Help! I am falling out of love with football.
The fact you are reading this probably means you have at least a modicum of interest in football. You are probably a fan of a club, have been for some time. You have probably poured a sizeable portion of your wage into that club, the trips away, the programmes, food, a pint or two not to mention the merchandise, the shirt, the kit for your kids. I once tried to calculate how much I had paid into my club, Nottingham Forest over the last twenty years but had to stop as it was beginning to concern me, almost as though I had paid in more than I had earned, (admittedly the first few years were funded by the bank of mum and dad). But is anyone else getting that empty feeling when they head to watch their clubs now? You still love your club, but what you are watching has begun to become a little distasteful, at times leaving a sour taste in the mouth and what I am sure used to be an enjoyable experience for me has begun to become quite a bitter one, something I have trouble reconciling with continuing to pay £400 plus all the other extras listed on my club. Football is beginning to feel too distant, too aloof, and, at times, downright infuriating.
This is written on the back of the Olympics. Perhaps that beautiful, well organised, successful 16 days when I saw into a series of sports that looked so much cleaner than my sport football. Winners congratulating losers was commonplace, when Louis Smith achieved silver despite having the same score as his Hungarian rival, Krisztian Berki, his first reaction was not to chuck his water bottle on the floor, and charge at the judges, veins bulging on his forehead to demand a recount, his first reaction was to smile and stroll over to his rival offering a warm handshake and a hug. Compare that to a few incidents which occurred on Saturday. My own team were playing Bristol City, one of our players Adlene Guedioura, sustained a head injury, the game was stopped and on resumption the Bristol City player Greg Cunningham intimated he was going to give the ball back to our goalkeeper, instead he took the ball and presumed to charge at our goal. Alan Pardew pushed a linesman believing the ball had crossed the line for a throw in, afterwards with a smile on his face he called the incident “ridiculous.” After feeling buoyant following the Olympic Games, the Cunningham incident at the City Ground and the subsequent Pardew push brought me back down to earth. Slightly longer ago we just have to consider the Terry vs Ferdinand fiasco, the Suarez vs Evra incident and Joey Bartons antics in the last game of the season. A lot of the time, gamesmanship in football is put down to the need to win, the need to be successful but I don’t see how being, allegedly, racist (or the abuse they poured at each other which was heard about at the court case) can be put down to that. That comes from not really caring anymore, about having so much money and influence and people massaging their ego’s that they feel above what is considered reasonable behaviour.
The ‘boys club’ attitude of the pundits on Match of the Day also appears to a symptom that football is sick. Again, thinking back to the Olympics the punditry was superb, with people who know and can dissect their sport. On Saturday night I was left with the two Alan’s smugly telling me things which any of my friends could have told me in the pub. MOTD seems to have settled on simply replaying the action with one of the pundits describing exactly what I am seeing, for this Alan Hansen receives a reported £1 million per year. The smugness of the majority of the pundits, has also become to annoy and frustrate me. Listening to 606 with Robbie Savage and Darren Fletcher I am amazed by their hypocrisy. At times Robbie Savage is adamant that you cannot compare ‘normal’ life to the life of a footballer yet, when it suits him he will ask a caller who is ringing in to complain about a footballer leaving his
club for more money whether he would do the same thing. Its hypocrisy and poor punditry and to rely on the ‘I’ve played in the Premier League so I know what I am talking about’ is boring and lacks any adept debating skills. The best sports articles and books I read are written by people who have never played the sport in question at the highest level, Daniel Taylor, James Lawton and David Conn for example. The punditry has turned into ‘jobs for the boys’ and merely serves to emphasise the growing gap between us as supporters and those inside the football industry.
Thinking about the money side of things, the average Premiership wage at the moment is £22,353 per week, which is, before tax, slightly more than I earn in a year, even at Championship level the figure stands at £4,059 per week. This is on the back of a £3 billion pound deal to cover the Premiership between Sky and BT. On top of this season tickets for the fans are generally on the increase. Manchester City, owned by one of the richest families in the world, increased their season ticket prices an average of 9% this season as well as clubs like Everton, Fulham and Tottenham these hikes alongside a Sky package which will cost £300+ should you have the sports package. This is all happening alongside a terrible recession were people are really struggling to pay their mortgage. Surprisingly the Premier League appears to have been able to withstand the recession with stadium occupancy over the season before last remaining at a whopping 92.2%, compared to when the Premier League initially started in the 1992/93 season when average occupancy was only 69.6%. If anything highlights the strange relationship we have with football it is this and I for one, and I am sure many of you reading, can testify to this.
