SOME THOUGHTS ON THE RETIREMENT OF A FOOTBALL MANAGER

In recent decades we have witnessed what to my mind is the degeneration of what was once a relaxed weekend pastime into an ugly exploitative money-making business full of puking, cheating, over-rich rude-boys whose antics are on a par with bankers and others in the financial services industry. Indeed, football today has been deservedly described as such, albeit an industry in which commodity production by manual labour is replaced by entertainment for those who used to make things, the working man relegated to the role of spectator.

How true is it to say though that the role of those being entertained is entirely passive when so many football clubs have active regiments of supporters and followers, even gangs, who buy fashion status shirts and other items of clothing, adopt songs, chants and mascots along with a wide variety of personal apparel that all exclusively serve as a kind of identifying uniform. Men, mostly men, are increasingly no longer part of collective structures such as the factory workplace or trades union. Much of this has now been exchanged by adherence to groups of semi-educated youths, average age 18-22, who entertain, if that’s what you want to call it, by kicking a plastic ball around for ninety minutes a week and mostly disappoint!   

Football is now a business, with many clubs quoted on stock markets making their money from clothes franchises, garments manufactured cheap and cheerful in China, extortionate admission prices, but above all, from an astonishing player transfer system which with its commissions and fees, legal and illegal, adds up to billions. It is here that the said entertainers, players with more publicity consciousness than skill, put themselves up for celebrity status and ludicrous price tag values manipulated by the new parasitic phenomenon of personal agents on behalf of the new financial mentality of clubs. Here, in this dance of greed, performers and manipulators come together in an alliance of wealth creation on the backs of millions of followers, a complex though really quite simple arrangement in which passionate, ultimately deluded souls pay a price for their once a week treat… denying their families money for their own self-indulgent hysterical need.

And never has this mania with its parasitic army of pundits, journalists, agents and talk-talk boys shown itself to be so staggeringly ubiquitous than now with the recent retirement of football club manager Alex Ferguson, a dour Scot with an undoubted psychological talent for managing juveniles. If any intelligent person needed a bigger shock to their system about the true meaning and importance of this once a week past-time-sport it was that for two days or more this one man’s retirement from managing a football team was given greater prominence throughout the national news media than the political and social life of the nation or anything else for that matter! The traditional Queen’s Speech detailing Government policy intentions over the next year was unceremoniously relegated into the background, Fergie’s retirement thought to be more important than changes that will seriously affect huge numbers of men, women and children throughout the country.

Consider this carefully. It has to say something!

Having performed such a trick, the media, from the BBC to the Murdoch Empire and beyond would argue that this is what the British people, who they ingenuously call the public, want. Yes, they’re giving us what we want! A plain lie if ever there was one because football is actually a minority sport, so in answer to what is a genuine question they ingenuously crumb up the excuse, we’re giving the public what they want! Sure you are, but does this public of yours include most of our kids, most men and women, those who might be more interested in the welfare and benefit cuts that will soon affect their lives. True, many of the so-called beautiful game’s most fervent supporters are among the most needy but that’s no excuse for substituting news of national importance and concern for the great majority with an endlessly revolving triviality from the world of fetish entertainment with its spitting, foul play, acting and pretense.

However, this is not just a story of how the retirement of a football club manager covers up a fair amount of political dirt about to descend on the heads of millions of people - well done the Establishment News Channel of the British political class! This post is about football itself, a province of low self-esteem, low in self-confidence followers, of gobby managers whose televised chat is really a bit of a joke, of know it all pundits who like to think of themselves as aficionados, and last but not least hats off to the players, a sorry little empire of self-important jerks many of whom can’t do the required thing of controlling a piece of plastic properly. Football was once a pastime of the industrial working class with pie and mash during the interval for fans. It was played by working class lads with rough lace up boots and a leather ball who knew how to run with it, dribble, pass and shoot, and rarely if ever foul, complain or fall down at the slightest touch, look tearful, endlessly complain or challenge the referee. Now they always fall over! Once, not so long ago, ninety-nine percent of the players were British. Today mostly not, Once they were exciting to watch and modest with it. Now they don’t give a shit and just want your money.

