***WARNING*** - This is the Longest Article to be put on Blue Kipper. We advise you to print it, & read it at your lesiure. If you think Mickey writes long reports, you ain't seen nothing yet. It makes "War & Peace" look like a comic. We were going to tell you to print it & read it on your journey to Anderlecht, but better still if you have a week or two to lounge on a beach, before the season starts take it with you. You have been warned!

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME: WHERE TO NOW?
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

Anybody who sets down his words for others to read takes a risk whatever the medium. But there are special dangers with posting stuff on the internet. I think it was dear old Herman Khan who said, "The medium is the message." Erm, not exactly, Hermie, if it WAS you, but we know what you were trying to say. Most futurist duffers got almost everything else wrong too. You find it difficult to trust the judgement of someone who uses extrapolations like, "………ten, twenny, thirty, forty, fifty years from now………"

This is why I immediately alert you to the length of this piece. It is very long by fans footy internet standards. If you have neither the time or the inclination then don't read it. As we all know, reading text on a screen can be demanding if you have the concentration powers of a gnat. Gravitas isn't always what footy fans want. It is after all supposed to be a leisure pursuit. I have written accordingly.

However, there are some relatively serious aspects of the game and that is the core reason for this essay. You won't find any one-liners or other failed comedy in it. If I wanted that kind of thing I would contribute to vacuous "footy discussion forums." But I tired of those a long time ago. Such forums are useful for long distance expats, scatty gossip-mongers and malcontents, but not much else.

Nor is this intended as an academic piece. Like most of my internet stuff, it is a fan's polemic. If you have to consult a dictionary for the word "polemic" this essay is unlikely to be of interest to you. It is my ambling view of the status of football and it is written mostly to help clarify my own thoughts. If I had wanted to write an academic piece I would have done so. This would have had it littered with references and notes, an unwise move on the footy internet. One day, maybe, but not now. For the time being I am also willing to run the risk of the accusation of superficiality. Nobody I know has the benefit of having it every which way. Despite that, each of the sections in this could easily expand into an essay or a book in itself.

There is an easily detected central thrust to my arguments. At least I hope there is. If there isn't, then the polemic hasn't worked.

Whatever. Here it is.

PROLOGUE.
" The times, to their eyes, must have been out of joint, and to the common folk must have seemed as insoluble and complicated as do ours today…………It is a paradox in whose grip we still live, and there is no prospect yet that we will discover its resolution. Simply, it was this: for good purposes, even high purposes, the people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combine of state and religious power whose function was to keep the community together, and to prevent any kind of disunity that might open it to destruction by material or ideological enemies. It was forged for a necessary purpose and accomplished that purpose. But all organization is and must be grounded on the idea of exclusion and prohibition, just as two objects cannot occupy the same space………………When one rises above the individual villainy displayed, one can only pity them all, just as we shall be pitied some day. It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom."
ARTHUR MILLER - Act One, "The Crucible."

"Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams."
W.B.YEATS.

Profound words. Great words, even. Perhaps emphasised by a poetic peak of experience, but no less important because of it. Only the purblind could deny their basic truth. Which means of course they also apply to something as trivial and innocent as football. You consider, make up your mind, take sides and then face the consequences, good or bad. All the while you try to ensure you have listened as much as possible. The complicating factor, as always, is how much you are willing to compromise. Hence Miller's play, written against the shameful backcloth of McCarthyism in the United States and right across Western culture. We still suffer its evil remnants.

The trick is to survive this time round, to learn from events, to identify which "two objects cannot occupy the same space." Life changes, time moves on, young men and women grow old and die, new lives are conceived. Always-present questions are: how do we want to live and what do we want to leave behind? What legacy? For instance, trivially but quite indictative, what legacy in football?

Right now football is at a crossroads because football is ALWAYS at a crossroads. So nothing new there, then. There are always issues to consider and decisions to make. If you opt out of the process you cannot fairly complain later. You cannot have it both ways, though some people try. You either engage the issues or you walk away. You are free to do either - the eternal flexibility and responsibility of choice.

Equally, the trivial leisure of football is no more independent of profound sociopolitical factors than any other activity. The game does not survive in a vacuum however much it may be wished otherwise. It is a world-wide game, the most popular on earth. It cannot run away to the quiet desperation of suburbia, or emigrate to the same problems, or try to pull up some other useless escape ladder. Therefore you are almost certainly forced to compromise or exclude. It depends on the issue.

Arthur Miller, a deeply talented and genuinely sensitive artist, was right. So was Yeats. The dichotomy is as identifiable through artistry, perhaps especially through artistry, as it is through philosophy and social analysis. And the game could not long survive without instinctive plebian responses. It all matters.

The main supplementary questions, then, are (a) what are the issues? and (b) what are the positions of everyone concerned with ownership and administration? and finally (c) where do YOU stand and what, if anything, can you or will you do about it?

Of one thing you may be certain, there are no absolute solutions. All you are left with is your common sense and how you use your natural intelligence. It is a matter of what you will settle for and how comfortable you are with how you get it. Rules may well be made for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men. But without some form of common understanding and agreement we can only lapse into anarchy. I have yet to meet anyone sane who wants that.

So you will find no ready solutions in this essay. That is up to everybody in the game, their ideas and how they are pursued, and sometimes how they are discarded. Beware of false messiahs and führers. In the end your own common sense is surely a much better guide.

