Cork City are to be wound up. Shelbourne lost their Premier League license in 2007 after five titles in six titles and in spite of reaching the third round of the UEFA Cup. Derry City suffered the possibility of going out of existence between 2000 and 2004 before finally raising the necessary money. Drogheda United went into examinership in late 2008 and had ten points deducted before the supporters finally managed to pull the club back from the brink. In 2005 Shamrock Rovers entered examinership and were also saved at the last moment by the fans.
And so on, and so forth. True, in some cases the problems have come from the usual property developers, disputes with local councils and incompetent financial management, and granted, the fans have saved some of the clubs – Bohemians is another club to be owned totally by its supporters. However, the fundamental reason behind the precarious position of Irish football clubs is the fact that the majority of Irish soccer fans pour money into the coffers of English clubs and ignore their local teams while they go bust.
I say English clubs quite deliberately. Everyone in Ireland has a soft spot for Glasgow Celtic, but there is a very real historical reason for that support and a very real connection between Ireland and (most of) Glasgow. At the end of the day Celtic is every Irish fan’s second club, whether they are the true fans who follow Irish clubs or the plastic fans who want to get close to England’s ass.
Let’s just pause a moment and consider what we are talking about. Do all French fans follow German teams? Do all Norwegian fans follow Swedish clubs? So why on Earth does the majority of Ireland follow clubs from some foreign neighbour?
Fans here will tell you that it is the result of the high number of Irish people who left to work in England, but as I have said before there are many Scottish people in England and they wouldn’t be seen dead supporting an English club. Others mention the huge Irish population of Liverpool, but there are infinitely more Irishmen or descendants of Irishmen in New York and nobody wants to follow the New York Red Bulls. Some people will talk about the number of Irish players who have crossed the water, but if that was the real reason then the fans would all have been following Reading for the last few seasons. Admittedly a lot of Irish people started following Sunderlandnil recently, but we don’t want them because they are not real fans – they don’t want the football, they just want the glory (!).
This phenomenon used to be confined to Liverpool and maybe Manchester United, but since the explosion of the Premier League you will see Leeds United shirts, Everton and Spurs colours, and Chelsea or Arsenal stickers on cars. I mean, what does Tottenham have to do with Ireland?
To a certain extent though, the fans could be said to be just following their instincts as well as the smell of success. Who wouldn’t abandon unfashionable clubs and jump on the bandwagon of rich men and silverware if somebody promised you eternal glory? It’s like the weak-willed man who is approached by a stunning woman dressed only in expensive perfume. His wife will be forgotten until he gets his trousers back on, and even then he’ll only be thinking up some justification which will involve blaming his wife for his own fall from faithfulness.
The modern television version of top-flight English football is a painted harlot that lures weak-willed foreign fans with expensive perfume with no thought of the damage she does to other women by sleeping with their husbands. The TV companies and the clubs and the governing bodies would argue that they are simply doing business but they don’t seem willing to recognise that with power and money comes a huge responsibility.
I’ll put it another way – it’s like that huge hypermarket that suddenly moves in down the road and puts all the small shops out of business. The hypermarket has every right to be there, and if the entrepreneur has enough money to build it, well fair play, but where will we be without all those small local shops? And what about the people who lose their jobs? Surely a person in the same business should accept that they have a certain responsibility towards fellow shopkeepers, and surely the Premier League and the TV companies should think about weaker leagues in neighbouring countries.
Smaller leagues the world over find themselves in more and more trouble as the global fan base chooses to follow the glittering prize of the Premier League, and as with all other aspects of the modern globalised economy the gap will not be closing any time soon. And there is no doubt that those fans would follow their own teams if they were more successful – remember the reception the Irish fans gave their boys in the Phoenix Park in 2002? – but success cannot be bought if the money is flooding into England.
It’s high time Irish fans started supporting their own home-town clubs instead of fawning over the English, but it’s also high time English football took a look at the effect it has on smaller leagues around the world, if for no other reason because eventually the money will dry up. And then no-one will give a damn about another tiny little nation on the edge of the world.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Boring, boring ...
