Cod Almighty | Article

by Mark Wilson

26 September 2006

For a good proportion of the past 38 years I have anticipated the start of the new football season with a relish only Colman's could conceive of. The long sunny days of summer being wished away for the return of slate-grey skies, hands-in-pockets hunched-against-the-cold days and regular football. There is just nothing to beat the walk up to the ground, a pint before kick off, the feeling as you drive away with a win under your belt or even reclining in a warm sitting room willing the result to be positive when the vidiprinter crackles into life.

This year has been different though. I have tried to put it down to the season starting so early that I've not been able to put away my summer pursuits, even metaphorically. The cricket has kept my interest all summer; the sight of Valentino Rossi reeling in Nicky Hayden in MotoGP is a lesson in skill, bravery and mental strength; and I'll admit I've enjoyed the odd balmy night in the beer garden as well. There are also obvious football-related issues that I've had to deal with: England's appalling showing in a pretty lacklustre World Cup and the heartbreak of Cardiff could have been cause for a subconscious wandering of the attention. Finally, Town's less than convincing start to the season hasn't forced me to try and convince my wife that a day out to Chester or Bristol is a win-win either.

So what has caused this melancholy, this disinterest, this malaise? It's not one thing: it's a list of them.

The most significant factor is that after almost 40 years of living and breathing football I no longer feel that the game is mine, and that I have become disconnected from it. At a time when you can't move for football news, football on the telly and football being central to our culture, the concentration on the money, celebrity and sheer shallowness of the game and its protagonists has caught up with me.

The Ashley Cole transfer saga is the most telling symptom of the disease. Chelsea tapped up Cole and he saw pound signs. He makes it clear to anyone who would listen that he wants away and he wants it now. Arsenal hold their ground and he throws a hissy fit. Arsenal have to give in when they realise that if he doesn't go he will hang around the place poisoning the minds of players who actually want to play for the club. When he bowls up at Chelsea he has the audacity to say publicly that he hasn't moved because of money. I'm offended because Ashley Cole thinks I'm as thick as he is.

To compound my contempt, throughout it all Cole is pictured in paper after magazine after paper parading around with his talent-free 'celebrity' girlfriend and being paid even more money for his wedding photos, and no-one seems to stop and ask if he's worth the attention.

See also Reyes, Andy Cole, et cetera, et cetera. The players at the pinnacle of football believe they are so famous that they are above all rules, and openly flout the laws of the game and of the land. Unfortunately, they think this because they constantly get away with it. There are countless stories of players being involved in fracas and illegal acts that are gently brushed under the carpet - from Craig Bellamy appearing to be able to pick a fight in an empty room to allegations of gang rape. Then we have the assaults on Pedro Mendes by Ben Thatcher, by Keane on Haaland... and the list goes on and on. I have recently been told by an 'insider' that a Premiership player hit and killed a pedestrian in his car while over the limit. The player made a call to his club and told (and I mean 'told') the club to sort it out as he was going on holiday in a couple of days. The club duly sent senior officials with a lawyer in tow, and the attending police officers were convinced that they should treat it as an unfortunate accident.

Panorama has shown what is at the root of all evil in football. Although the programme failed to convince me that it had incontrovertible evidence, it did enough to confirm my suspicions. The amount of money in the game (at the highest levels, of course; I'm coming to unequal distribution) means there is much to celebrate: the safe grounds, the facilities for the supporters, the excellent community programmes at many clubs, the high quality of the game played and the athleticism of the players. Unfortunately the down side is far weightier: the corrupt deals done by those who wouldn't understand the concept of the 'good of the game'; the way players are manipulated by people who should be representing their best interests but are actually only acting in the interests of their bank accounts; Chelsea buying the championship and making it almost impossible for other clubs to compete, while being managed by a man who makes most agents look high-minded and principled.

And in the middle of all of this is the FA, the supposed guardians of the game, who couldn't run a piss up in a brewery, who can't legislate against the wrongdoers and couldn't give a fuck because their nose is in the same trough as everyone else's. The association's fiascos are almost too numerous to list. If you start by mentioning that Wembley still isn't finished and Eriksson is still being paid £12,000 per day, you might never stop.

I wouldn't want to heap all the blame on the FA, though. UEFA and FIFA are a bunch of incompetent fuckwits as well.