THE SPECTACLE.

As a fan, the first concern is an obvious one: What happens on the pitch and how does it affect my team's fortunes? Since this is a general essay, let us for the moment leave the latter point aside as too likely to cloud judgement. But what of the way the game is now played? Is it a healthy escapist spectacle or an exercise in economics?

Given my later opinions there is much irony in my assertion that the present playing spectacle represents, if not a Golden Age, at least a Silver Age. Average playing abilities have never been higher, play never more open, players never more athletic and fit, play never less dirty, referees never more aware, skill never more encouraged, young ambitious players never more eagerly sought or better cared for, players never better rewarded, communications never more open, administration never more professional, stadia never better built, fans never so well informed and eager for still more knowledge, the game never more analysed or popular across the world. Those are the positives and they are welcomed by all common-sense fans.

I maintain these are advances mostly made IN SPITE of the present method of running the game, not because of it. The vast majority of these gains exist due to better understanding, not through the manipulated hardening of financial arteries or monopolist control of the media.

These days we are largely spared the odious sight of visiting teams strung across the field in obligatory defensive formations to gain fifty percent of available points, or of a centre back or sweeper carefully ushering the ball into the 'keeper's hands every time it gets near the penalty area.

Quite rightly the game's administrators have seen fit to change the Laws of The Game sparingly. The main changes have been: A slight but crucial alteration in the offside law and similar treatment of the back pass, plus possible advancement of a free kick. Each of these has given a small but decisive edge to attacking play. Add to this the league format of three points for a win and one for a draw and you get welcome clear water between obsolescent dour old attitudes and invigorating new enthusiasm. It is not all bad news.

Nobody I know wants to see a return to the awful defensive play and brutality which, honourable exceptions aside, came to dominate the 70s and much of the 80s. Nor is there any wish to see a resurgence of sickening, widespread organised fans' group violence or a return to inferior stadia and facilities.

Alas, as always, there are negatives. There is still much dissatisfaction amongst fans. It is therefore surely necessary to achieve an accurate understanding of the pluses and minuses.

Like many others, I assert most negatives stem from administrative and ownership changes made since 1985 and of important changes in employment laws. Each of these has inevitably resulted in perceived adverse affects. Player and administrative loyalty, always tenuous at best in any professional sport, is generally seen as a thing of the past. Some players are seen as high in earning and deliberately low in effort. Club owners are seen as distant and disinterested in fans, perhaps even interested only in personal profit.

Thus, perception of the spectacle suffers the penalty of increasing detachment. Instead of a community based club sporting activity we now have an event nearer to a theatre play on tour performed by a band of wandering troubadors. Older fans consider this to be anathema and castigate it. Younger fans know little else and have less idea or organised will of how to change it. All of it is played out to a background cacophony of artificial event-organising, commercial graphics and other noises.

The spectacle suffers too from different patterns of fans behaviour. This stems from the advent of all seater stadia and consequently much easier (and therefore faster) access and egress. Fans spend a good deal less time in the stadium than they used to. Previously, it was necessary to arrive much earlier to get a good place on the terraces. There used to be a steady build up in the air of expectation. But now fans arrive barely minutes before the kick off and the stadium is empty within minutes of the final whistle. It all adds to the sense of detachment.

If the sense of spectacle is to improve it has to do so in parallel with a restored sense of fans' involvement. This has to be actual, not nominal. It cannot be restored alone by ever more efficient book-keeping or cold professionalism or larger loans or a better PR company.

THE FANS.

The word "fan" is derived from "fanatic," which is unfortunate to say the least. There will always be those incapable of understanding anything more than the obvious implication. The fact is, football fans are as infinitely varied in their behaviour as any other group of devotees to any other form of human activity. Anybody who tries to place a single label on football fans is either uninformed, ignorant or of ill-intent.

At root, supporting a football club is about loyalty. That is the whole basis of the creation of the modern game in the Victorian era and its survival in the contemporary era. To be sure, not of the life and death type once claimed by one manager, but loyalty all the same. It is surely a worthwhile feeling and one of the reasons many local fans are (needlessly) dubious of long distance supporters. It is worth asking who could be more loyal than those who travel long and inconvenient distances to watch the club of their choice? The behavioural roots are primeval and possibly unknowable, yet we all instinctively know the manifestations and the common-sense limits they require. Tribalist nonsense shouldn't be confused with a fervent wish to see playing success.

Organised fans' violence in the seventies and eighties clearly breached these limits and resulted in an extreme authoritarian approach by the establishment. Worse, it produced tragedy. Too many of us of a certain age (inside and outside the game) willfully ignored the looming logical conclusion to two decades of mounting evidence. We will meet fate's invoice for the rest of our lives. Surely none of us should seek to avoid paying it. This is not being melodramatic, it is acknowledging a fact which carries with it an obligation to try to ensure the same terrible circumstances do not happen again.

By and large, acceptable fans' behaviour has reasserted itself. But basic good and bad human nature cannot be changed, so it is important to accept the part played by circumstances and improved crowd control techniques. If human nature cannot be changed we can at least improve our understanding of it. Normally this leads to better circumstances. From this, it is safe to conclude that better facilities usually mean better behaviour. Which is why I never ever want to see a return to standing terraces. I am implacably opposed to them. We must maintain and increase the gains made since 1990. If the fans relax their vigil there is a possibility of a return to the bad old days.

