Sunderland supporter Bob Stothard looks at the current state of the
”people’s game" as clubs go bust, players revolt over racism and ticket
prices go up and up and up.
Sunderland supporter Bob Stothard looks at the current state of the ”people’s game" as clubs go bust, players revolt over racism and ticket prices go up and up and up.
Sport, it has been said, is a substitute for war. Nowhere is this more true than in football, where tribalism and regional chauvinism go hand-in-hand. It is a backward state of affairs anathema to Marxists. However, I’ll always hate Newcastle….
Football is the most widely followed sport in the world, particularly in Britain which ‘gave’ the game its rules and structure. A club by definition is open to membership. In the professional tiers, however, there are no clubs, despite their official titles, but businesses run by wealthy, private individuals (excepting Exeter, Wycombe and AFC Wimbledon, which are owned by supporters’ trusts). Very few of the said individuals, those who own and run the businesses, are lifelong supporters of their ‘clubs’ and many front cash-rich financial hedge funds. Decisions to take over clubs are taken in board rooms as far away as Malaysia, Russia, Thailand, China, Arabia and the USA.
These capitalist businessmen have not suddenly discovered a love for this or that club but see rich pickings there for the taking. In the case of the owners of Manchester City and Chelsea, the clubs are a personal plaything and tax deductible for their astonishing personal fortunes – fortunes accumulated in very questionable circumstances. The Glazer family, which owns Manchester United, has steadily – and legally – increased that club’s debts at the same time as stuffing their own wallets, much to the chagrin of their fans in Welwyn Garden City, Royston, Devizes and other far-flung soccer hot-beds.
When cowboy owners come to grief it is devastating for the fans. Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers are perfect illustrations. Other well-known clubs such as Motherwell, Dundee, Charlton, Middlesbrough, QPR and Leeds have all suffered administration or even liquidation.
Sweet FA
The Football Association, a loose alignment of amateur
county apparatchiks with a penchant for blazers, is totally unsuited to running
the professional game. Their collective lack of business acumen allowed
Murdoch’s Sky TV to hijack the working class game and permit the formation of
the Premiership in 1992. They were, to be sure, mesmerised by the money
Murdoch’s slimy agents waved in front of their collective nose. As a result
football on TV, including international contests, vanished from the terrestrial
channels and prices at the turnstile went up like a Saturn rocket. This from a
coterie which only allowed televised football (in highlights form) in 1964,
refused to install floodlighting at Wembley (which was shared with a dog track)
and played international matches at 3 o’clock on Wednesday afternoons!
England supporters have groaned as, over the years, the Football Association (FA) prevaricates and dithers about managerial appointments – and still gets it wrong. The body is a law unto itself: in cases of professional players’ breaches of discipline only five percent of cases are ‘found’ for the defendant. Recently, the FA found Chelsea player John Terry to be guilty of insulting and racist language weeks after a court of law found him not guilty. Who ‘elects’ the FA and who decides the personnel of its various committees is not known. That the FA is composed of largely decent men is beyond question. That they are a coven of self-important, self-serving incompetents is also very well-known.
Football in the British Isles is almost unique in that the amateur game is still – despite Tory sales of public sports areas and school playing fields – the bedrock from which most British and Irish professionals once emerged. Kids were always seen booting a ball along a street in spontaneous games: honing their skills, learning the art of co-operation and team work (Bill Shankly described football as socialism – a common aim where each player contributes to the common good) and overcoming setbacks. Groups of friends, pub and works’ teams organised their own leagues and made them work.
Today, professional clubs ‘spot’ youngsters at the age of eight or so and sign them up. Whilst this is a great thrill and honour for the child and the parents, the reality is the child can no longer participate in ad-hoc games or play for his school. The child is bound to the club until he is either taken on as an apprentice or simply discarded. Most often discarding is the inevitable outcome.
Sensing an opportunity to cut costs, professional clubs – even the big, rich ones – abandoned apprenticeships and took youngsters on as Youth Training Scheme trainees. The infamous YTS system was Thatcher’s plan to get youngsters off the street by offering £10 per week on top of their miserly dole for a maximum of six months. Of course, it did not work and greedy bosses took advantage of a ready labour market where they did not have to find even one penny in wages.
Having resolutely refused to recognise the women’s game for decades, the FA has recently amended its stance – once it was obvious there was interest, money and kudos involved. Although still the poor relation in Britain, women’s football has been a staple game across Europe for decades.
Inaction
The FA, and its Scottish equivalent, failed to act in the many tragedies which have occurred during their respective watches. In 1946 a wall at Bolton collapsed killing 33, in 1985 at Bradford 56 people died in a stadium fire, in 1971 stairway 13 collapsed at Ibrox, Glasgow, killing 66 fans – a match I attended but at the Celtic end – and where in 1902 a partial wall collapse killed 25. Most recently, at Sheffield in 1989, 96 Liverpool fans were killed due to police incompetence. It was only after an official enquiry was launched that the FA acted even though that official enquiry and coroner colluded with South Yorkshire police in exonerating them and blaming the Liverpool fans.
The shocking details of the police whitewash regarding Hillsborough, recently revealed, only confirmed what most football fans already knew: the Tories and their blind allegiance to the police, coupled with their fear and hatred of working class Liverpudlians – who had previously elected Marxists to their city council – thought they deserved it. This haughty, macho constabulary also roughed up my friend’s father, aged 68 and five feet three inches tall, whilst attending a Sunderland away fixture.
