NAILING FOOTBALL JELLY TO THE CEILING
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

It is close season. Perhaps time for some pertinent thoughts and questions as the dust settles from athletic endeavour. Here’s mine: Why do you watch or play football? Seriously, why does it take up any of your time? Why do you like the game?

On the face of it there haven’t been many – if any – successful attempts at explaining its attractions. But here’s my effort anyway.

Regular readers will know my gushings are carefully controlled except for occasional mood lapses. Comatose approval, circumlocution or echolalia are not my idea of understanding the passing parade. But Kleinkunst is occasionally welcome, which is why I am a big fan of the gifted Oz satirist, Barry Humphries. I am intoxicated with the idea of his first revue titled “Call Me Madman.” In this the curtain went up only so the cast could pelt the audience with rotten fruit and vegetables, after which it went down again, permanently. I approve wholeheartedly. There is no point being squeamish or overly self-possessed about laughing at the absurdities of life. And that includes football.

For instance is anything more absurd than a fat middle-aged man in a club football shirt? Answer: yes. On a recent flight from New York I saw a fat, pug-ugly, bespectacled middle-aged woman with gelled-up spiky yellow hair and a tee shit reading “Yellow rat-bastard – NYC.” You have to have a sense of perspective. I have no idea or inclination to discover what was in the mind of either the man or the woman. That’s their problem. I just know the contrived aesthetics made me laugh uproariously though I doubt it was the kind of laughter they sought.

Where most other laudatory descriptive efforts fail is in trying to separate the spectacle from the spectators, the stagecraft from the actors, and the critics from their motives. For instance, describing the game as “balletic” tells you only a little about its visual appeal. Saying a game has “atmosphere” is indolent prose and means nothing. Groups of people acting together are far more fascinating than that. If you are reasonably serious you have to dig a lot deeper while trying to suppress a belly laugh or two.

But let’s not get too starry-eyed and precious about things. The game is played, watched and administered by human beings and all the strengths and weaknesses that implies. It has been ever since its evolution in early English industrial society. A sense of reality is required. Like any other sport, most committed fans are absolutely convinced their opinions are correct and the only ones worth considering. To confirm this you only have to view the contents of any internet footy forum for any club. Invariably, if you bother at all, you come away shaking your head at the fatuousness of it. How can people be so STUPID and vacuous? you ask wonderingly.

The same applies to any collection of TV pundits who seem more intent on securing a well-paid return booking for shouting loudest or talking the most self-important claptrap. A sensible man surely watches all of this, shrugs……… and then moves on to better experience. No loss, no sweat. Life goes on. Watch the match, form your own opinions. Good friends stay, non-friends fall into the past unlamented. It’s about a sense of warm reality and human chemistry, not the frigidity of mere usefulness and self-styled “objectivity.” I have no time for cold chameleons who try to be all things to all men. It is possible to be Romantic without the excesses of gooey sentimentality.

Sport, any sport, is surely Romantic, football more than all others. Its ultimate goal is personal and collective fulfilment, of sporting glory. Sometimes glory can be obtained even in heroic failure. But too much of anything is not good for (for want of a better term) the human spirit. The Roman Empire recognised this. A conquering general would ride into Rome on a gilded chariot, his children frequently at his side or riding the trace horses. The procession would be preceded by prisoners of war in chains. Exotic caged animals and looted treasure would be on display. Behind the conqueror would be a muse holding a laurel wreath above his head and whispering in his ear, “All glory is fleeting.” It would be as well to remember this during the current corrupt administration of the game. It won’t last forever.

Sports are not “entertainment” in the strict definition of the term. If they were, every player would be able to turn performances on and off at will, according to a script. Veteran players and fans know this is impossible. Performance can be affected by anything, mood, circumstances, the opposition, personal ability, the weather, uneven performances by other team members, and so on. Consistency is a desirable goal but it is only ever achieved by a few. Great players obviously manage it more often than less talented players.

It therefore follows that great games are great because they are rare, not because they are frequent. Every now and then along comes a season replete with outstanding teams all at peak form all at the same time. You can never tell. Ultimately, the game’s unpredictability is one of its great charms. A lowly team always has a chance no matter how remote. This is why knock-out competitions have such universal appeal and are enveloped with fraught feelings. When all of this comes together all at once the affect is magical and often unforgettable.

So, the players and the fans are the ones who have made the essence of The Beautiful Game. Everything else is secondary. Efficient organisation and administration are surely necessary but only as a service, not as a purpose.

There are seventeen Laws of the Game. You’ll find them here:

http://www.fifa.com/fifa/handbook/laws/2002/LOTG2002_E.pdf

In fact the only ones you were ever interested in when you first visited the game as a kid were Laws 1, 2 and 3. In essence these state the size of the field of play, the shape and size of the ball and goals, and the number of players. But the real attraction of a kid’s game was that EVERYTHING was flexible when you played casually. The only inviolable (generally) was that you didn’t handle the ball. Hence its simple beauty. It captures you completely whether in the favella of Rio or the suburbs of Frankfurt. All you really needed was a ball – any ball – and two groups – virtually any number – to form two teams. Even the shape of the ball wasn’t sacrosanct. So long as it rolled and generally went in the direction you kicked it, everything was okay. And away you went into your own glorious world where you were any great player you could imagine. Even if you couldn’t play footy to save your life, you desperately wanted to be a part of it. That has always been the game’s greatest attraction.