Much has been made by ingénues of an alleged swing away from working class to middle class support of the game. It is not an argument I accept. It is a convenient, lazy and superficial observation based on consumerist social grouping definitions. This might suit the PR firms who try to separate you from your money but it tells us next to nothing about fans' motivation. Classically, these definitions were compiled by bean-counters and untalented academics who know the price of everything and the cost of nothing. And since "class" is a matter of personal consciousness they cannot see into someone else's mind or even get it right from spending habits. Nobody can, you and I included.

That being the case, I have no empirical evidence to back this up but I do have a lifetime of observing and listening to football fans across the world. Overwhelmingly, I firmly if instinctively believe it is still The People's Game at root. I maintain the game's majority mass support is still deepest amongst those who consciously identify themselves as "working class" and who have simply made the transition to higher earnings and positions of greater working responsibility in a post-industrial society. This does not necessarily make them "middle class" in accordance with consumerist definitions, though it might move them from one group to another.

But fans' response to ownership and administration of clubs is a different matter. Deliberate overall policies put in place since 1990 have propelled us into quite a different era. It really is the biggest watershed since the recognition of professional players. I believe these policies are mostly against the interests of fans and the betterment of the game. I am willing to wager that scientific investigation would show most fans feel the same way.

Therefore, what now needs to be done is formation of a consensus for a method of fans' ownership. Which puts you squarely up against the dominating factors described by Arthur Miller. Existing power centres of the system will not go quietly unless they are overwhelmed by sheer weight of consensual numbers. Ergo, we need to consider not just the method of ownership but how we make agreeable transition with minimal disruption. Moreover this needs to be considered at every level of the game. Seems to me self-evident there isn't much point changing mere ownership if similar policies still apply. The lessons of Orwell's "Animal Farm" are as valid as Miller's prose.

There are indications the fans are beginning to move slowly toward creation of their own club-based institutions. This has been accelerated by the upheavals of the last decade and should be welcomed with open arms. There have been notable successes. Chief amongst them was the successful resistance of the Independent Manchester United Supporters to the prospect of a takeover by widely despised Rupert Murdoch. Another was the survival of Brighton after they were bought by an asset-stripper. Still another is the long overdue creation of a Football Fans Union. There are others. In each case, the fans showed they were very far from an unlamented image lingering from the eighties and seventies. They showed determination, organisation and intelligence. Most of all they showed how much they loved the game. The breakthrough will only come when they finally realise the full extent of their power when they decide to exercise it, however spontaneously. It is of course impossible to forecast how long it will take for this to come about.

On the whole I believe modern fans are better informed, better behaved and more discerning than at any other time in my life. They have made it so through use of information technology. The situation is very far from ideal but with some luck it will improve further. Fans ownership can only improve the game and the ideas which flow through it.

THE PLAYERS.

Apart from the mysteries of club and country loyalty, players are the reason we watch football. Without them there is no spectacle at all. Yes, it is a fairly straightforward observation……………but how many of us take this to its logical conclusion? For recognition of this simple fact surely entails recognition of players rights.

Logically, then, a prime consideration must be the central fact that most players are lucky to have a top class career of about ten years duration. Immediately tagged to this are undeniable facts that more money now flows through the game, that players are entitled to the same freedoms of employment movement as anybody else and that they are entitled to a fair share of the money. Put all of this together and few will argue with the proposal they should be paid fair rates from available money. In a free society the definition of "fair" is a tricky one and open to negotiation between owners and players. It seems to me we should not apply different rules to the players than we would want applied to ourselves.

Of course one of the main problems is how we view the levels of pay of top-class players and those on lesser earnings. Since this is not an academic piece I have not researched actual figures. However, it is surely safe to claim earnings are highest at the so-called "top" clubs and slide gradually downward the further down the league you go. Which means the vast majority of players earn nowhere near as much as a few at the top. In other words, a sense of fair perspective is required.

On balance I believe most fans do have an instinctive sense of perspective despite the occasional justified or unjustified grumble. Taking it further than that will bring you face-to-face with Nye Bevan's "language of priorities." Which means you have to consider social factors too……………………………………

That aside, it is the freedom of movement which unsettles fans most and which has helped bring the game to an unprecedented level of contingency. Fans find it difficult to give loyalty to players who might move on after just a few years. Furthermore, this factor endangers relative club stability. It poses the question: how can you build a successful team and hold onto players for reasonable periods if everything is in a constant state of flux? Not, of course, that there is anything new about this, it has simply been compressed into a shorter time frame.

And here we might as well inject a lively sense of history. Prior to current player freedoms there is little doubt the pendulum was firmly in grasped by the clubs. Fans who fought against unscrupulous employers and laws sometimes miraculously lost their sense of fairness when it came to football players. It had to change. Bill Dean once came face to face with the great American baseball player Babe Ruth after they had both struck the historical "60" mark. Ruth was astonished to hear that Dean didn't get a share of gate receipts but instead was on a weekly wage of a few pounds. Notoriously too, football clubs got rid of players as soon as they had outlived their usefulness. Which meant comparatively young men were thrown on the social scrapheap with little or no means of making a decent living. To use the Americanism, they went from heroes to zeroes. Inevitably there have been tragedies. Surely we don't want to return to that?