Consider this alongside some examples of players wages like; Wayne Bridge earning an estimated £95K per week, Roque Santa Cruz on £90k per week, Joey Barton earning £70k per week or possibly one of the most sickening stories in recent football history, Winston Bogarde earning £40k per week for years whilst at Chelsea despite playing only 11 games during that period. At my own club we have Ishmael Miller on a reported £15k per week contract and Matthew Derbyshire on something similar. Over the summer, our captain Luke Chambers’ contract expired, with many fans stating quite confidently that he would not find a club willing to offer the wages he had been on whilst at our club, predicting a change in the way wages were being paid. Chambers subsequently managed to double his wages at Ipswich Town. Now these are decent players, certainly better than your Sunday League types such as myself and I have no jealously towards their ability, but are they really worth that amount of money? Meanwhile players like Louis Saha and El Hadji Diouf have been able to earn good deals for themselves keeping up their journeymen routines. Does anybody else find figures like this distasteful particularly when coupled with prices we as fans pay to watch our football clubs?
It is hoped Financial Fair Play will have an impact on this. However I have concerns that if clubs need to cut their cloth, will this not have an impact on fans again with a potential increase in season tickets and match tickets to increase profits and allow club spending to continue? Also how can a manager such as Roberto Mancini be expected to balance his books by shipping players like Bridge, Santa Cruz and Adebayor out when they are demanding similar wages, wages other clubs cannot afford? I think the theory behind FFP is decent but it certainly needs some re-working and possibly re-starting the whole thinking process.
I’d like to not care as much as I do about my team, Nottingham Forest. I like to think of myself as a rational human being with strong desires for the world to be a better place and with my politics falling pretty far on the left of the spectrum. Yet this rational, sensible part of me has gone out the window when it comes to football. Yet I feel the tide turning I really do, I am not sure how much longer I can tolerate seeing all the sickening things I see in football and, as I admitted to, this is in the context of having watched the Olympics. It would be reassuring if there were others out there who feel the same way and feel that supporting their club, and football in general, no longer sits well with them, perhaps we could start some sort of footballers anonymous group?
I do not know what can help me to get back in touch with football, perhaps a more definite movement towards fan ownership through supporters trusts, perhaps a re-designed plan over Financial Fair Play, perhaps going to watch a football club lower down the leagues where there is a little more honesty or perhaps just accepting that this is the way it is for now and stopping my moaning and hope that the football bubble may burst and bring things back down to a level I can appreciate and find easier to continue to attend and pump my money into.
Excelent article – albeit ’twas the same sentiment last year and for the last 3-4 years to be honest. Football is an elite sport watched by the working class. its in the position it has always wanted and the big money men.. I mean “Barclays” (who cheat half the world out of money) are laughing all the way to their own bank…
I reckon youv'e lost touch with the basic principles of the game. Think back to when you fell in love with the beautiful game, perhaps at primary school. It was always exciting. Then there was the saturday team when then the training became tough but you were still in love. On top of this you began drinking like a madman and turning out on a Sunday morning with a hang over, spewing up behind the goal before kickoff.
and deciding that you were still better than their C/F and making that header yours.
You get my drift.
Now you can't do it any more and your only recourse is to pay way over the top to watch a bunch of whinging overpaid squealing prima-donna's do very little for their 70 THOUSAND POUNDS A WEEK. I'm not at all surprised you'r falling out of love with this thing that drives us on year after year and into insanity as we reach our dotage.
For me, I will always support The Toon and if we should never win anything ever again, I will always be in love. x HAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY the Lads.
I go to watch forest and have a young boy that i’d like to take in the years to come. The thing that is really sickening is the amount of foul language being hurled around the ground with such animosity – even in children’s seating. The club and police do nothing. I’m sick and tired of being subjected to it- maybe the only way to tackle the situation is to stop giving these clubs my money until they enforce the rules.
Agree with Georgia Peter & not just because i’m a Toon supporter!
I love the ‘beautiful game’ and will always follow my team because it’s MY team representing MY home city (no matter what (C)Ashley thinks!). Because of our ‘fanaticism’, Geordies will ALWAYS support the Toon, through thick or thin, good or bad. Even when we were 5h17e, we had attendances that other teams could only dream of. I don’t know anyone who has ‘thrown in’ his season ticket, although I know it has happenned… and I bet they’ve learned to regret it! I have never walked out of a game before full time and yet I am constructive in my criticism of my team’s performances, as and when.