Racism
The FA is self-congratulatory in the matter of ridding racism from the game. As with most things, this benighted guild of goons is fooling itself. The recent Luis Suarez (Liverpool) and John Terry (Chelsea) cases notwithstanding, only a fool would claim it is a thing of the past. When black players began to appear in professional teams in the 1960s they endured appalling abuse.
Despite the fact that the Taylor Report recommended all-seater stadia and better stewarding thus making racist comments easier to pinpoint and the miscreants to be ejected, the phenomena has not disappeared – it is only less obvious. Glossy pamphlets and pitch-side advertising are simply inadequate. Only one thing will eradicate racism within grounds and that is for the majority of decent fans to ‘educate’ the idiots and even alert stewards and police.
Professional clubs sited in areas of large Asian populations have negligible support within those communities – still less have players. Further down the league pyramid, racism is alive and kicking. In Bedfordshire one young lad of Asian origin, who had captained his school, district and county sides, attracted the attention of several professional club scouts. All refused to offer him a trial when they learned of his ethnic background. Presently there are only two non-white managers at professional level: Chris Hughton of Norwich and Chris Powell of Charlton. Two out of ninety two! The England international team’s ‘fans’ contain a hard core of racist/neo-Nazis and the FA, which oversees the England Supporters Club, has done little to remove this poisonous group of thugs.
Scandal
When it comes to scandal, football excels itself. Leaving aside the drugs, drink, and sexual peccadilloes of the players, corruption is never far away. Back in 1915 Liverpool and Manchester United players were involved in match fixing. The same occurred in 2009 involving players from Bury and Accrington Stanley. In 1965 four players from Sheffield Wednesday were banned for life, again for match fixing. Abroad, the problem is even worse.
Flouting financial rules is something capitalists pride themselves on. It is rife in football, of course. Complex financial regulations are, as one would imagine, completely beyond the scope of the FA amateurs. Their ‘fit and proper persons’ rule has been shot through by recent owners of Portsmouth, Leeds, Glasgow Rangers and plenty of others. These big clubs, in desperate trouble due to their greed, have punished the very people they claim are the heart and soul of their existence – the ordinary fans. The FA knows how to punish the fans’ loyalty but fails to prevent the abuse – the robbery – by the owners.
Long gone are the days when local heroes like Jackie Milburn or Charlie Hurley took the bus to the stadium along with fans. Today’s star players have no rapport with the fans, earning sky-high wages, living in mansions and swanning about the place in expensive cars.
Whilst socialists might cringe at the wealth and benefits ‘earned’ by millionaires chasing a ball for ninety minutes, they will also consider a player is bought and sold like any other asset without regard to his or her desires or feelings. Their bosses have zero loyalty to a player when there is money on the table. In 1961, the players union (PFA) threatened strike action to rid football of its salary cap of £20 per week – (£400 today), and only certain team members might get that, and two years later successfully overcame the infamous ‘slavery contract’ used by club owners to entrap players.
Indeed, there have been attempts by professional players to take strike action. Given that fans would play for nothing for their beloved teams, this was always going to be hard to get public support. In 1907 the Players union was formed, its stalwarts comprising the whole of the Manchester Utd and Sunderland teams at its core. In 1908, after browbeating from the FA (comprised of toffs, some with titles) and their respective clubs, many other players signed a public declaration they had left the union – the Manchester and Sunderland men remained firm. The union was weak and was forced to accept a cut in wages during 1945. Players only received ‘full wages’ during the playing season – the close season figure was much less. Nevertheless, compared to a pitman, lorry driver or toolmaker, players were comparatively well-paid even then.
Nowadays, club chairmen fulminate against players’ agents. Said agents are parasites taking whopping percentages from transfer fees and some are known to unsettle players in the hope of moving them to another club and trousering another wodge of money. Agents are capitalists – like the chairmen they irritate – who have seen an opportunity and seized it. Unlike the players they represent, they do not face a relatively short career. Many ordinary fans wonder why the PFA does not usurp the agents’ position and take over the role for the union.
Costs
In this day and age things have changed markedly. Anyone on an average wage, however, needs to cough up at least £25 to attend a match. A council worker, for example, needs to invest one sixth of his or her weekly wage. Such a statistic would hardly worry the new breed of middle class and celebrity ‘supporters’ to be seen at the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United. The success of these clubs attracts such parasites who enjoy basking in reflected glory: did you see George Osborne in camera shot at Chelsea’s European Cup final? I didn’t know they played football at Eton……
How could football be returned to its working class roots? Germany provides something of a template in that no one Russian oligarch or Arab family can own a club out right*. Fifty-one percent of any club is owned by the fans with voting rights; it costs around £13 for a match ticket and, if travelling to an away game, 250 kilometres of train travel is included in the match ticket price. An elected fans’ representative sits on the management board which runs the clubs’ day-to-day business.
In a socialist society the capitalist owners would be given a detailed map of how to return to their natural, but impecunious, homes of rugger, equestrianism and polo. Real fans from the mass of working class people who support their clubs would democratically elect a leadership of delegates (with the right of immediate recall) to oversee and manage what is theirs and theirs alone.