It continues when you are a fan too. Watch a crowd, any crowd. Irrespective of age, the majority want to make every pass, score every goal, take every corner, save every shot, lift every trophy. It really is the most instinctively inclusive game of them all. No other sport comes close to the same magic combination. Outstandingly played, the professional spectacle has a proportion equal to the golden mean. Which is why the Laws are tampered with but sparingly. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The number of players, size of the pitch, even the shape of the ball, somehow everything seems RIGHT, even while we endure the present sheer commercial rottenness eating at the game. If this were not true why would people still spend so much time and money playing and watching it worldwide? In a word, PARTICIPATING? When all is said and done you still have to get off your backside and take part, otherwise the game will die. It isn’t like watching the contrived uselessness of a TV soap opera, not even with current deplorably undertalented coverage and commentary. Nor is it a merely a matter of book keepers idiot-simplicity “bums on seats.”

But if you have played the game with reasonable competence at any level you will also know the last thing you want to hear as a player is one of the latest badged-up coach-twerps yelling “technical” inanities from the touchline. Yet even these unwelcome intrusions are an attempt to make performances better. Where they fail of course – at least with the incapable ones, which is the vast majority – is in their inevitable failure to understand individual human nature applied to teamwork. Which is why (potentially) great coaches/managers like David Moyes stand out so obviously. They get to the essence of the game and do it right quickly. Everything else is secondary, thus explaining Alex Ferguson’s intolerance of idiot questions from media hangers-on attempting to manufacture false hype. Visible creative talent is always infinitely preferable to leech-like barrow boy salesmen.

Once you are out on the pitch you have to live it existentially. Any attempt to hide is immediately apparent to veterans of the game. The same applies to the level of performance, subjective nonsense and personal dislikes aside. You have to deliver. Excuses are not acceptable, however valid. Only the non-professional game makes generous allowance.

And it is at the non-professional level where lies the games true charms, individual and collective ability notwithstanding. When the game at this level ignores duplication of the more woeful aspects of the professional game it can provide just as much if not more enjoyment and satisfaction. If institutionalised corruption in the professional game were to much exceed existing levels I could walk away to the non-professional game without so much as a glance over my shoulder and STILL love it.

Years ago I remember watching a Sunday League match in pouring rain at Wavertree. The contestants were two of the then best known Sunday teams on Merseyside. Amongst the thousand or so spectators were Colin Harvey and John Hurst, both at their playing peaks. Out on the park, knee deep in mud and driving incessant English rain at 45 degrees, both teams played some amazing one touch football that made you forget the deluge. Some individuals were nothing less than dazzling. As we came away buzzing I heard Colin say quietly, “I don’t care what level that was, it was magnificent.” And so it was. We all knew it. We didn’t need him to say it. Nor did it much matter we also knew the Sunday players almost certainly couldn’t cut it in the professional or semi-professional game. The point about this is that virtually every genuine player or fan anywhere in the world could tell you a similar story. True fans are a genuine international brotherhood, salesmen not wanted.

Language limitations are no barrier to feelings either. I recall too an al fresco dinner party on a beautiful evening in Kuwait. On the same table were an ex-Bulgarian international player, a Roma fan and a Bayern Munich fan. Somehow we conquered the language barrier to communicate our opinions. I can still see the Roma fan, a late middle-aged man with few illusions of life, go all misty eyed when we got onto the subject of the Brazilian Falcao. We managed to make our way through the better playing spectacle of English footy (mine and the Bulgarian’s stance), the deadliness of Gerd Müller and the sheer class of Der Kaiser (everybody’s opinion) and the future of the game in the hands of Havelange. We got through it all without an interpreter.

I recount these stories at opposite ends of the scale to illustrate once again how universally loved is The Beautiful Game. But it would be irresponsible and lazy to ignore other factors.

That being the case, it was only a matter of time before an increasingly authoritarian right-wing “globalized” establishment tried to muscle in. Even the paranoid American establishment (who actively hate the game for their own loony purposes) couldn’t ignore it. Too many people were playing and watching it even on home turf. Elsewhere, the very worst of commerciality seeped in and still threatens to suck money from it. It is a tribute to the games enduring grass roots popularity that this has achieved only limited “success.” With some luck and good organization the fans will turn the tide decisively.

Of course none of this means the game is impervious to the worst of human nature. It never has been and never will be. Passionately supporting a club is not an excuse for a version of tribalism which expresses more hate for individual players or other clubs than it does appreciation for the game itself. It is important to recognise and deal with this as it arises, preferably head it off before it gets out of hand. Racism too is a particularly tricky issue. Lampooning it is a useful tool (I used this myself in some reports during the last World Cup. The result was a hilarious combination reaction of racists and PCs who have little idea how similar they sound) but in the end it will have to be dealt with by legal enforcement and suppression of the nazis. There is a point beyond which a crowd becomes a mob. We all know where that leads us, in and out of the game. We have no more excuses.

In the end the game evades a clear rationale. At one end of the spectrum we have those who genuinely do love the game for its own sake. At the other end a loose collection of racists, mere fanatics, self-possessed whiners, salesmen, governments and spivs who could yet do more damage. Most of us fall somewhere in between. A sensible fan, in my view the overwhelming majority, will realise this and act accordingly and ensure we keep the game healthy enough to fulfil the dreams of our children.

It really is only a game, even if we get relegated. Place it any higher than that and you are in grave danger of ending up in the loose collection described above. But Pelé was right. For all its faults it is still The Beautiful Game. It endures for that reason.