But the new commercial policies have now also produced the appalling phenomenon of clubs chasing younger and younger players. BBC Radio Five did a short documentary on this a few months ago. The programme exposed some facts which can only be considered an indictment of our society and the game of football. For instance, according to Radio Five, clubs are now pursuing and paying fees for children AS YOUNG AS NINE, sometimes EVEN YOUNGER. I have no hesitation in condemning this as repugnant and morally reprehensible. I believe most fans will think the same way. It calls into question just how much relative value we place on our children, football and money. Like most parents the latter two don't even get into the frame before the well-being and freedom of my kids. My children have become free-thinkers, not automatons in a corrupt commercial system. I believe any commercial offerings of any kind to children under sixteen should be made a criminal offence subject to heavy jail sentences. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

Players now are better athletes than they have ever been. Individual playing and fitness levels are much better. All this has happened cumulatively over decades of increased scientific application and training. Because of it, it is much easier for fans to spot which players are not performing to their acknowledged capacity. It is a different matter when it comes to analysing precisely WHY they aren't performing. In my experience a fan's opinions of a player's lack of performance too often tells you more about the fan than the player.

So there is a better balance to be struck where players are concerned. Mere commercial anarchy is not my idea of consensus. Chasing children with large cheques is not my idea of encouraging interest in the game or a healthy ambition to achieve excellence. There is much work to be done in these areas and the players must make their contribution. An acceptable consensus is required. The sooner we have it, the better.

The players would do well to heed the fans' dissatisfaction rumbling in the background of their recent threat to strike. In actual fact the reason for the strike was honourable and intended to defend players on relatively low earnings or in a particularly vulnerable employment position. I believe the fans would have lined up behind the players in the end but likely it would have been a near run thing. The players need to do more to get their situation better understood where they have a case.

Of all player-related issues the most annoying is the introduction of agents. Whenever I hear the word I am reminded irresistibly of the scurrying Sidney Falco character in the movie "Sweet Smell of Success." It is difficult to see them as anything other than leeches in the worst sense of the word. In my better moments it is just about possible to concede them as a necessary evil for some players who can't tie their own shoelaces unaided. But it is surely time to call for an overhaul when players are fronted by large business corporations like SFX or Clear Channel. A few rules wouldn't go amiss on what agents are allowed to propagate openly or privately. It is a safe bet they are the origin of most of the rumours and innuendo which surround the game. If these people are to stay it would help fans if each club were obliged to publish a full list of players and their agents at the beginning of every season and update this where necessary throughout the season. We should know too what the agents earn so we can make up our own minds as to their motives. As matters stand, most of us believe (and rightly) the first place to look for a player's agent is under the nearest stone. If we are to expect a minimum standard of behaviour of players and spectators there is no reason why this shouldn't extend to agents.

The latter point (and that of "loyalty") was never better illustrated than with the Rio Ferdinand saga at Leeds. There are other examples. Here's a player with a five year contract, one year into it, and his agent says he wants "to leave for a bigger, better club." Ferdinand himself said he wanted to leave to win a trophy or two. Probably like you, I don't have much sympathy for Leeds in anything. A few seasons ago it looked as though they had finally shaken off their awful reputation but now, sadly, they are back to square one. Ferdinand is merely a graphic illustration of much of the systemic phony angst which currently grips the game. It is absurd to expect us to believe Ferdinand moved only because of trophy expectations. Give the present state of the game Leeds are as likely as any club to win one.

On the whole incoming foreign players have improved our game as a spectacle. Obvious failures aside, their better skills levels have demonstrated how far behind we had fallen yet again. But I wouldn't want to import en masse any of the foreign leagues. I still believe our average league football presents the most exciting games in the world. The nearest I have seen to the English game is the Spanish. The rest are a differing mish-mash of continuous patacake boorishness. David Beckham apart, you would struggle to name an English player whose passing could match most foreign international players. But surely a limit has to be placed on the number of foreign players allowed in. An unlimited policy did dreadful damage to Spain's international performances for many years. So it is important to ensure youngsters are encouraged to play the game and to believe they have a genuine chance.

THE CLUBS.

The FA Premier League is a greedy, self interested cartel which has damaged the fabric of the game all the way down to its English roots. So is the so-called G14 Group of a tiny number of European clubs. In my opinion both organisations are implacable enemies of true betterment of the game and thus of fans' interests. If they are not attenuated they will likely destroy the game as a worthwhile spectacle. Both are minuses, not pluses.

The idea of the Premier League was mainly created by the so-called "Big Five" clubs in the late eighties and early nineties of the last century. These were Everton, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool. It was a dreadful and damaging development which has helped lead us to the present precarious financial situation. The English game is now divided into two leagues against itself. The grass roots of the game have been starved of finance. It is time to restore sane unity and reform into a single league again. To do so, it is as well to understand why it was split in the first place because these arguments will resurface.

Since then both Everton and Tottenham have fallen from playing success. There is a irony in this for opponents of the Premier League. Most Evertonians and Tottenham fans naturally think otherwise.

