This weekend saw one of the biggest football matches of this Premier League season. The (possible) title decider. It all came down to this. There was no way this couldn’t be the greatest thing in the history of the world ever. And once again, we were treated to a fairly decent football match that didn’t actually decide very much at all. It had its moments. It even had a couple of bits of controversy. But, at the end of the day (Brian), life continued as normal.
It’s not just the ridiculous hyperbole that flooded from every second of the television coverage that grates – and this is on ESPN in the US remember, not the grand masters of overblown ‘footie’ excitement, Sky – it’s the seeming mindless acceptance by the footballing world that this somehow stands for something not just to supporters of the sides involved, but to the wider world in general. It was a sodding football match. Yet we’re made to believe that some seismic change in the order of the universe has just taken place. I’m happy because it will make my boss happy, I’m reasonably okay with a club I dislike marginally less than the other winning. But in the wider scheme of things it stands for precisely bugger all.
Now, I know that your average being with two synapses to rub together intrinsically knows this. I just wish the broadcasters did. I realise that this was an important match between the top two sides but come on. It’s as if no other football exists. But then they ramp it all up again for some meaningless mid-table clash because the hyperbole monster must be assuaged. Surely at some point all superlatives will have been used and recycled so much that new ones will have to be created or old ones rearranged into bizarre new combinations. So the whole thing ends up sounding like Alan Partridge’s World Cup Round-Up.
The worst part is, there’s no attempt to redress the balance within football. It’s one thing to make a big deal of a top of the table clash when it’s a close race and near the end of the season. It makes me entirely incredulous, however, when the juggernauts of the Premier League are matched against lower teams and this is somehow deemed as ‘unworthy’ of their mighty stature. One of the games that followed matched a team that has one player whose salary alone is more than the combined wage bill of the opposing team for an entire year. I’m all for the best getting to the top and the less good settling for mid-table mediocrity or relegation. But COME THE FUCK ON. How is this in any way a good way to run things? Team with massively rich owners and inordinately expensive players considered among the world’s best, outmatches smaller club with vastly more limited resources and mostly peopled with lower-league journeymen. What are the odds?! Somebody phone Reuters!
I suppose I’m old-fashioned and idealistic enough in my thinking to wish that there was more of a balance. The thing I find the most galling is that the expectation of the average fan of many clubs boarders on the insane. Some of the blame can be placed with the fans with letting the success of the club they support go to their heads and so any season without success is considered abject failure. However, it’s what modern football has become that has helped engender this. Many of the ‘big’ clubs must have continued success in order to continue at the highest level lest they ‘do a Leeds’. With so many clubs struggling to cover their expenses and more than a few going into administration, one wonders whether the clock is ticking on one or more of the biggest clubs. Surely the current model is unsustainable?
This season has already seen a Premier League side go into admin for the first time, is it really that improbable that others might not follow suit. More importantly, is it going to take one of the bigger sides getting into this kind of trouble before something is done about it? Not that I have any answers. I just see the only way in the current climate that any side can truly compete with the biggest clubs is to ‘buy in’ with the help of some immensely rich sugar-daddy. And it’s not as if that’s any kind of guarantee of success, just that the club is a bit more likely to pay its players on time or in Notts County’s case be left with a monumental amount of egg on your collective faces.
This isn’t necessarily an English league football problem, either. Witness the plight of clubs trying to keep up with those most extravagant of Jones’: Real Madrid and Barcelona. Even some traditional powerhouses of European football that would have seemed immune have had their finances brought into question in recent times.
It’s not even as if I’m having a pop at certain clubs or their fans. I’m well aware that without the continued involvement of a chairman that secures the loans and debts, the club I’ve followed since a boy would be right up the creek. I can point and laugh when our (sorry but I have to link to this clip again) rivals get into trouble or are threatened with relegation or post the worst record in top-flight football history [ahem] but I’d like to think that nobody really wants to see any club cease to exist. As HM Revenue and Customs takes an increasingly dimmer view of clubs that fail to pay what they owe and administration not always being the best way out, things may get worse for many clubs before they get better. It may never happen to one of the ‘giants’ of the European game but will it have to be that bad before anything is done about it, I wonder?
If there is an answer, I’m sure it’s far from easy. But I don’t think I’m alone in not being comfortable with the way things are going.
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[...] around in my head when I’m yearning for sleep at 2AM and have to be up at 6AM for the biggest match in the history of everything ever. And when the wind of reason from being fully awake (and just getting the word that we are getting [...]