To get back to the point in the article though, the true ‘values’ in football have ‘gone to Hell’. Players should be honest, show integrity and have a desire to play, like the Olympic athletes have shown recently, bar none! I honestly believe that globally, a form of wage-capping should be introduced and realistic values placed on players. otherwise we ARE going to end up with an elitist league of richest clubs full of cheating, play-acting, prima-donnas… with the worlds best(?) players not necassarily playing the best football… and who wants that? It’s happening and it needs nipping in the bud by those running the sport, for the sake of the game – and for the true fan! After all, without us there would be NO football!! HTL!!!
I’m sorry but I have to disagree with a lot of what you say. It sounds to me like you are just too familiar with football and, like anything that we become familiar with, you’ve become complacent and taken it for granted. When this happens that electric spark may not always be there all the time.
Think instead, however, of promotion against Yeovil after the years of hurt that had gone before that, think of beating Derby and Leicester 5-1 and 4-1, think of Man City away in the cup. Those are the days that should remind you why you love football so much.
The Olympics were great, I really enjoyed them and that feel good factor that they gave to the whole country was amazing, but the punditry sounded so much better because they are often introducing you into the intricacies of a sport that previously you may have only known a little bit about or watched occasionally, they can’t do that week in week out on the football.
The sportsmanship seen such as Louis Smith’s reaction was admirable but are you telling me you don’t ever see that on the football pitch? Football is a more frenetic sport but still has those moments of sportsanship – look at how the crowd and players reacted to the return of Paul Anderson on Saturday, for example.
Negative incidents on the football pitch are simply highlighted more due to the amount of coverage the sport gets and the amount of games that take place. If it was in football do you think the athletes that got caught for doping would barely get mentioned? I think not but that is what happened during the Olympics.
Of course footballers earn too much money but, unfortunately, even if every football fan didn’t go to games, as long as they watched it enough on TV these wages would be just as high because, in reality, it is from TV and sponsors that the revenue streams are large enough to match the wage bill. Financial Fair Play will only remove financial doping by rich owners but as long as the club can generate the money through TV and sponsorship then they will be fine. The money earned from direct sale of tickets or merchandise to fans, unless in the lower leagues, does not cover anywhere near enough of the player’s wages.
Unfortunately the cost of going to a game is not determined by how much the playing staff earn but by simple economics, supply and demand. This is where the grassroots part of the game is being dissolved as more and more local and loyal fans are priced out of attending matches on a regular basis. This is predominantly at the very top of the Premiership though.
The reality at Forest is that I have bought a season ticket for under £400, which equates to about £15 a match and I can go and watch us play a Premiership side next week for less than a tenner. If my son was over 4 he could have a free season ticket alongside mine and his Grandad can either get a discounted rate off any game he wants to go to or a really good discounted price for a season ticket.
So, if you really think you may be falling out of love with football, try and remember why you got hooked in the first place. You sure won’t have cared about the money/pundits/what other sports were doing etc back then. All you need to do is put things in perspective and remind yourself the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Football has come a long way since we both started watching it and I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see a Brian Clough side, but the next time the Trent End erupts due to a last minute goal that completes a winning comeback or we demolish one of our bitter rivals, don’t dissect every tiny detail just allow that wave of pure and utter joy to wash right over you and take you to that place only football fans really understand and then you’ll know, then you’ll know “That’s why I love football”.
Very nicely put Ben and great to hear from a fellow red. Its true Anderson did get a good reception, in fact, far better a reception than he ever got when he played in a red shirt and to that you can add McKenna on his return to the City Ground when he returned with Hull last season. But, to me, situations like that are really few and far between and under Billy Davies we operated under strict gamesmanship rules imposed by the gaffer which I, as a football fan first and Forest fan second, always found a little uncomfortable. You are spot on with many of your thoughts though and maybe taking a step back is in order and re-evaluate my opinions, perhaps the context of the olympics has really just exacerbated my thoughts and feelings, I dont know. Also really enjoyed reading Georgia Peters comments, very eloquently put. Thanks for everyone for feeding back, its much appreciated.
Redfaced…what a great piece. I too suddenly realised that there were loads of other things to do on a Saturday afternoon, and they were all cheaper things too! I hated all the players cars behind the main stand, as well as the diving, spitting, snarling of many of the players.
Try watching a game of hockey at Beeston, only £3 and top-quality sport played in an intense but less agressive way. I’m hooked, but then each to their own!
I have just comeented on this article, condemning the dodgy goings on on tyhe commencement of the EPL. My post was not accepted.