The Premier League was born out of tragedy and political factors which governed the eighties. The two main tragedies were at Heysel in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989, but there were others, including Ibrox in the late seventies. At the same time there was a rise in minority organised fans violence. And parallel with this was the advent of the most reactionary government of my life time, a collection of sour politicians who seemed openly to despise the majority of the people they governed. Some still do. Extreme right wing policies were applied to everything. It was a potent mix. If it was not substantially resisted the results were entirely predictable in everything, including football.

This was quite separate from a necessary consensus for legislation to protect spectator safety including all-seater stadia. Few quibbled with the necessity. The only opposing voices to it were die-hards with a sentimental view of what it was like to stand on the terraces. There was much talk by them of "tradition" and how sons followed fathers onto the same terrace spot. Few die-hards seemed able to say why this was substantially different from using a safe seat with more room and less hiding place for thugs.

To give you an idea of the kind of nonsense flying around, the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, openly asked, "Why can't matches be played behind closed doors and broadcast on TV only?" The thing is, she MEANT it. That was and is the kind of establishment mentality the game is almost always faced with in England. Add to this the lunacy of American-style extreme right wing economics and you have the current financial and administrative mess, a "bubble" waiting to burst. It is only a matter of time.

The Premier League was finally established in 1992 and followed years of secretive preparation by the so-called Big Five. Parallels with the equally disguised methods of the G14 Group are uncanny. But there is an important geographic difference between the two organisations. The former operated at the roots of our game, which is indispensable, but the latter operates across European national boundaries. This inevitably means that the former is a good deal stronger than the latter in numbers and tradition. If G14 were to become terminally separated from their respective domestic leagues who would be bothered enough to take out a TV subscription to watch something of which they weren't part? Hence, the only viable long term target of G14 is to split the game and run their part of it on their own terms. Unity, one of the game's great attractions, would be lost to a commercial divide which would have been instigated by a tiny group of monopolists.

THE FACILITIES.

For too long spectator and training facilities were primitive and frankly disgusting. This has changed dramatically over the last decade. And we should be clear it was a result of government legislation caused by tragedy at football grounds. It is important to remember this because there are some revisionists who would have you believe the changes were brought about through the influx of new money and the PLC. Not so. There was a moral and social imperative at its root, all of it reinforced by a general consensus that enough was enough. Money didn't enter into it. It is worth bearing this in mind whenever you consider the prospect of legislation in other areas of the game. If the consensus is large and active enough CHANGE WILL COME whatever the issue.

By the early eighties a visit to a football ground was a distinctly unpleasant experience. This feeling was caused by a combination of organised minority fans violence, reactionary policing methods, the growth of deliberate social division and a continuance of aforementioned primitive facilities.

Stadium changes since then (particularly the introduction of all-seater stadia) have vastly improved facilities and the match experience. In league and cup matches we are now virtually free of the mindless tribal violence which almost destroyed the game. Police crowd control is generally much more sensible and sensitive, the north-east excepted. There will always be aberrations of course. There always have been. Even a totalitarian dictatorship couldn't eradicate these. The question is how we analyse and respond to the exceptions. I have yet to meet any fan who thinks the north-east police have the correct solution.

Stadium design itself continues to provoke healthy argument - as it should with any building or new piece of architecture. The two aren't always the same. If your circumstances demand an economic envelope that is almost always what you get. A structure with no frills or pretension is almost always a mere building. Usually you will only get excellent architecture through an enlightened combination of talented designer and talented client. This is a rare unity. When you throw in an economic system which stresses only cheapness cost it becomes rarer still. Best value is almost always a subjective judgement, especially when it comes to a creative art form like architecture.

Most modern stadia are little more than an economic envelope because that is all most clubs can afford. Iconic design usually costs money. It is impractical to expect a club like Derby County to produce a work of art unless they have substantial patronage. The fact that they have a new stadium at all is a minor miracle. This doesn't automatically condemn so-called "small" clubs to inferior stadia but it does mean they are faced with difficult financial choices. Which is where enlightened and talented ownership and administration enter the picture.

Virtually all the old or existing stadia were located on what was open space in Victorian or Edwardian times. The growth of towns and cities eventually hemmed them in. Expansion beyond site boundaries was virtually impossible. Lines-of-sight requirements also eliminated the possibility of vertical expansion. If you developed on your existing site it almost certainly condemned you to considerably lower capacity and reduced revenues. Aston Villa and Tottenham are two examples. Thus it became necessary to relocate to a new site with more space to accommodate the new standards of design and comfort. It really was as basic as that, though other factors came into it too. Manchester United are the only first class club I know who have managed to escape these constraints and even then only because the ground is fortuitously located in what was then an abandoned industrial estate.

As observed earlier, the match spectacle, so-called "atmosphere", has been much affected by new stadia. This has prompted some fans to campaign for a reintroduction of standing terraces, a prospect to which I am implacably opposed. However, there are also signs that fans have come to the realisation that only THEY can make atmosphere and that you don't need to be crushed against your neighbour to do it. You can still make all the noise you want if you're sitting down. It merely makes you more readily identifiable, that's all. So what? Who needs an events organiser or an announcer trying to whip up the crowd like a new age commissar?

THE SYSTEM, THE FINANCE.