It’s ages since I watched a game of football, and I suspect if I asked you to guess which one, you wouldn’t get it. It was, in fact, the first 85 minutes of the second leg of the Chelsea-Barcelona affair. There was a film starting at 9.30 on another channel and I hate missing the start of films. Besides, after Chelsea had failed to capitalise on their dominance (and the referee had made a series of bizarre decisions) I just knew that Barcelona would sneak it at the end so I turned over in disgust.
After that, I didn’t watch any more games for the rest of the season. No Premier League or other divisions, including the usually exciting play-off finals or Newcastle United’s compelling car crash of a season finale. No UEFA Cup final, FA Cup final or even the Champions League final.
The reasons are varied. Sunderlandnil rarely play live anyway and I’m not a Newcastle fan, or for that matter a supporter of any of the play-off teams, so I didn’t watch the domestic games. I never really watch the UEFA Cup final anyway unless there’s a British club playing; I’m certainly not interested in German teams or Ukrainian teams, and to be honest I can’t actually remember who exactly played in this year’s final. I was in Galway for the Ocean Volvo Race on Cup Final day, and I have to say that it was spectacularly good in every way, much better than 99% of football matches, so I was never going to waste such amazing weather sat in a sweaty pub.
As for the CL final, I watched a Russell Crowe film on DVD (“A good year” – not bad, especially with a good red in your hand). Again, I had a sneaking suspicion that Barcelona would win and the thought disgusted me to the extent that I couldn’t bring myself to watch. However, there was another reason much more fundamental than my dislike of that awful club, and it was the same reason that made me look for alternatives for all those other games too.
I was bored to tears of bloody football.
I can still remember intense feelings from my childhood – running onto the grass at Carr Lane Rec with my first ever pair of football boots and a composite ball in school PE lessons, or taking a brand new football out in thick snow and playing anyway. I can recall with perfect clarity being allowed to take the radio to bed if there were midweek games past my bedtime and listening to exotic names like Gothenburg and Besiktas, and I remember all those FA Cup final days and my mother draping coloured ribbons over the TV set for one team or the other. And I can remember oh so keenly the excitement that would build up before every England game.
Those feelings disappeared long ago, not just because I’m touching forty but because football isn’t the same as it used to be. Yes, I know, the world moves on and life changes and certain things stay in childhood so they can be cherished even more, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I don’t like the way football has gone. Television – and television money – has taken football away from one type of fans and given it to another. And while I have absolutely nothing in common with those fans, I can’t claim that it is necessarily their fault.
Quite simply, there is too much football. There are live games seven days a week, with four of five games some days, and the news programmes and the newspapers and the internet are constantly bombarding us with more information that we don’t really need or want. On top of that, any prick can just start up a football blog and think the world really gives a damn what he thinks!
I remember one time I went to my local Irish pub in the centre of Madrid for a full Irish and a read of the Saturday paper. I got there at lunchtime – obviously a perfectly respectable time to be having breakfast – and sat in front of the 12.45 (UK time) game. Then I stayed to watch the 3 o’clock game. Then I decided I’d order some chips and dips and catch the 5.15 game too. Before that had even finished the Spanish games started, one at eight o’clock (their time) and another at ten. This football marathon finished at midnight. Twelve hours and five games of football after going into the pub I fell out into the street feeling like I’d eaten the entire contents of Willy Wonka’s factory. It had nothing to do with alcohol because I hardly drink – I was just sick of football.
That was towards the end of 2004, but I have to say that the problem had already been going on for some time. Funnily enough, I never tired of Spanish football, only the English game, and since moving to Ireland and it’s been getting steadily worse. So last season, come the business end of things, I was bored silly with the stupid game, the know-alls, the pundits and most especially the constant, never-ending, unavoidable, Orwellian coverage.
The result is that I’ve not watched a game since the 6th of May, and right now I am not feeling that pre-season excitement creeping up on me like I used to years ago. So I’ve decided not to watch any football – if the self-important brain-dead television executives allow me – until there is really something to play for. No pointless summer tournaments, no meaningless opening clashes, no muddy mid-table hoofing and no semi-finals, because next summer is the first African World Cup, and I would really like to enjoy the World Cup like I used to.