No reason was given, but I immagine it was because I told the truth whicjh is an embarrassment to tye football authoriries.
I would not be suprised if this post wasn’t accepted either. Hipocricy!
I support Watford, and yeah i can understand your thinking a bit. We’ve just had a big takeover too and now we’re the partner club of Udinese and Grenada. Although it does have its perks in the form of high profile loan deals and signings, Geijo, Almunia, Pudil, Vydra, Abdi etc. it does also come with the problems like the youth system being downgraded from Cat. 1 to Cat.3.
The good part to it all is it saved us from the ongoing financial problems and mid table mediocrity. We can now push for promotion and that’s all good.
However it does feel that with all the high profile names and stuff its pushing out the younger talent. Sean Murray is one of the lucky ones to have stayed in the squad after the takeover.
@Daddyreddog
To my knowledge, this site doesn’t have any moderation of comments so if your comment wasn’t accepted it was almost certainly just a technical glitch.
@Redfaced
Very nice piece.
If there’s one thing I’d wish to change about football, it’s the ridiculously confrontational nature of fans. I’m quite happy to find that no-one comes into my place of work and hurls abuse at me. No-one sits on the other side of my office swearing at me. Clients of my old company don’t scream “Traitor! Scum!” in my face when I pass them by.
I really don’t understand how anyone can think that’s acceptable.
As a bridge somewhere between that and the bad punditry thing, the next time a pundit says “oh they’re young lads, under a lot of pressure, tempers run high” I’m going very calmly and patiently forge some documents and sign that pundit up for the army.
The armed forces do a bloody good job of training their people; of teaching them discipline and self-control. It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that football clubs don’t try hard enough because they don’t have to – because it’s not in their interests to do so.
Ignore the debates over technology in football. One simple rule change: “No player other than the captain of each team shall speak to the referee unless spoken to or they shall be booked” to be brought into effect August 2014.
In two years, every coach in the league can whip their players into shape. But until the rules change, they’ll continue to choose not to.
Evo, it will be interesting to compare our two clubs long and short term. Whereas Watford have gone for a ‘big name’ manager and a different player recruitment policy, our owners have appointed a decent, under the radar manager and have gone about signing steady, dependable championship players with no ‘stellar signings’ as of yet (watch us snap up Joey Barton now!). Jem, I know exactly what you mean, working in mental healthcare I have to be extremely disciplined and my code of conduct is regularly examined with the risk of losing my job should I not meet certain standards or proficiencies, I am sure there are similar rules and regulations guiding your practice in your line of work.
Your example of a pundit blaming it on ‘young lad, high pressured environment’ and comparing that to say an 18 year old patrolling the streets of Kabul with a fully loaded gun and managing to withold from pulling the trigger is an accurate one although of course, pundits like Robbie Savage would not allow you to make that comparison as there is nothing like football.
Just bring the laws in as you suggest. I wonder if anyone could tell me if the move the ball forward 10 yards due to dissent has been scrapped altogether also?
Yeah will be good to see, I think the finances are always a good thing to have, especially in today’s climate. The one thing that annoyed me about the takeover was Dyche being sacked because he was a great manager and did really well to get us 11th when we were relegation candidates.
Both seem very sustainable models, where as our owners paid something like £7.5 million overall for all of our players that we have on loan, they were already on the books, so no need to spend, where as your team are signing sensibly and building up without busting the bank.
Who do you recon will be promoted this season?
I’m going for leicester and bolton automatic and as my outsider boro. Think they all have decent managers. Shame about dyche, has nottingham routes i believe but i cant say the same about us losing cotteril, the ten game run without scoring around the turn of the year was some of the worst football i have ever seen the reds play. I’m sure they’ll soon get hooked up with other jobs, maybe one of them will roll up at derby down the road.
Redfaced,
They implemented the 10 yards advance for dissent thing but butted up against a brick wall when it came to free kicks 27 yards out. Giving a penalty for that seemed too extreme and game breaking.
Problem is, with a free kick 19 yards out you just give the ref some chat, get the ball brought right up close and the entire defence just lines up on the goal-line. Advantage dissenters.
I wasn’t even talking about stuff as serious as walking patrols around dangerous streets – just basic indiscipline: answering back, swearing, insults, spitting. It’s somewhat widely known that off-duty in the mess Army folks can be some of the crudest, rowdiest around and fair enough. I don’t care if footballers are louts when “off-duty” but just like soldiers they can be taught to behave and toe the line when “on duty”.
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