Today, football is ugly, greedy and no longer clever, It’s another kind of swindle on the populace, a bit like food substitution. Horsemeat for beef, aggravational foul play for genuine skill. Temporary contract low skill poorly paid jobs in a call center or retail park for engineering or manufacturing ability. Just another substitution swindle for what was once skillful, for those who knew their worth and had self-esteem. Who didn’t put themselves about in the modern British fashion and think they were celebrities, more important than anyone else.

You’ve only got to watch an England football game on television played at Wembley or abroad to get a flavor of those who support our national team. Many are almost as pathetic as the players! Their ardor you may think is linked with a genuine patriotic fervor. True, only it’s much more than that. There’s no other national footballing side whose supporters sing the nation’s anthem so regularly. A strange contradiction if ever there was one as it’s an anthem that speaks nothing about the welfare of its people, only for its solitary unelected ruler by inheritance. With the exception of North Korea, there’s nothing else like it! Watching England, one can hear God Save the Queen being throated out with an almost manic regularity in London Cockney. The Queen, in the minds of these passionate friends, is bonded with the team like nothing on earth. She’s their symbol of Englishness above and against everything foreign, and naturally along with it there’s the symbolic expression of the defeat of Germany in the Second World War by way of the tune from The Great Escape beaten out by a supporters band in a frenzy of fervor and joy.

Support for England’s football team is an intensely emotional experience with its social basis deep in the London working class. It’s nationalistic all right but not as vile as the conduct and chants of other national team or club supporters, mainly from East Europe or Italy. It goes with a commonality of appearance among many supporters straight out the Polish or Ukrainian underclass. Is that it then, sad to say? The poorer you are the more ignorant and racist you’re likely to be? But then there’s also Scottish club football to consider with Catholics and Protestants each supporting their own club through religious affiliation. Hundreds of thousands of people in Glasgow hating each other throughout the year across a religious divide reinforced by football! Was there ever a place where football and religion were more intertwined? For the poor of that city, football one way or another, was always a religion!

A religion or a distraction? It can honestly be said that although essentially European in terms of its modern origin, there’s been no other sport throughout human history, even horse-racing, that’s been orchestrated to capture so much national attention and divert it from the central social and political issues of the day. Weekly club games capture as much interest and energy from the mass of city dwellers as games of a different nature did in the Arenas and Stadia of the Roman Empire two thousand years back. Indeed, they were used by its ruling families and aristocrat class to gain popularity among the masses, much as the political class encourages sport as a passport to popularity today. Trouble is, football’s modern gladiators are unlike their ancient counterparts. They’re more often difficult to control straight out of school teenagers with one big lousy attitude. Hence the importance of management skills for those who can’t manage themselves. The need for a father figure for temperamental teenagers from families that never had one.

Father confessor, priest, rabbi and psychologists skills…  Given the circumstances of an untalented, difficult, modern teenager’s life, all are relevant for the role of a modern football club team manager.     

 

For some it’s wonderfully paid. Football managers these days have yachts and stables of racehorses. David Moyes, Manchester United’s new manager, will reportedly earn thirty million quid on a five year contract. More than any father confessor, priest, rabbi or psychologist ever did. That said, there’s only one question that’s worth asking now. What makes football managers worth more than thousands of nurses, teachers, firemen, bus drivers, doctors and policemen? When you’re sick, when you need help and comfort, when you want your kids to be educated, do you ring up your football manager and ask? No, you don’t really care jack about how much all these others are getting for what they do for you every day. You take all their kindness and caring and help for granted, just as long as you can contribute to the ridiculous, extortionate salaries of footballers and their managers who really don’t do anything much for you once a week except behave like jackasses after which treat you return to your wives and kids and watch them eating cheap takeaways.

Football supporters! It’s time to stop being passive spectators and start being men again. Take your wives and children out into the world, share new vistas with them and turn your back on the turnstiles!