There are plenty of people around who insist that modern football – namely the Premier League and the multi-tentacled industry that has grown around it – is rubbish. They feel zero connection to its ludicrously over-paid players. They grimace at its commercialisation. They balk at the absence of loyalty, insufferable hype and match-day tickets that require a second mortgage. Even the term ‘match-day tickets’ makes them physically nauseous.In disgust at a sport they no longer recognise these people often retreat to the mud and authenticity of non-league fare, and without wishing to seem even remotely patronising I admire them for that. There is genuine sacrifice in a protest grounded in morality.I on the other hand love Premier League football. Enough to tolerate the ever-changing kick-off times, Jamie Redknapp, and the increasingly sterile atmospheres at games. Enough to overlook the fact that Manchester United have an official coffee partner. Andros Townsend earns the same in a day than I do in a year and I’m relatively okay with that.Yet recently I have come to greatly miss the key element that first hooked me into the matrix. I have become disillusioned and jaded; at other times angry and sad. Where has the fun gone?Don’t fret, I’m not one of those nostalgic types who yearns for the game’s ‘characters’ though admittedly that is a factor: any era would be enhanced by the clown princes of yesteryear and by contrast players today seem to be athletes first, automatons second, with any personality that manages to break through considered a bonus. That they are so cossetted and unapproachable as a consequence of that protection hardly helps either.Yet it’s not the players I have a problem with, nor the managers, or the media, or twenty-first century supporters. It’s none of them individually and all of them as a whole. It’s everything. Football has lost its soul and that soul was not wholly constituted by what is shown in cloying adverts that kid us that everything is still okay: a dad guiding his young son through the crowd en route to his first game; the mates from different social strata who can all conveniently afford a beer and a ticket for the same area of the ground. It was also the life-enhancement that the game gave us 24/7. That has gone. Or at least it’s going.Now football has a permanent scowl on its face. The reason why footballers are so cossetted is because if they dare to air an honest opinion faux-outrage follows with the media quick to castigate and the public wanting blood. In fact outrage is everywhere: at career decisions, refereeing decisions, manager’s post-match comments, tweets, celebrations, opinion pieces. And if it isn’t outrage it’s mockery: at tricks that don’t come off, and fan vids, and supporters who had faith in their team and publicly said so and supporters who couldn’t afford to attend a game thus leaving an empty seat. At some point around 2012 ‘banter’ – that annoying rapscallion whose heart was at least in the right place – was replaced by cruelty, and hatred, and f***-you-and-know-your-place. It’s difficult to see where we go from here but down.Nobody seems to be enjoying themselves at all anymore. Resentment abounds. Toxicity and cynicism abounds. 25 years of screaming hype has left us entitled and thoroughly pissed off. Right now Manchester City are playing some of the most exhilarating and sensational football ever witnessed on English soil yet visit any club forum and its akin to stepping into a wake. The media has an agenda against them. Their unbeaten run is doomed due to John Stones’ injury. Negativity is the norm.Last week a Daily Mail journalist trolled Arsenal fans by selecting a combined XI ahead of the North London derby and purposely picked the entire Spurs side. In response Arsenal’s official Twitter account trolled him back and by doing so opened the gate to a slew of despicable abuse from supporters that ranged from antisemitism to personal threats.Who comes out of that story well? Nobody, that’s who, least of all myself for referring to the first two examples as trolling. Until recently that was bantz and prior to that it was just folk having a giggle at another’s expense. You know, like we used to all the time until we collectively broke our funny bone.
As ‘teagate’ raged on (for those unfamiliar with the ‘scandal’, Arsenal’s response to the journo was a gif of Mesut Ozil slurping on a brew) Twitter offered up another doozy that sent our inner-child to bed without any supper. According to FSF Faircop, a viewer of Match of the Day spied a fan making a masturbatory gesture towards a player and was so incensed they wrote a letter of complaint to the club. Let’s stop the tape here to acknowledge that the programme in question has millions of viewers and so it’s a statistical definite that one of them would be hyper-sensitive and eccentric enough to go to such measures. He or she presumably fires off missives on a daily basis complaining about all manner of grievances, from presenters wearing too much make-up on Songs of Praise to the smaller size of Mars bars.
When the reel is played on it’s revealed that the club have now identified the culprit who can expect a ban to be served up imminently.
I have never encountered anything so mirthless and fundamentally depressing in all of my life and bear in mind I once saw Russell Howard do stand-up.
These are mere examples, of course, plucked from another week full of vexation and indignation towards a pastime that used to be our escape from such doom and gloom.
In truth though it’s all around us; like the Wet Wet Wet song if you swapped ‘love’ for ‘tetchiness’. Doom, gloom and sneering cynicism can be found in supporter snobbery (‘go to every game do you?’); stat snobbery; free-kicks that lead to a goal twenty passes later being analysed to death; cautions for players who celebrate with fans (it’s excitement, not incitement); overly earnest pundits; non-approved flags being confiscated.ÂElsewhere po-faced nannying from the game’s authorities and rank hypocrisy from supporters are rife. Football is a stressful, serious business these days. Maybe we need reminding that it needn’t be?
Because on the pitch we’ve never had it so good. Before us Ozil and De Bruyne exhibit sumptuousness with ease; Pogba prowls and Salah is lightning in a bottle. Just three months into the season and the Premier League has already lavished us with 315 goals and enough moments of individual ingenuity to lift the spirits of a dead man.
It’s a crying shame then that it’s all been greeted with a scowl, one-upmanship and a pervading general sense of arseyness. It really is time to turn our frowns upside-down for all of our sakes.
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