A game of two pay packets
Rod Liddle says that obscene salaries — together with foreign players — are ruining British football Recently, the champions of English football, Arsenal, took on Hitler’s favourite team, Bayern Munich, in a European Champions League match and, I’m delighted to say, they got well and truly stuffed. I’m afraid that football brings out the patriot in me and I’m always inclined to put aside my club loyalties to cheer on a British — or, better still, English — team. And so it was on that night in southern Germany: of the 26 players who took part in the match, only one of them was English — Bayern’s midfielder, Owen Hargreaves, who scampered around the pitch like an office boy on amphetamines for the last 25 minutes or so. And even Hargreaves is English only in the way that, say, Zola Budd or Prince Albert were English. But, still, it was enough for me. Play up, Bayern! In fact, just one of the seven English teams competing in European competitions this year contained a majority of English players — and that was my team, Millwall. And we went out in round one.
Talk to the FA and you’ll be told that the 2004–05 season has been a monumental success. It is true that we have been entertained, on our television screens, by some lovely football at times. It is true, too, that of the four clubs remaining in the European Champions competition, two of them are English or, more accurately, play their games on grounds situated in England. And the national side is arguably stronger than it has been for 35 years, possessing a midfield which is the envy of even Brazil or France. But this aside, the season has been a depressing and at times revolting spectacle, predictable in its outcomes, populated by ever more loutish, greedy and stupid players and petulant, duplicitous and arrogant managers. No wonder, then, that the fans are beginning to vote with their feet.
This season the Premiership will be won by Chelsea, with Arsenal and Manchester United fighting it out for second place. The FA Cup will be won by Arsenal or Manchester United and the League Cup already resides at Stamford Bridge. This triopoly is a desperately boring and stifling state of affairs. Further, the three clubs relegated from the Premiership will certainly consist of two of those promoted to it last year and most likely all three. The gulf between the divisions widens by the year, just as the proportion of English-born play ers at Premiership clubs dwindles by the year. The days when the League championship — and indeed a European championship or two — could be won by a side consisting of local players reinforced by canny purchases by a clever and inspirational manager, as was once the case with Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa, are over. For good. Today, success is solely about the amount of money spent.
I suppose we should be grateful for the arriviste Chelsea, fuelled by the, uh, undoubtedly perfectly legitimate fortune of the owner, Roman Abramovich. For the last eight months, in supermarkets from Berwick to Barnstaple, you will see chavs who have recently discovered that lo, they are Chelsea fans and thus obliged to wear the nurseryblue Emirates-sponsored football shirt as a badge of loyalty. But loyalty to what, exactly? Chelsea, with its billionaire Russian owner, multinational task force of a team, sharp Portuguese manager and geographical situation in a part of London characterised by wealth and endemic transience, is no longer a place or a tradition. The new fans, those who don’t remember Pat Nevin, never mind Charlie Cooke, are showing a loyalty to success and money, nothing else. They are the sort of people who will vote for Tony Blair on 5 May solely because they think he will win. People who live their sad lives vicariously through the success of others.
For those less easily assuaged, Premiership football has become quite literally a bit of a turn-off: the inevitability of its outcomes and the lack of genuine competition has made even that glistening array of goals on the TV highlight shows dull and pointless. Match of the Day’s viewing figures, earlier this season, were down by 9 per cent. Sky has had some of its lowest-ever viewing figures for games — and fewer people are turning up at the grounds, too. In the first quarter of the sea son 5 per cent fewer people paid to watch their sullen heroes in the flesh, and this followed a slight decrease the season before. But in any case, the turnstiles matter less these days: according to the accountants Deloitte & Touche, television broadcasting now provides the clubs’ major source of income, whereas only six years ago it was the smallest. So now, the real fans can go hang.
And where the money is most concentrated — at Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea but also, to a slightly lesser extent, at Newcastle and Liverpool — so you will see the most flagrant contempt for the fans, for the various impotent football industry bodies, for the referees, for the national team, for the sporting ethos — even for the TV viewers. That ruddy-faced mountain of lachrymose Scottish bile, Sir Alex Ferguson, refuses to speak to the BBC despite the fact that his club trousers millions from the BBC contract — apparently because the corporation had the temerity to investigate his son’s role as a football agent. And nobody calls him to order. What the BBC should do is withhold every penny to this flatulent, preening club until Ferguson complies with his obligations — or not show United at all, thus giving the rest of us a break. Manchester United, Newcastle and Arsenal players can cheat and brawl to their hearts’ content, without very much — or, usually, nothing in the way of censure from their clubs, and the footballing authorities look on, supine. Chelsea’s manager, Jose Mourinho — an attractive man in many ways — can heap vitriol and accusations of partisanship on a top international referee, causing him to retire from the profession, and Uefa hands him a few weeks off from the dug-out, nothing more. They dare not cross the clubs with the money or the men with the clout. And all of the top club managers can withhold players from international duty — sometimes, it would seem, fraudulently — so that the pampered little moppets remain uninjured for the next stroll out against those children of a lesser God: Southampton or Charlton or Fulham.
These days, when the top clubs play the smaller teams in a particularly crucial game, the only recourse for the underdogs is to kick them off the park, as happened recently when Arsenal met Blackburn. This does not provide for an edifying spectacle but, still, I’d have happily clambered down on to the pitch to help Blackburn do the business, especially if it meant kicking Robert Pires really hard. We are grateful for the chance to watch Robben, Henry and Ronaldo et al weave their magic, but the pay-off is that somehow the English game has been left high and dry. For the real fans it has never been just about beauty — as a Millwall supporter, this is something I know only too well. It should also be about a sense of place and a sense of belonging, of commitment and community and something which transcends the obscene pay packets. But how can you explain that to one of those new Chelsea fans or, indeed, players?
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