The English may have invented the game and the Brazilians perfected it, but as rival football fans in England come together to protest exorbitant ticket prices and Brazilians rally at the Confederations Cup, there seems little love left for the beautiful game.
While the protests in Brazil are primarily directed at their government rather than the game itself, football has never been far from the scene. The growing Brazilian middle class is demanding greater political transparency and better public services.
In this regard, the protests may seem a world away from English outcry against expensive ticket prices.
To give mileage to the phrase ‘against modern football’ is to risk censure. As one English protester explained, you run the risk of sounding like “the 45-year-old bloke who sits in the pub and moans that there are no good bands anymore.”
The fact is, following the professional game anywhere these days is to buy into ‘modern’ football. Fans of struggling teams usually forget the politics and take down the banners when an oil baron, media tycoon or property developer injects a few million dollars into club coffers.
Moreover, it is hard to know where ‘modern’ football starts and ends. Football clubs have long been dependent on rich and powerful benefactors, while no amount of nostalgia will change the fact that fans have rarely ever been in the driver’s seat.
Still, it’s becoming harder to ignore the fact the people’s game has increasingly little regard for ordinary fans. It’s popular to blame overpaid players, but the real problems are structural.
In England, fans at all levels of the game are being fleeced for the privilege of watching their team. According to recent data from the BBC, a day out on the terraces at York City in the English Fourth Division costs nearly $40. What a world.
The situation is, of course, far worse in the Premier League. Which is why fans, led by Liverpool’s ‘Spirit of Shankly’ Supporters Union, camped outside the FA last week.
A deep, often irrational love for their club keeps them coming back and paying the high prices, but the economic realities of austerity in Britain makes it harder and harder for them to justify a family trip to the football.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, there is a deep-seated concern about the money being spent on hosting the Confederations Cup, the World Cup and the Olympic Games. Never in my lifetime would I have suspected that Brazilians would be protesting against hosting a football tournament, but the level of discontentment is so great that the fight for better public services seems to have overshadowed even joga bonito.
Dave Zirin once wrote, “The building of publicly funded stadiums has become a substitute for anything resembling urban policy.” The Brazilians are right to protest. As Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski outline in their book Soccernomics, hosting international sporting events doesn’t necessarily lead to greater national prosperity.
If anything, Kuper and Szymanski found that “hosting [a World Cup] doesn’t make you rich, but it does make you happy.” We Australians are keenly aware of this disconnect after hosting the Olympic Games in 2000.
However, at this rate, the authors may need to adjust their thesis. Plenty of Brazilians are neither richer nor happier, and the World Cup is still a year away.
Still, the sad truth is that ticket prices in England are unlikely to be lowered significantly, while it’ll be far easier for FIFA to simply whisk the World Cup away to a less troublesome country than engage in the nation’s political process.
Why? Because they can. It’s become unfashionable to talk about the reserve army of labour that strangles workers demands, but the same concept could readily be applied to the world game.
While the unhappy few will hold up banners that read ‘the game is nothing without the fans’, the inverse also holds true. There will always be a country waiting in the wings for the World Cup should the violence continue in Brazil, just as their will always be someone who’ll be able to afford ridiculous ticket prices in England. The enormous reserve army of fans makes real change in football an elusive dream.
In the case of the World Cup, the majority of the converging football pilgrims will likely view protesting Brazilians as a nuisance. And even for fans sympathetic to their demands, only a fraction will actually stay at home.
Sadly, deep-seated national and club loyalties usually squash or distort any growing seeds of solidarity. If anything, football fans themselves perpetuate the divide and rule mentality, and as a result, few groups of people are so readily and happily exploited.
The democratic deficit has well and truly enveloped football, and the soul of the game is gradually being eroded. The professional game is a business that nonchalantly sucks its participants dry.
The fish rots from the head. FIFA is like a Trotskyist nightmare, in which the football revolution has well and truly conquered the globe, but the ideals of mass representation and mass democracy have been lost in murky personality politics and sectarian infighting. Changing FIFA now seems as daunting and difficult as reforming Stalinist Russia.
Promises of Financial Fair Play and greater political transparency will only be the start of the corrective process, but they can’t come soon enough. Watch this space.
With repressive Russia and Qatar preparing to host the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, and Rupert Murdoch planning his oligarchic international summer league cartel, politics will never stray far from the game we love.
