Has football really changed that much in the last couple of decades? You would certainly think so if visiting one of the bookshops nationwide with shelves creaking dangerously under the weight of reams of nostalgia-filled tomes all based around the “football ain’t what it used to be” theory.
Sky TV dominance, domestic Leagues awash with foreigners, the end of terracing, billionaire owners, the outlawing of tough tackling...all topics regularly debated, with those over 30 lamenting the loss of football’s soul.
Whilst there are certainly things I miss about football as it was “when I were a lad”, watching my kids growing up and loving the game as much as I did (and still do) has certainly tempered any feelings of negativity I may have been harbouring about the modern game.
Much as my generation simply accepted the ills of football in the 70s as ‘part of the game’ (frequently appalling facilities, hooliganism at its peak, ‘hard men’ attempting to decapitate flair players), so my kids view haphazard kick off times, a competition for ‘champions’ that invites you in if you finish 4th and Estonian full backs edging out the lad who’s been in the Academy since he was 10 as just the way the game is. For all the documentaries that you can find on the myriad TV channels now available to most of us, it sometimes takes a comic drama such as ‘Life on Mars’ to remind us that much in the 70s was rubbish, and ‘progress’ is still, more often than not, ‘a good thing’.
One crucial founding principle of football has remained intact through all the changes, a principle that has kept the playing field far more level than is the case in many sports. What division you play in is still determined by performances & results on the pitch. “Football is a results business” remains a cliché simply because it remains true.
When you see the likes of Leeds, Man City & Sheffield Wednesday slumming it in the third tier, and virtually half a Premiership full of teams who rarely if ever graced the top tier in the 70s & 80s, it cheers all who cherish that level playing field...and I’d be willing to wager you’d still find very few Leeds supporters, or for that matter Saints or Charlton fans, backing Phil Gartside’s ridiculous scheme of a few months back.
You know the one...’Prem 1’ and ‘Prem 2’, each with 18 clubs, featuring Celtic & Rangers...all of which in itself isn’t entirely ridiculous, there are strong arguments in favour of smaller divisions, and if we have 2 Welsh clubs in the league, why not 2 Scottish ones?
No, the truly nauseating bit was that the idea was clearly conceived with the goal of protecting the backsides of clubs like Gartside’s Bolton, who have enjoyed an extended run at top table, but who know one bad season, one misguided managerial appointment, maybe a couple of dubious refereeing decisions, and it could all be taken away from them. Hence the idea that only one team per season would be relegated from ‘Prem 2’ to what was left of the Football League...a club that would then be even more red hot favourites for an instant return than is the case now with those Prem teams who drop to the Championship...a club who would no doubt have few problems fulfilling the criteria that you can’t help feel ‘Prem 1 & 2’ would have put in place for their members’ club (starting point: quality of facilities...logical endpoint: fanbase & turnover).
The Gartside proposal fell only one step short of being an invite only closed shop League, and as such has thankfully been rebuffed – for now.
Cup competitions are a different kettle of fish. One of Jimmy Greaves’s stock phrases back in the day was “the Cup’s a great leveller Saint”....and so it still often proves to be, with the fact that the latter part of the Champions’ League is played in a knock out format even allowing for shocks & surprises at the top level of the game.
Seeding has played a part in numerous cup competitions for some time now, with complex and convoluted rankings systems being deployed in an attempt to ensure that not too many big boys end up with cup egg on their faces.
Sometimes the seeding system employed is not only supported by logic, but also adds to the excitement of the competition – the third round draw in the FA Cup being the best example. As for the biggest competition of them all, the World Cup, seeding has long played a part, especially in the European qualifying sections, where many of the richest countries and their all-important TV viewers reside. However, the playing field has still felt relatively level.
Much like the Champions’ League, where England, Spain & Italy rule the roost, FIFA clearly would prefer to see certain key countries qualify for the showpiece finals themselves. However, the qualifiers for South Africa 2010 threw up some unexpected concerns for the governing body.
Whilst they were no doubt delighted to see Spain, England & Holland (small population but huge following and glamorous footballing heritage) qualify at a canter, they didn’t foresee France, Germany & Italy all stumbling as the finish line came into sight. Equally distressing must have been the sight of Portugal’s woes. Whilst not Finals regulars by any stretch, they currently have the world’s most bankable footballer in their ranks. (Meanwhile down in South America, one of the World Cup’s greatest ever playing legends, so great that even 86’s hand of God and 94’s drugs ban have only partly taken the sheen off, was making a pig’s ear of trying to get heavyweights Argentina through. An Argentina team featuring the world’s second most bankable footballer...)