There’s another victim of modern football – the World Cup used to be every four years, now it seems like it’s every day.
After that, I didn’t watch any more games for the rest of the season. No Premier League or other divisions, including the usually exciting play-off finals or Newcastle United’s compelling car crash of a season finale. No UEFA Cup final, FA Cup final or even the Champions League final.
The reasons are varied. Sunderlandnil rarely play live anyway and I’m not a Newcastle fan, or for that matter a supporter of any of the play-off teams, so I didn’t watch the domestic games. I never really watch the UEFA Cup final anyway unless there’s a British club playing; I’m certainly not interested in German teams or Ukrainian teams, and to be honest I can’t actually remember who exactly played in this year’s final. I was in Galway for the Ocean Volvo Race on Cup Final day, and I have to say that it was spectacularly good in every way, much better than 99% of football matches, so I was never going to waste such amazing weather sat in a sweaty pub.
As for the CL final, I watched a Russell Crowe film on DVD (“A good year” – not bad, especially with a good red in your hand). Again, I had a sneaking suspicion that Barcelona would win and the thought disgusted me to the extent that I couldn’t bring myself to watch. However, there was another reason much more fundamental than my dislike of that awful club, and it was the same reason that made me look for alternatives for all those other games too.
I was bored to tears of bloody football.
I can still remember intense feelings from my childhood – running onto the grass at Carr Lane Rec with my first ever pair of football boots and a composite ball in school PE lessons, or taking a brand new football out in thick snow and playing anyway. I can recall with perfect clarity being allowed to take the radio to bed if there were midweek games past my bedtime and listening to exotic names like Gothenburg and Besiktas, and I remember all those FA Cup final days and my mother draping coloured ribbons over the TV set for one team or the other. And I can remember oh so keenly the excitement that would build up before every England game.
Those feelings disappeared long ago, not just because I’m touching forty but because football isn’t the same as it used to be. Yes, I know, the world moves on and life changes and certain things stay in childhood so they can be cherished even more, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I don’t like the way football has gone. Television – and television money – has taken football away from one type of fans and given it to another. And while I have absolutely nothing in common with those fans, I can’t claim that it is necessarily their fault.
Quite simply, there is too much football. There are live games seven days a week, with four of five games some days, and the news programmes and the newspapers and the internet are constantly bombarding us with more information that we don’t really need or want. On top of that, any prick can just start up a football blog and think the world really gives a damn what he thinks!
I remember one time I went to my local Irish pub in the centre of Madrid for a full Irish and a read of the Saturday paper. I got there at lunchtime – obviously a perfectly respectable time to be having breakfast – and sat in front of the 12.45 (UK time) game. Then I stayed to watch the 3 o’clock game. Then I decided I’d order some chips and dips and catch the 5.15 game too. Before that had even finished the Spanish games started, one at eight o’clock (their time) and another at ten. This football marathon finished at midnight. Twelve hours and five games of football after going into the pub I fell out into the street feeling like I’d eaten the entire contents of Willy Wonka’s factory. It had nothing to do with alcohol because I hardly drink – I was just sick of football.
That was towards the end of 2004, but I have to say that the problem had already been going on for some time. Funnily enough, I never tired of Spanish football, only the English game, and since moving to Ireland and it’s been getting steadily worse. So last season, come the business end of things, I was bored silly with the stupid game, the know-alls, the pundits and most especially the constant, never-ending, unavoidable, Orwellian coverage.
The result is that I’ve not watched a game since the 6th of May, and right now I am not feeling that pre-season excitement creeping up on me like I used to years ago. So I’ve decided not to watch any football – if the self-important brain-dead television executives allow me – until there is really something to play for. No pointless summer tournaments, no meaningless opening clashes, no muddy mid-table hoofing and no semi-finals, because next summer is the first African World Cup, and I would really like to enjoy the World Cup like I used to.
There’s another victim of modern football – the World Cup used to be every four years, now it seems like it’s every day.
The full penalty of the law part 2
You’re caught on CCTV, you admit you did it...but the court finds you not guilty. The British justice system is sending out a very clear message there.
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