made to keep the everyday working folk in work and keep the club as a ongoing community. These footballers are being seen as greedy self-centred spoilt rats. We can smell the football fans hot breath and we can feel the anger now. Indeed football folk are getting very fed up with this destruction of the game. Portsmouth football fans want to take back their club.
As Manchester United remain, under the traditional leadership of Sir Alex, the unhappy fans calm down their anger but if once Sir Alex would wear a yellow and green scarf all hell would erupt. The American owners would be literally down and out. Even with a good victory last night in the Champions league the big stories remained with the revolts against the American ownership that knows and cares so little about the beautiful game. The pictures going around the world of David Beckham wearing this yellow and green scarf said it all. There are big moves to take back the streets.
(Actually I am rather angry at the way that Manchester United supporters have moved away from their traditional red and white colours and into yellow and green. There are only two big teams in the world that may wear yellow and green. First and foremost my own Norwich City. Second, only a little bit lower, is Brazil)
Liverpool are in similar states of anxiety with their own American ownership and it will not take very long for this anxiety to surface as outright angry protest. Just wait a few more weeks and see the shit hit the fan. It will, it will. In fact we can expect a volcanic eruption from Liverpool unless some magical wand is quickly waved around to change things. What we see today is the lull and calm before the storm.
This is all very sad. These necessary protests for the future can cover up some of the things that remain good and that remain in a good football tradition. But a football club must be run along football lines and those that own and control football do need to love the beautiful game. There is so much more to football than special accounting gurus or debt handlers or hedge fund hogs. Of course we can say (and we must say) that this ideal also applies to education, health, general social welfare and cultural life but football today is showing the first signs of this realisation in public. I might even say that football can lead the way. Take back the streets and keep them away from special accounting targets, profiteering pirates and debt-loving rogues.
I hope our Finnish government reads this. Why? Think about it. Smell the mustard. Smell the coffee. Smell the slow return to a streetwise population. Football fans find a new sympathy for Islanders and Greeks today. What is more is that many hundreds of thousands of lovers of the beautiful game are saying that enough is now enough.
David Beckham, that master of public relations, well knew this feeling of the football fans. That is why he wore their yellow and green. Beckham knows the real mood of the street.
As one football fan was reported as saying last week : ”Different balls are going to be kicked soon”.
However a few big boys, like Mr Murdoch, are doing everything they can to prevent this uprising. His media refuse to carry a story like this one above. The Sky high media of Murdoch do everything they can to silence the street. That is how they make his big money.
NB: My story above should not be taken as a critique of American sport itself. My context is England. In fact American elite sport is far more egalatarian and even bit parts socialistic than is sometimes believed. England is far more elitist and unequal than America with top sporting lives.
Steve Bowles
