A Not So Beautiful Game

On Sunday 18th April 2021 as 12 professional European soccer clubs announced that they want to be a "SUPER LEAGUE". Why is that important to me? It is because I grew up in the culture of soccer and not as a consumer of entertainment.

The Super League idea is heavily influenced by a group of American businessmen who own some of the big soccer clubs in England. For them soccer is a product that they can sell through subscriptions via a cellphone and players are the merchandise they can take around the world as some kind of traveling circus. It is everything that community built and working class created soccer is not. It cares nothing for neighbourhoods or history, just clicks, for a product infinitely many times bigger than anything the NFL or the NBA can ever hope to become or scale to.

In post-script there has been an increasing rise in protests about 12 greedy rich owners trying to apply their will against an overwhelming negative backlash. Including a surprisingly passionate response for talk show host James Corden :

Corden makes it clear that his American audience probably does not care for this, but he does, likewise the usual arms-length attitude of average LinkedIn users don't care either. Like Corden, I am thinking about this, because I care.

In a moment those that had built a model for a PREMIER LEAGUE, found also that the very clubs they helped make wealthier, now decided to bite the hand that feeds them also. In a pandemic, with no fans in the stands, the financiers smelled the fresh blood of profits from a sport that the rest of refer to as the "Beautiful Game".

What is odd, is how many soccer fans who were shocked by the news late on Sunday, as if it came out of the blue. Yet no one took the talks of a Super League seriously. No one thought that the idea would have any traction other than the fanciful ideas of a very few. That was how it was in 2018 and we all dismissed the odd player speaking from a perspective that very few fans actually share, that this is a good thing.

Back then the pundits were also saying what any sane thinking fan would know - that talk of a Super League is just talk, because the very idea of it would spell a death knell for the Beautiful Game that built a rich history and a passionate tribal following, which began with working class people, who the elites once satisified in the "stands" where they set the culture that soccer should be watched standing up.

Two years ago the questions changed a little, asking whether the Super League is the future of football. It depends on how we frame that future. The transformation here is from a game the elite gave to the poor working classes, without seats which cost money, while they participated in the rich man's sport which was Rugby. This is the future, soccer now is for the rich.

If a financier sees that an $8 billion investment is totally worth the investment, charging a fifth of a working class person's weekly minimum wage for a ticket is not a big deal for them, it is the sheer extent of profits available when people are willing to pay big money.

When the Premier League OK'd American owners to take over three of the clubs now seeking to be in the new Super League, if they did not have the vision of this possibility, it is clear from the media history that others did. So the Premier League is just as blindsided by the announcement by the twelve breakaway "big clubs".

Not the German league, where the richest club Bayern Munich is 51% owned by fans. Yet there is always a FOMO at work, and the fear of missing out has already attracted two Spanish giants whose ownership is also member based i.e. a large number of fan shareholders who elect Presidents who have decided that this is good for both Real Madrid and Barcelona. The custodian of the game in England became the Premier League, and they too took the game from the English Football League, but there was no cynicism about that.

Now this "Super League" want to take the marbles that are presently in the hands of European bodies in England, Spain and Italy, it is something these bodies should have conceived as a possibility. Apparently the Spanish La Liga may have done that, for they have claimed that they are "prepared" for this eventuality, so have cryptically suggested that the 12 clubs wanting to form the Super League have a surprise waiting for them. There will be a surprise waiting for them but it might come from politicians not football authorities.

For decades we have lived with the creation of "American Football", with soccer fans reminding the yanks that that Football is soccer.

The irony is that soccer is getting a possible "americanization" of soccer. This shift is from clubs who had a relationship with their fans, to owners who have a relationship with their investment, and sometimes for decades.

Liked prized investments in art, the value appreciation of sports ownership has been immense. Only a few sports teams are available on the market at any given time. Their market values have soared into the billion dollar category. This is no longer your neighbourhood football team whether that is soccer or grid iron.

The 12 soccer teams under the radar now are big business.

We are no longer talking in the realms of billionaire owners but sports empires. If there are soccer supporters awakening to the confirmation of the letter of intent to form a Super League on Sunday night, they possess a certain naivety that these sports behemoths are taking something precious from them - so fans like me might decide to stay away, or form a non-league team in protest. That works because then we own it, it is all about ownership now.

