“Bollocks to you too!”
Immersed as I was in the music, whilst simultaneously staring out of my suburban window dreaming of owning a pair of bondage trousers, it took me a while to cotton on that my mother had entered the room, seen the sleeve of the Sex Pistols album that I had surreptitiously snuck into the house, and passed judgement. In fact, all I saw was her back, quickly followed by the sight of a slamming door.
The generation gap, neatly encapsulated 70s style. Music, fashion (“you’re not going out dressed like that”), hair styles (“is that a boy or a girl, you can’t tell these days…”) – this, traditionally, is the subject matter that divides parents and their offspring.
Cut to 2007, however, and it would be fair to say music (and its attendant fashions) has become less a divider of generations, more a soundtrack to familial bonding. Editors have the number one album? Time to introduce your brood to Joy Division. The line ups at the Diana & Live Earth gigs are tired and stale, reckon the nippers. Dead right, you concur.
So where’s football come into this, you may well ask – and with some justification, having waded patiently through this waffle with no mention of a Torres, Henry or, indeed, a Shinawatra.
Well, I’ve spent the close season watching the Premier League soap opera unfold on Ceefax, Sky Sports News et al, and like many fans I know (not ‘commentators’, those pontificating broadsheet journos whom you never see admit to an allegiance to any team, but fans), I’ve found myself feeling as alienated from the game as my mum would have done had she been dropped into a Clash gig in 1977.
This game – our game – is no longer about skill, or so it would seem. Neither is it about promotion and relegation, the camaraderie of fans, sporting theatre. It’s not even about the bad haircuts, the constant tinkering with kit designs, the debate about safe terracing.
It’s about MONEY. Cash, dosh, dinero, wonga, spondulics. Obscene amounts of money. Transfer fees, salaries, new stadia, take overs. Enough money to feed a good chunk of the Third World is sloshing about this less than beautiful game, and the mainstream media loves every minute of it.
And what I’m asking myself is this. Is the distaste with which many of us are viewing this state of affairs merely a sign of our age? Are we grumpy old stick in the muds simply refusing to move with the times? Not that I’m suggesting that Messrs Shinawatra, Magnusson, Gaydamak and the franchise owners at Liverpool Reds are the Pistols reincarnate, trailblazing a vibrant new era for the game…but are we turning into our dads?
Of course we’ve been moving this way for well over a decade now. Sky Sports, the advent of the Premiership, all-seater stadia, over-expectant fans whingeing on phone-ins. The much-discussed gentrification of the game as the traditional fan has been priced out and the much-satirised (but still rich enough to pay) prawn sandwich brigade have sidled in.
But things had seemed relatively under control. Tolerable. Abramovich was a one off, a novelty. The £20,000,000+ transfer fees were still the exception, not the rule. £100,000 a week salaries were still rare outside of SW6. And despite the widening gap between the Prem & the Football League, the haves and the have nots, clubs such as Bolton (consistently), Charlton (until a year ago) and Reading had all shown they could compete. OK, the days of an Ipswich being top 3 year after a year, a QPR getting within a point of the title, a Watford getting into Europe may have gone, but small town clubs were not being eliminated from the upper echelons of the game altogether, even if they might need to rely on a local lad sugar daddy inspired by Jack Walker, and the odd Korean or Latvian import on the pitch.
But now? Now it’s getting silly. West Ham, Portsmouth, Man City…what on earth is going on at these places? Classic English clubs, clubs central to their local communities, passionate fans who accepted that the trophy cabinet wouldn’t be stuffed to the gills every year, but who got behind their team all the same.
Do the fans of these teams really want the owners they’ve now got? Well, maybe that’s where the generation gap kicks in. I had a look at a City fan site recently to see what they made of it all. An in depth article analysing the (ahem) ‘colourful’ history of Dr Taksin Shinawatra from a fan clearly feeling the soul of his beloved club was under severe threat nestled alongside another from a correspondent writing out his multi-million pound wish list of potential new signings.
“So what exactly do Eggert Magnusson and co. want with West Ham?” a suspicious Irons fan brought up on Moore, Bonds or Brooking will most likely be asking. “How much money will the manager have to spend on signing world class players?” is the more likely query from his son or daughter. (“Oh gawd, not Craig Bellamy!” they will no doubt chorus together, showing there are still some footballing emotions that can unite the generations)
At the root of it all, it would seem, is “the new TV deal”. Not Sky, but the one for international rights. The one that means it isn’t all about making the top 4, even the top 6…even staying up…the one that has decreed that you get the best part of thirty million smackers for finishing last. At last it seems that the old adage “how do you make a small fortune out of a football club? By starting with a big one…” no longer rings true. Clearly these new investors ARE in it for the money.
I guess it’s just the close season. When things kick off in August, and the transfer window has closed, it’ll be business as usual again. Who is Sven bedding? Who is Bellamy fighting? Who is ‘Arry slipping a few quid to (allegedly)? Will Jamie Redknapp ever say anything worth listening too?
Somewhere along the line, some football will be played, and generations can unite over sublime skill, comedy own goals and pantomime villain refs. Fans of Prem teams throughout the land will dream that this is the year they finish in that all important 4th spot…or 6th…or 10th…or 17th. Hell, let’s finish 20th, trouser the £26,000,000 cheque, then enjoy winning games at a canter every week in the 08-09 season before getting back on the gravy train.
And what of those of us whose teams aren’t in the Prem? Those teams for whom there is no parachute payment? The ones where the club’s highest earner gets in a year what Herr Ballack gets in a week? Well I guess we just have to amend our dreams accordingly. Win more games than we lose, maybe a couple of derby victories, that sort of stuff. Avoiding relegation on the last day could be about as good as it gets. That and a live Sky humiliation against Arsenal’s multi-national U15s in the Carling Cup.
As we grind our way towards the inevitable European Super League, the over-30s among us will continue to splutter over our Bovril. Da kids will have no such qualms. They’ll simply pick an English team to follow in the Big Mac Euro Super League, whilst also following their local team in the Mr Jerk Chicken Southern Regional Alliance. International football will fall into the wilderness, as the European and South American heavyweights ditch it altogether and the Faroes are crowned World Champions after a penalty shoot out victory against the plucky Venezuelans. “Granddad, what was a terrace casual again?”
Oh, how Richard Keys would chastise me if he read this. Deluded flights of fancy from a grumpy old sod. Next you’ll be telling us that a disgraced former Thai Prime Minister and an Icelandic biscuit magnate are competing with a shady Russian oil baron to be the most powerful man in English football…