I said earlier the game cannot divorce itself from sociopolitical factors. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the financial side and the advent of the Public Liability Company (PLC) as replacement for the Limited Company (Ltd. Co.) and individual ownership. But there are broader signs that governing right wing extremism is beginning to slow and might even stop altogether. It wouldn't do to underestimate how much the latter has affected the game. If you doubt this, read this well-nigh incredible extract from a recent sports column in the Washington Post:

"I have finally figured out why apparently most other Americans and I find soccer so boring. Soccer offers neither speed nor strategic thinking. Soccer is not much of a mental game at all. It is more than simple it is simplistic. In particular, play development in soccer proceeds at a glacial pace and then rarely culminates in anything terribly interesting.

"It had been my suspicion that socialist nations embraced soccer because the game amounted to 90 minutes of boredom broken up by a few fleeting moments of excitement, and that probably reflected life under socialism.

"Can the rest of the world be wrong about soccer? Of course they can, and they are. We Americans do not turn away from soccer out of some kind of jingoism or xenophobia. Our rejection of soccer lies in America's exceptional pursuit of interesting challenges."

Leave aside for the moment the attempt to label football as "soccer" (used in every sentence save two. Establishment Rugby Union propagandists use the same tactic) and the other cold tripe it contains. Concentrate on the equally fatuous nonsense of the second paragraph and you will get a far more accurate idea of what the fellow is up to. Plainly, this is a man who has absolutely no idea of the roots of the game, how it was codified or how and when it attained its popularity. Inherent racism in the final sentence merely confirms it. I loved "apparently" in the first sentence, especially since he will be well aware of the game's widespread grass roots appeal in the US, something only strangled later by media monopoly directed and owned by the American establishment. Eventually their siege mentality will fail. Perhaps that explains his paranoia.

But what this illustrates unequivocally is how the problems are STRATEGIC, not TACTICAL. In other words, arguing about the game at macro- or micro-economic level, day-to-day important though they are, will get you virtually nowhere in trying to restore the game to its former rough consensual level. The problems have to be attacked simultaneously at all levels.

Changes to the game cannot be considered seriously unless they take account of how the game is organised world-wide, and how it is financed. Ipso facto, this means consideration of the power structures of FIFA, continental associations and national and local associations. Changes are required globally, root and branch, not piecemeal. Small victories are to be welcomed but they won't change things unless they build to critical mass. If present trends continue it is a safe bet there will be a split in the game and we will be reduced to the administrative level of boxing, probably with the same kind of gangster mentality running the sport.

Welcome and important though it is, local change is doomed to long-term failure if not carried right through the system. Anyone who settles for local change alone is settling also for an unhealthy siege mentality similar to the author of the Washington Post piece. More to the point, such an approach of itself will fail. Something additional is required.

Courtesy of indefatigable Neil Wolstenholme, here is an illustrative list of our current problems as at July 2002:

Full Stock Exchange Listing (maximum regulation & disclosure requirements)
Aston Villa Plc
Celtic Plc
Leicester City Plc (considering down-listing)
Leeds Sporting Plc
Manchester United Plc
Newcastle United Plc
Sheffield United Plc
Southampton Leisure Plc
Sunderland Plc
Tottenham Hotspur Plc

AIM (Weaker regulation)
Burnden Leisure Plc (Bolton downlisted from main exchange)
Charlton Athletic Plc
Chelsea Village Plc
Millwall Holdings Plc (downlisted)
Preston North End Plc
West Bromwich Albion Plc

OFEX (weakly regulated share trading market)
Arsenal Holdings Plc
Rangers FC Plc
Other Plc clubs
Aberdeen FC Plc
Bradford City (in administration)
Heart of Midlothian Plc
Loftus Leisure Plc (out of administration, going private)
Nottingham Forest Plc (trading suspended, likely to de-list)

This is not a definitive list, nor does it identify the kind of hybrid arrangement which exists for instance at Everton, where the club is majority-owned by Paul Gregg on a strictly-for-business basis. Or at Liverpool, where ten percent of the club is owned by Granada and administered by Rick Parry, prime mover of the cartels of the premiership and the G14 Group. Nor can you divine from this what goes on in detail behind the financial scenes. For that, you usually need some basic financial training and the tenacity of a pitbull terrier.

One of the things which may have propelled David O'Leary on his way out of Leeds was when he was asked on TV if Rio Ferdinand was staying. He replied it wasn't up to him, it was up to the PLC. The same kind of aura surrounded the arrival of van Nistelrooy at Manchester United. The same kind of attitude governs the near-absurd size of Liverpool's squad in a near-desperate attempt to keep up with the financial Joneses. All of it helps to inflate an illusory bubble.

Superficially the PLC is more "democratic," since there are more stringent disclosure requirements. However, this is classic Friedmanesque smoke and mirrors of the type which gained him an immoral Nobel prize. In any case, that kind of disclosure isn't necessarily the ally its proponents would have you believe. Anybody can cook any set of books in any system. Check out Enron/WorldCom/Allied Irish Bank/Barings etc. and anybody else who has fallen for Friedman's "freedom to choose" mirage. No, the issue is WHO has the money, WHERE do they get it, where does it GO and who has the POWER. Previously, the much more secretive limited company set-up hardly mattered because the vast majority of directors weren't in it for the money. They were in it for local social status or the love of the game, however ignorant they may have been of its workings. In fact the PLC has led to less accountability to the fans, not more. Like Friedman and his method, it is thoroughly discredited.