Football is a simple game. It requires 22 individuals to kick a ball into a net at either end of a bit of grass. To make sure anarchy doesn't reign we have a few rules to adhere to, just as in society, which provide a framework for our expectations and some boundaries to what is acceptable and what isn't. Why is it, then, that most of the players and club officials spend so much time trying to ignore, bend or blatantly break these rules or defend those who are caught when the offence is undeniable? There is no doubt that we see far fewer career-ending injuries now, and the outlawing of the tackle from behind has had a positive effect on the way the game is played. But these far more serious crimes have been replaced by cheating at a low but damaging level, so that shirt pulling and diving have become not just acceptable but almost new skills in the game - and nothing at all is being done about them.

And don't try to take the moral high ground with any 'I hate Ronaldo' crap. Every team has a diver, and if they don't they're trying to sign one right now. If I asked you to name five divers or shirt pullers you'd be able to reel them off without thinking. You wouldn't have been able to do that with leg breakers in the 1970s. Go on then - I'll start you off: Chopper Harris, Norman Hunter... and?

As with the law breakers we have the deniers. Ferguson and Wenger moaning about every little infringement their team has suffered but succumbing to temporary blindness when their blameless charges transgress. Every manager who claims a penalty or free kick was a poor piece of refereeing when any idiot can see it's a copper-bottomed foul. Touchline contempt for the officials is mirrored on the pitch, with the abuse they have to take from all quarters. Stuart Pearce is lauded because he's candid and honest. Of course, he stands out for that - he's unique!

Did I mention the unequal distribution of money outside of the Premiership? It breaks my heart that my beloved Mariners cling to their existence at the mercy of Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs, gates affected by form and ITV Digital (as well as a bit of historical mismanagement) while Panorama reports that a Premiership manager buying players he didn't really want or need 'earned' £150,000 in bungs: a sum that would probably keep Town in business for a month. Top players earn more in a year than most of my family will earn in a lifetime but seldom think of supporting the small clubs they started at, and everyone from Freddie Shepherd to the agents to the managers to the players wouldn't understand the question if you asked: "What does this club mean to the fans?"

So we will continue to read about clubs on the brink of extinction who need only a small percentage of Man Utd's weekly gate or the fee paid for Michael Ballack or Nicolas Anelka's brother's cut to stay in business. It's as if they exist in a different world, like a poor kid looking through the windows of Harrods in the run-up to Christmas. In principle I can understand this and would, to a degree, defend it because it is part of a free market economy. But the sheer short-sighted and narrow-minded view of the 'elite' is what depresses me the most. The diversity, richness and passion in English football is because of its structure, its history and its culture, and those things disappear when small clubs disappear. Why is the third round of the FA Cup one of the most eagerly awaited days of the football calendar? It's not because the FA announces a 9 per cent increase in turnover or a new sponsorship deal with a fast food company.

The cherry on this cake has to be Sky. The money stems from them and because of that they feel the need to hype games out of all proportion. Do they really believe that Huddersfield against Bristol City on a wet Friday night is a major sporting event? I doubt it, but it won't stop them trying to convince you. They also feel the need to convince us that a game that has been like watching egg custard skin over has been a fascinating tussle worthy of hours of post-match analysis.

Allied to this is the complete absence of a moral compass: no comment on bung allegations, post-match interviews that fail to challenge managers when players have brawled, abused referees or committed acts unacceptable in any other public arena and a generally fawning attitude to the goose that laid the golden egg. Oh for a Sky pundit to stand up and say: "What a nasty little tosser that Wayne Rooney/Robbie Savage/Craig Bellamy/Alan Smith is" instead of describing them as "spiky".

What of the future? I've already mentioned that I'm 38, and I have many friends with young children who are obsessed by football. They all spend their weekends dressed in the kits of their favourite clubs with their favourite players' names printed on the back, kicking a ball about in the back garden whenever they can. For the most part it's an innocent pleasure, but every now and then a small voice shouts: "Oi ref, that was a..." or they throw themselves theatrically to the ground - and I can't help but think that we reap what we sow.

These are the reasons why I've fallen out of love with football - and I haven't even mentioned Brand Beckham, arrogant Premiership fans, Steven Gerrard and his private plane, moaning bastards on messageboards or... Christ, I could go on forever...