So with the involvement in the Finals of Ronaldo, Riberry, Henry, Ballack and co in serious doubt, not to mention the reigning Champs (who as of the last couple of tournaments have had to suffer the ignominy of actually having to qualify in order to defend their title), FIFA set a very worrying precedent – they changed the rules of the qualifying tournament in Europe when its end was but weeks away.
Given the amount of column inches dedicated to Gartside’s harebrained scheme, one which he never actually formally took to the Premier League’s boardroom table, I am amazed at how little coverage was given to FIFA’s ultra-belated decision to seed the Play Offs that would decide the final qualifiers from Europe.
In case you need reminding of what they did (or in case you didn’t even know they’d done it, so scant was the coverage received, and with England not affected), at a meeting on September 29th, with the groups due to be completed in mid-October and the Play Offs themselves set for mid-November, FIFA announced that those Play Offs would, for the first time, be seeded to the advantage of the four nations which held the highest world ranking.
Not only had there been no previous mention of this in all the pages & pages of rules & regs issued as the competition started, but also it’s worth remembering that the groups themselves are seeded in the first place.
Such on the hoof making it up as you go along might not be questioned in, say, F1, where one (ever so slightly crazy) man rules the roost – but in football? Yet this decision was endorsed by the massed ranks of the sport’s governing body. Surely when it comes to such “making it up as we go along” to protect vested interests, this is a very unwelcome first.
The four countries who have fallen foul of the ruling are Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Slovenia. Ukraine may still fancy their chances against a Greece team whose ranking is no doubt still skewed by their surprise Euro 2004 win. One suspects Bosnia & Slovenia (seeded in Pots D & E respectively in the original draw) will be relatively pleased simply to have made it this far, in groups where second place was always likely to be wide open.
The real losers have been the Republic of Ireland. Seeded third in their group, they went through the qualifiers unbeaten, drew twice with group winners Italy whom they pushed all the way...and have been rewarded with a two-legged tie against France. Of course they may well have drawn either of the heavyweights who messed up qualifying, the French or the Portguese, had the draw been done out of an unseeded hat...but the odds were slashed once the new ruling came into play.
Much of World Cup history is about fantastic individuals who pushed their countries to victory (Pele, Maradona, Zidane); or if not to victory, then to previously untold levels of achievement for their nation (Stoichkov, Cruyff, Platini, Hagi). Often such players’ legendary status has been defined by their performances on the so-called greatest stage of all. Others (Best & Giggs being close to home examples) have been denied the opportunity to cement that status simply due to being born in a country that rarely qualifies for the Finals. Zlatan Ibrahimovic misses out this time as unfancied Denmark from Pot C in the original draw forced Ronaldo’s Portugal and his Swedish side into second and third places respectively.
Arguably no individuals since Zidane & Ronaldo in 1998 have dominated a World Cup Finals. Ronaldo got the goals in 2002 whilst simultaneously looking like a shadow of his pre-Final 98 self (an overweight shadow to boot); whilst one of the big stories of 2006 was how Ronaldinho at his apparent peak failed to perform on the ultimate stage. In each of the last two tournaments, the two finalists have been teams who performed efficiently as units, but left us few really outstanding memories.
Perhaps FIFA share this view, and simply want to eliminate any risk of the top turns not being present. Messi or Ronaldo guiding their team to glory will garner a lot more coverage than a well-drilled Germany winning again. Maybe they’re painfully aware of the mumbles from Arsene Wenger amongst others that the better quality of football is now to be found in the Champions League, where a handful of teams have not only hoovered up all the best talent, but then have months to make them gel, a luxury no international team ever has. Thus individuals and teams both flourish in a way rarely seen in the more recent World Cups.
Their dilemma is clear, but the precedent set by the solution is still wrong. If FIFA can change the rules of World Cup qualification as they go along, we risk open season for such changes in every competition going. The game’s rich and powerful must be rubbing their hands in glee.
I’ll leave the last words to Chile’s captain Claudio Bravo, words which sum up perfectly the spirit of the World Cup and what qualifying for it means to a small country, and which hopefully can inspire Ireland and co. in the uneven battles to come:
"It was our mission to change the face of Chilean football. It was an exceptional campaign, based on discipline, consistency, confidence and belief. But this isn't the summit, we can achieve great things and will work to do so."
.