DGKramer
Guest
Good article, Joe. However: "Soul of the Game eroded?" The soul of the game is the pick up game in the back alley, it is the youth game before politics, ethnicity, social class and finance get in the way. And in some form, sometimes it can be seen shining through games at all levels including professional and Cup venues. Futball is a business at all high levels. Therefore expect the BS of business to get in the way most of the time. By the way. Bob, music is also a business. When you pick up your own guitar and play on a stage at the local pub open mic night you will quit worrying about who is a good band now and back in the day. Towser that was a great comment. Finally back to Joe, one final comment (overall I appreciate your article and the issues it brings out) In my opinion a "happily exploited fan" is a lobotomized fan. I tend to believe that fans are aware of what is happening but inevitably they choose to attend certain matches and venues. Kind of like paying taxes in my mind, being happily exploited. At the same time let your officials know where you stand on that exploitation. DGKramer, Author of Dignity and the Pitch
nickoldschool
Roar Guru
Lucky you albatross! I have seen a couple of very decent bakeries in some suburbs (am in Sydney too) tbh but this is definitely not the norm unfortunately.
steven
Guest
Now that's what I'd like to see...
Jonathan
Guest
Using a political argument and complaints about inflation which happens world wide to have a whinge at football. What a pathetic article. The only people who dislike the game of football now are day dreamers who sit on their coach at home getting fatter by the minute, spending heaps of our money on health problems and drinking, gambling, sex, drugs and what ever other bad things they can think up. it's not football that's the problem, it's society.
albatross
Roar Pro
$5.00 for a "loaf" of "bread"? Here in darkest Western Sydney we are fortunate to have a real bakers shop nearby. They bake real loaves with a crust that you slice yourself with a bread knife. When you spread butter and whatever on, the slices don't disintegrate. $5 for a loaf fresh baked this morning and a 2 litre milk.
nordster
Guest
Im talking relative to what was before it....
Ian
Guest
Queensland won both games.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Yes, spot on about technology changing the way we watch sport. Only last week, a massive change occurred in NZL when "Coliseum Sports Media" beat Rupert Murdoch's SkySports (NZL) for the right to broadcast every single EPL match into the NZL market. "The End of TV As We Know It": http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/end-tv-we-know-it-CK This is the way forward: watching entertainment - not just sport; movies, TV - on any internet-enabled device, anywhere in the world. The entertainment delivery model of that forces you to watch TV in one room of your house is antiquated. Even old-fashioned FoxSports has finally understood the power of the internet & will launch "Foxtel Play" very shortly - no lock in contracts & available on any internet-enabled device.
Pau
Guest
Why do you think News Ltd and their Liberal Party mates are so opposed to the NBN? The NBN WILL make direct broadcasting a reality. Not just for Australian sports but even for competitions abroad. It makes it more democratic - why should a fanatical fan of a team in Hungary miss out just because not enough of his neighbours will have the same interest? But since when was democracy compatible with big business?
Jukes
Guest
On an off topic, Was there a State of Origin game on last night because I thought the only game being played last night was the one in Canberra. You have to love the timing of politicians :D
dasilva
Guest
Tame Impala is an ok album. I like ELephant but I can't say I enjoy it from start to finish. In terms of late psychedelia I'll take Aliens. Oh yeah I forgot about other groups Arcade Fire The Darkness José González Muse Gomez (although they are from the late 90's) Wolfmother
dasilva
Guest
Pop music has always been popular The difference is that other genre music used to have a share of the table as well Now they don't, or at the very least their share has been dramatically reduced. In any case, I'll take the bad pop music of the 60's over the bad pop music of today anyway Monkees > majority of what on the radio today.
Floyd Calhoun
Guest
Black Keys are worthy, but Swedish proto punk garage band, The Nomads take em all to the cleaners with 'The way you touch my hand'. It's from the early eighties, but still rocks. ABBA it ain't. They started out doing US punk covers, and now they're being covered.
my left foot
Guest
No, there was still @#%y pop during then, or have you forgotten? Sure there were some great bands, but a lot of @#% got pushed ahead of Mark Bolan.
my left foot
Guest
Sory, Linken Park? Comertialised vomit passed off as punk, no not quality.
Griffo
Roar Guru
True. Something the FFA could do to invest some money now into platforms where the ad and subscription revenue goes to them, not others. Become their own broadcast network online. Only thing I see against this scenario is doing/setting this up in plain sight of FoxSports/FTA...
Floyd Calhoun
Guest
God help the firm given the challenge of conducting an audit on FIFA's books! If they even have any.
Happy
Guest
The real battle will happen when associations / leagues stop selling tv rights and organise broadcasts themselves. Subscription based streaming services may be the norm in the future.
Jayden
Guest
Just listened to Okkerville River Brilliant.
Ian
Guest
Franko, hey i wasn't going tit for tat with you. i agree its up to every person to decide what to do. just wanted to share.