It's all thrill and no filler goalfood’s simon harvey believes he can see parallels between football’s recent shenanigans, and another great british tradition (oh yes he can…)

Like Natalie Imbruglia I’m torn.

I’ve long hoped that English football would emulate its richer European counterparts in wealth and performance on the European and world stage but now I’m not so sure.
I obviously don’t want to turn the clocks back and I’m not a fan of Luddite FC but all this 24-entertainment, this non-stop news ticker tape of football stories each outdoing the other for their bizarreness, is doing my head in.

Is it just me or has football in this country become ever so slightly farcical, an ugly caricature of itself, a vicious Gerald Scarfe cartoon, lampooning its own misgivings.

In the past the game has been noble and positively Shakespearian.  It could easily have been said of 1966 . . . “and gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd, they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks, that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”

But now we’ve gone very end-of-the-pier, a little bit tawdry, a bit pull-your-shorts-up-get-in-the-wardrobe-here-comes-the-vicar. It’s now pure pantomime (the first reader to even think ‘oh no it isn’t’ must leave the website now). What other branch of entertainment throws up and wallows in such outlandish plots:

A cherry-cheeked Scotsman kidnaps a Bulgarian (who learned his English by watching The Godfather on TV) at an airport and drives him under a blanket to meet his friends; a former permed and permanently truculent hobbit-like creature storms out of his job leaving an army of beer-swilling, black and white trolls threatening to start World War Three. Then before the curtain falls a man wearing a tea towel turns up and says he’ll buy everything in sight even though a Russian businessman has already bought everything in sight and beyond sight. More Arabs and Indians arrive for the finale all waving wads of cash and threatening to throw them at anyone left standing. Meanwhile a man from Thailand, whose assets are frozen (in true Panto double-entendre style) exists stage left with a pocket full of profit. It’s Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, Cinderella, babes in the Wood and Puss in Boots all rolled into one. It’s a cheesy scriptwriter’s dream.

So why don’t we go the whole hog and have Canon and Ball manage the Welsh national side, make Christopher Biggins chairman of the PFA and introduce mandatory goal celebrations where players slap their thighs and shout ‘boom boom’ in an overly enthusiastic sort of way. The crowd could singalong after goals with chants of ‘a-ga-doo-doo-doo, push pineapple shake the tree’, with accompanying actions. We already boo the villains, cheer the heroes and shout: “he’s behind you” shortly before a tackle so we’re half way there already. So we should push the entertainment boundary further, make leading goal scorers principal boys and put a bit more slap on Sam Allardyce and Harry Redknapp and turn them into the perfect ugly sisters.

Soccer Aid was a success so let’s extend that and have pro-celebrity-family-entertainment-football full-time. Every squad must have no more than six full-time professional footballers, two soap stars, one boy band member, a comedian and someone in drag (I can think of a couple of teams who meet this criteria even now). Football scouts would have to spend equal amounts of time watching a useful leftback in a Hibs game and picking up a very funny stand-up at the Fringe.

We could return to the US idea of penalty shoot-outs for draws, we could introduce cross-entertainment systems. You could run an 800m race around the Don Valley trackside while a Rotherham United player receives treatment on the pitch, we could blindfold players who score penalties too regularly and even worse – you could dress grown men in furry costumes to look like their club mascots.

Everywhere you look in football these days there’s the incredible and the unbelievable, the kind of yarns where you just don’t know if your best mate’s winding you up. Even as I write, I hear that Darlington’s decision to buy Lichtenstein international Franz Burgmeier was based on a recommendation from the schoolboy grandson of the business tytoon and Darlington chairman George Houghton. And let’s not forget the club’s previous chairman, the famous George Reynolds, himself a safecracker-and-bare-knuckle-fighter-turned- millionaire who’s just returned from a stay with Her Majesty for tax evasion – see what I mean? Is it April 1st or what!

Panto stories and soap plots everywhere – there’s enough material here for a Hollywood blockbuster only it’s just not believable because it’s larger than life, over exaggerated, bloated and corpulent and not remotely credible . . .even though it’s true. Don’t get me wrong, it’s dead funny. I’ll share a joke with the bloke who sits next to me at Bramall Lane but I’m glad it’s not my club. Sure, I’d take the money if it was offered, it’s human nature, but am I pleased it’s happening this way? Is it sustainable? I don’t think so.

How noticeable too that the Berbatov/Kev shenanigans managed to overshadow the preparation for what was once a valued fixture – an England World Cup qualifier – the national game reduced to a mere sideshow thanks to an exclusive TV deal and the Prempanto being the biggest show currently in town. We’ve just gone a bit cheap and tacky. We’re a fashionable sport attracting the fashionable money but for how long and with what sort of exit strategy. Are we going to mimick the City bankers – enjoy the party for as long as it lasts and bugger work in the morning. Lots of headaches, an enormous bill to clean the mess up and one or two red faces regretting rash partnerships.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking there’s always a bloke like me whingeing in paradise. But the problem I have is, and this is not in any way sour grapes, nor is it some high moral grounded Northern working-class diatribe on success being borne out of  blood, sweat and tears, it’s that this rich man’s toy stuff really is all thrill and no filler. It’s all veneer and no substance. Truly great clubs have established their superiority through years, sometimes decades of continuous improvement in an era of greater equality between small and large clubs. Now though, you can buy superclub status like a franchise, not necessarily success, but you can at least pretend to be in the gang because you can pay to be there. And so English football’s Big Four became the Big Five and if the trend continues the four great divisions will eventually and inevitably spawn an elite superleague and the rest will be ancient history.

And we’ll all watch and enjoy because it’s always entertaining watching the game at its perceived best. But all the players will be interchangeable, the cast of this tacky show dependent purely on who’s currently fashionable. Some of the shows will stay open for decades and other shows will be overnight flops. It will be a transient piece of theatre lacking any real substance and watched by just as transient an audience of Japanese tourists paying top prices to watch another giant leap forward in the dumbing down of the greatest game on earth. Sadly, the show must go on.