Long term, the greatest threat to the European game comes from the G14 Group. Like a dock-side bully this tiny group of clubs continues to threaten the stability of the game. Recently, UEFA (led by Lennart Johansson) changed the format of the European Cup to get it nearer to its much more exciting knock-out roots. Johansson said it was to protect the game. Predictably the G14 Group attacked the proposal. Few fans had any illusion that their motivation was anything other than the gate money provided by more games from the stultifying group "league" format, a system which was foisted on the competition by the very same G14 members.

The two English members of G14, Manchester United and Liverpool, have been less able to help formulate anything in secret since they were flushed unwillingly into public view in the closing years of the last decade. There is surely great and justified irony that fixtures between the two have become evil and poisonous and bereft of anything good. Just as Celtic and Rangers were forced back into order by the majority of Scottish clubs, so the English pair have had to face certain realities. The main one is that if they step too far out of line they might well find themselves ostracised by the vast majority of clubs and fans. If that ever becomes the case it is difficult to see such fans paying TV subscriptions to the very people who displayed the worst kind of greed. There are many signs the fans have simply had enough.

But of course the main source of the money which flooded the game was from TV broadcast contracts. TV controlled by the likes of Murdoch only became interested through potential advertisement revenues. In his case he HAD to have football or his satellite TV stations faced bankruptcy and ruination. Others were merely greedy. It was only a matter of time before the truth dawned on everybody, sometimes painfully so.

The Football League legal suit loss to ITV Digital may well be enough to finish some of our "smaller" clubs but it has also been a searing lesson. It will never be forgotten within the game. All of which might drive down the amount of TV money coming in. However painful, this will be no bad thing in the long run. A sense of reality will have to be applied. And this will help limit the affects of the assorted carpet baggers and cheap suit salesmen who have plagued the game for the last twelve years or so.

As I have said in the "media" section of this essay it is time for the clubs to form their own TV football channel and reap honest money without sub-contracting the game's soul to spivs like Rick Parry, Peter Risdale or Terry Venables. Such a channel, properly considered, properly formed, properly consulted with everyone in the game, would go a long way to stabilising the worst affects of the last awful decade. The technology isn't exotic anymore, nor is the finance, and the whole thing could be administered reasonably easily. Then at last we could perhaps restore a sort of imperfect consensus. But, as we all know, almost anything is better than the current disgusting anarchic mess. If you deal with slime like Gordon Gekko don't be surprised if you end up with nothing.

I believe all of this will be tackled sooner or later, perhaps spontaneously and bit by bit. I also believe the game would be better off as some form of fans trust. This wouldn't solve all the problems and it wouldn't prevent some clubs from going out of existence. Nor would it change the iron laws of honest economics. But it would help to protect the game for future generations. That must be a worthy and honourable target.

FIFA, UEFA.

Sadly for the game, the current chief administrators of FIFA are virtually a byword for corruption. The chief enemies of change are João Havelange, now retired, and the current incumbent, Sepp Blatter. Havelange continues to exert influence behind the scenes. UEFA is run by Lennart Johansson; he couldn't be more different from the questionable characters who run the global organisation. In many ways this clash of opposites is fairly representative of the kind of forces which affect communities everywhere. In such circumstances you will eventually be required to take sides or form your own different position.

For the time being I support Johansson in almost everything he does. Blatter is not my idea of an individual with the best interests of the game at heart. FIFA continues to be dogged by accusations of corruption, fraud and vote-buying. UEFA is not squeaky clean either but at least there are occasional sincere efforts to keep the game on a relatively straight course.

In truth the international administration of the game needs to cleaned out top to bottom and to rid itself of the commercial circus it has become. At the present rate the game could end up as bad or worse than the drugs-ridden Olympic movement.

FIFA and UEFA represent the very cockpit of power in the world game and it behoves every rational fan to keep a careful eye on who controls each organisation and what are their policies. If Blatter's approach becomes overwhelmingly uniform across the globe you can be sure there will be many more famous clubs going to the wall in similar fashion to Fiorentina in Italy. Nobody will be safe. There are already disturbing signs among some so-called "big" names in England. The game would take decades to recover.

THE MEDIA.

It is fair to say we get the media we deserve. And few would argue with the proposition that they are mostly awful. Newspapers especially are almost all extreme right wing in opinions and policy. This is reflected in their coverage of football. All of what follows takes due account of the week-in, week-out difficulty of finding original ways of self-expression or description.

It is important to differentiate between print, audio and video format. Then you have to consider the difference in emphasis between local and national. But in the end, if you don't buy their stuff they go out of business or turn their attention elsewhere. It really IS that simple. Merseyside's devastatingly successful boycott of the Sun showed the possibilities.

Of all the media, newspapers are easily the worst offenders, though strangely they do have some honourable individual exceptions. For instance I have no problem at all with Paul Wilson in the Observer and Rob Hughes in, of all places, the Sunday Times. There may be one or two others but the fact remains that most of them are so bad I long ago gave up buying newspapers on a regular basis. Tabloids are simply unspeakable.

There is of course nothing new to this but certainly it would be true to say that the advent of Rupert Murdoch and his imitators resulted in driving down already low standards to an even lower common denominator. Each time you thought they had gone as low as they could, it was ratcheted still lower. It is now at the point where it is scarcely possible to read a coherent "report" which isn't riddled with pointless garbage or outright lies. Why some people pay good money to be lied to is way beyond my poor cognitive abilities. The Fourth Estate is supposed to set standards, not pander to the worst while blaming the victim.