I am sure that the 12 renegade European clubs are not so naive to underestimate the war that they are unleashing, for they have seen over the COVID period that so long as there is someone to pay them for the product of the football, the modern football fan is just another source of revenue - so long as their is a TV audience that will buy their product.

Having spent over 5 decades having football as a part of my life, it matters very little to me that I now spend some 5 hours detailing my thoughts in this thought piece. This is how much this game has been a part of my own identity, but this beautiful game is being turned into a not so beautiful product. It is the difference between falling in love and paying for prostitutes - one is a love of the game, the other is a lust for power and profits.

The Premier League were the original one's who overlooked supporters groups, in so much as that if they did not sell out football to people who see it is a financial transaction rather than have actual football sense. It is true that teams like Manchester Cithave football sense, but this club is owned by a State and not just any ownership group or family. Chelsea's owner understood the football side by appointing the best managers.

These owners have enjoyed the taste of victory and their fans have enjoyed glory all purchased through large injections of whatever success money can buy. Not all clubs enjoyed this success especially where the financial whizzes dominated the football brains, or in the case of Manchester United turned football operations to their financial whiz. Now just when it looked like the football side of the operations have clicked, they do this?

When the owners of Tottenham built a state of the art of stadium, it seemed like the team I supported were finally going to be a part of the big league success story. Now fans ask how a team like Tottenham would be included in the Big Six in England . What people forget is that this stadium escalated in costs because its owners wanted a retractable soccer pitch, under which there is a NFL pitch, complete with NFL dressing room facilities.

If there was ever an Americanization of the Tottenham Stadium it could not be as stark as the desire to have an NFL franchise in London. If the trick was just to appoint a quality coach every team could buy themselves a championship, but if one spends more money on the NFL infrastructure than on the team itself - that signals where the real priority is. What value is there for a Spurs fan to say they have a state of the art of facility, before one wakes up and understands the split personality of the stadium. This is not White Hart Lane, this is not the attractive football of Tottenham's history, this is a property that belongs to its owners.

This is not me celebrating a League Cup win in 1971 or a UEFA Cup victory in 1972, or the FA Cup wins in 1981, 1982 and 1991 or the solitary League Cup win in 2008, which is the last time there was silver ware - while other "big team" won much, Spurs fan became the perennial optimists. The solace was attractive football, played the "right way" made up for the lack of success and a championship that most Spurs supporters have not seen in their lifetime or at least if they were alive in 1961. We live in hope, but we should also understand the reality of the game we lived and loved.

It is all well said and done but the addiction that spans a lifetime is a hard habit to give up. Even if my team succeeds being a part of this "Super League", eventually I might find myself counting away the last decades of my life, following the same team.

To UNFOLLOW that habit means saying a goodbye to a significant aspect of what I have identified with that goes beyond skin and bone. There is a lot of history.

What we are talking about now is a group of clubs that think they can run things better than the organization body. For all the flaws in that body, what will they do if the ugly specter of football hooliganism starts coming back.

Now the organizations bodies and the political authorities work hard to keep this awful part of tribalism and right-wing groups from re-entering soccer, with all its very ugly consequences.

Then there are areas that a club lead consortium might to do much better, which is to go well beyond the platitudes to end racism in football. Clubs will be driven far greater to protect their assets and if social media companies do not protect them from online racism, they are likely to see the profitable value of becoming extended social media networks themselves. Once one has a taste for taking over things where does it stop?

Personally I think these clubs have underestimated just how ferocious the backlash will be from football supporters and equally the politicians who can sense that siding with supporters garners them far more votes, because there is genuine concern about the personal and societal values that a Super League set up the way it is, to look after the interests of a handful of clubs, hurts the wider infrastructure of the game (that made it beautiful), there may turn out to make this Super League as the "common enemy".

There are also the structures of UEFA in Europe and FIFA globally that cannot be underestimated. While these bodies have not covered themselves with glory, with corruption scandals that show they are not angels, the lesser of the two evils is what is under consideration. This is how I feel about this news and all of this is my opinion. Tonight I wanted to express it in the unique way I normally do, so there is very little I am carrying around, because these attitudes were born of a lifetime embedded with moments, stories and experiences, that make the game beautiful.

I hope it will revert back to being the beautiful game. The inner rage is real here tonight.