I was there at that match Wigan v United. I remember the hope I felt before it started- The Blades are staying up. We just needed a draw or West Ham not to win. Wigan beat us, fine, but then West Ham finished us. The painful irony being that the winner came from a player that still hadn’t signed a contract. This tragedy forced me to rethink my views about football. I mean, is football a game anymore or just a business?
I saw the look on the fans faces, the tears in our eyes. It was as our seemingly irrepressible passion had been sucked out of us by the bald emotionless chairman of West Ham, sitting in his VIP area. His mouth held up in a tight smirk with the news of the clubs survival. All he needed was a white cat to complete his menacing image.
In the days of Stanley Matthews, that’s before WW2 and the commercialisation of culture as we know it today, football used to be more of an honest game. A game where people played by the rules and a game where dirty cheats were sent elsewhere. Football was for the common man, his kids, and our communities. The tickets were cheap, the atmosphere in games was electric, the stadiums packed. Players had a similar salary as your average builder or fireman.
It might be a slightly romantic image but isn’t this more like how the game should be? Does it seem right that someone who failed his GCSEs yet can kick a ball, will get paid £100,000, when there’s nurses for example, getting paid a miniscule fraction for a much more demanding job with much longer hours? Where did football start going wrong?
After the Second World War people had more money to spend on leisure. Crafty businessmen noticed that they could make a lot of money out of the game due to its massive popularity. Ticket prices went up which meant there was more money at stake.
When TV got big we no longer needed to be at a match to watch a game.Football went global. Big money player transfers started happening which changed the concept of the game as local game, local players to global game, global players.
With this came the added pressure to perform. Players became gods and are now paid thousands of pounds a week. With the game constantly expanding towards business, football has also become a platform for marketing, adding to the business possibilities of the game. Large companies invest in leagues, grassroots football and sponsored teams.
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Players are now selling products and services from sports brands to double glazing. Logos are splayed across player’s chests. We’ve even seen recently, the Barcelona team, who were against this, succumb to ‘shirt branding’.
Although these injections of cash might appear good, they actual have a largely negative effect. Football is now not in the hands of footballers and fans anymore but those of global businessman. Ticket prices have drastically risen which means true fans often can’t afford the hefty prices. At a top team game, the crowds are so quiet for the massive size of the grounds because there are more corporate businessmen than true born and bred supporters in the stands. I went to an Arsenal match with my uncle at the Emirates Arsenal Stadium. Annoyingly I had to sit with the home fans and I was infuriated to hear them discuss their business plans during the match. They didn’t even cheer when Arsenal scored. They just sat there watching the video replays, clapping as if they had just seen something at the opera. A far cry from what football used to be able.
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More and more business tycoons are taking over clubs, becoming chairman and fuelling them with their riches so that they can buy better players and facilities. The pressure on these clubs is immense as they have to succeed or else the money that’s been invested in them both by the chairman and the media will be lost and the club will drastically lose. Leeds United, a club which 6 years ago were at the top of the Premiership, have now been relegated to League 1 (the 3rd tier of English football) purely because they did slightly worse than usual during one season. Without the input of cash from TV rights and European Champions League money, the club imploded and went into administration.
With so much pressure on clubs from financial problems, some higher status clubs are bending the rules in their favour and football corruption is becoming a regular news topic. We saw this with referee bribery in the recent Italian Serie A scandal when a number of clubs were found to have bribed the referees. West Ham were heading the same route to disaster as Leeds. Even though huge amounts of money had been injected into them they were failing until the last few games of the season when their best player Carlos Tevez was on brilliant form.
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They finished the season staying up above Sheffield United who as a result went down. This was heart- breaking for all us fans who truly believed that relegation was never going to happen. West Ham were of course jubilant but they should have hung their heads in shame at their illegal win.
Despite the Illegality of Tevez playing without a contract and the club was only fined £5.5 million even though the rules clearly stated that they should have been deducted points. It was his goal that sent us down, the painful irony stung my body like a bow and arrow from the very hands of the West Ham chairman. How could real football let them get away with this? Was it to do with the ineptness of the FA? An organisation even more badly run than our train service or the NHS. Or was it to do with the fact that Trevor Brooking, an avid West Ham fan was on the independent inquiry committee? One thing’s for sure without Tevez West Ham would definitely not have stayed up.
Although justice has not since been done, we now have to expect football to become unjust if there is a lot of money involved. The only solution to the problem is to take most of the money out of the game and impose severe bans for cheating. If we continue to let it expand football it will be more like watching the Apprentice than the beautiful game. On the positive side, Sheffield United fans, as passionate as ever are always there to support the Blades, however grim the situation. Myself and fellow journalist Mikey Hindle went down to Sheffield City Hall to report for Cube Radio on the ‘Fairness in Football’ demo, triggered by the Tevez scandal. We found thousands of fans in good spirit determined to beat all the odds. In interviewed a few we found their resolve and hope truly inspiring. The demo proved that real football shouldn’t be measured via financial routes but where the heart is, at grass roots.
By Simon Lumb |
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