Radio commentaries and comment are an admixture of mediocrity spiced with an occasional moment of inspiration. Just as you despair of the strange hysteria of an Alan Green, along comes an acceptable Peter Jones. Just as you reach for the off-switch at the latest non-footy mention of David Beckham and Victoria you get an instructive and informative piece on the buying and selling of child players. At least you do on the BBC. After persevering with commercial radio for a short while I gave up in the face of an unending tide of consumer-based mushy grits and unshelled peas.

If there's one place all this could be reversed it is television. Sadly, though it should be so much better, it is the worst of the lot. It is the worst not because it is as outright evil as too many newspapers, or as enemetic as radio. It is the worst because it so downright mediocre or shrill. I am at a loss to explain this. In TV football we don't have talented commentators of the stature of Richie Benaud in cricket, of Peter Alliss in golf or, greatest of them all, Bill McLaren (now retired) in rugby. Instead, we are stuck with various sub-contract ineffables on a depressingly predictable and needless hype mission. At one time I was inclined to feel relieved that we had managed to avoid the horrors of a Murray Walker from motor racing. Then along came Jonathan someone-or-other on Channel 5. Even the BBC can do no better than Barry Davies, John Motson and Gary Lineker.

There's a good deal in the argument that the internet has gone a long way to replacing large tracts of former mainstream media, particularly newspapers. Fans can now get their views aired on the internet however inarticulate and incoherent they may be. A lot of the time they are a good deal more sensible and humorous than anything the so-called professionals can assemble. And the fans will get better as they learn spontaneously how to use the medium. The logical conclusion, then, is what do we want to pay commentators for if we can do it better ourselves? That goes for panels of so-called "experts" too. If, as we all keep saying, the lifeblood of the game is contesting opinions, why do we need a small number of overpaid self-congratulatory, self-promoting "personalities" in place of the fans, especially if they are harming our game? Answer: We don't, not really, not unless one of them has the talents of a Bill McLaren.

New information technology has made it impossible for mainstream media to ignore the fans. The result has been a half hearted attempt to get them more involved. Unfortunately most of it has been patronising and badly formatted and is probably doomed to failure. And once the technical problems of webcasts have been solved it will be goodbye to current mainstream media monopoly.

In the meantime the clubs could form their own TV channel and run it strictly in the interests of the game and the communities it represents. It wouldn't be difficult to set up an administration which included the fans and their opinions. This would go a long way to eliminating the phony hype and hysteria which ruins too many media reports and comments and reduces the game to the level of a pantomime.

And this is where mainstream media has failed most of all, as they were bound to once they went along with induced right wing sociopolitical engineering of the last two decades. Individual matches have not been treated at all like a game. Too often they have become a career vehicle for someone whose "abilities" are reduced to cheap jeering or always being on the winning side. Small wonder the fans, players and managers hold them in such deep contempt. For the fact is, however much of a spectacle the event may or may not be, it involves a vast majority whose club has little or no chance of winning a trophy. Sports glory may well be the ultimate goal but there is also something else in play apart from that. At its best, it is simple human loyalty, usually a very attractive part of human behaviour. We all know what the worst is.

The media cannot abort its responsibilities for its own actions. It is neither above the law, though it frequently tries to be, nor beyond commercial retribution by the fans. One day all this might well come together and those media people who helped promote the current state of affairs will come to rue the day they sold out to the mediocrity of hype.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.

"An intelligent man makes himself as happy as circumstances allow."
BERTRAND RUSSELL - "The Conquest of Happiness."

It doesn't do to get nostalgic about a past which never existed. This might be temporarily pleasant but it has no constructive value. Far better to be a child of the times with a sensible knowledge of the past and a determination to improve things for the future. Keep what you deem to be good and throw out the rest. Along the way there are victories and defeats. Such is life.

Since 1985 the game has been through the most traumatic and damaging time in its history. But good things have also emerged.

Here are my suggestions for the future:

1. Make the entire game a self-financing trust.

2. The clubs to form their own TV channel and other media outlets.

3. Re-organise finances to ensure money is spread more fairly and in the interests of the game and its future.

4. Re-organise clubs administration to ensure fans are fairly represented in daily affairs, possibly via a written constitution.

5. Limit the number of foreign players.

6. Disband the so-called "Premiership." Return to a single Football League of four divisions, perhaps two regional divisions in the fourth division.

7. Tell the G14 Clubs to disband the organisation or vote them out of their domestic leagues. The Scottish clubs did this recently and quickly brought Celtic and Rangers to heel. If G14 wish to go off on their own, so be it.

8. Completely overhaul FIFA and UEFA. Make these organisations too into a trust.

9. Ban shirt advertisements.

10. Ban advertisements on the periphery of the playing field.

11. Organise a properly constituted forum to discuss these and other ideas and reach consensus.

The truth is, there is no quick, easy fix. Anybody who tells you there is has an agenda of their own or is plain foolish. It is the fans who made the game in the first place and it is only the fans who can rescue it, technical and professional advice notwithstanding. Without them, the game dies or devolves into "Rollerball." In the latter case it won't be worth having.

As I said at the start, the game is at a crossroads. I only hope it chooses the right road.