‘When Boris Johnson spoke out against the Super League proposals, I scrolled idly through the comments on the Guardian website. As usual, they met all my expectations.’
Ironically, the Guardian’s football coverage is very good and the only section of its site that I can, very occasionally, bear to visit. That aside, here is something I wrote about the 1980s for a article that UnHerd an everyone else turned down:
‘Of course, those were the days of real fans in real grounds. I was punched in the face at Reading, terrified when I went to Millwall for the first time, and present at Stamford Bridge for the League Cup semi-final in March 1985 when the Chelsea fan ran on to the pitch and attacked Clive Walker after he’d scored for Sunderland against his old team. Halcyon hooligan days!’
I vowed as long ago as 1996 that I would not put any more money into English football. It had already become a racket with sanitised stadia and grasping players and agents etc. It’s a thousand times worse now as my Derby County head for relegation coached by a man (Wayne Rooney) who is being paid 100k a week or whatever.
Fraserburgh, I’m with you on your proposed article. I’ve been a Villa fan from the late sixties, through relegation to the 3rd Divison taking upwards of 25,000 fans to Blackpool , being chased around such badlands as Wigan, Preston, Bristol etc al, before igot to the truly terrifying journeys to Millwall, West Ham, our neighbours across the city and those “cheeky chappies ” from Scouseland. My memory such as it is was that it was great fun with my mates from the same area, and I and my mates never got involved fighting with anyone who didn’t attack us first. Happy days
Happy days indeed. Chelsea and Leeds fans would routinely smash up parts of the Baseball Ground, and I can remember Derby fans doing much the same at Shrewsbury as we sank to another defeat in the relegation season of 1983/84.
However, it all got out of hand at Heysel. And from that point on I suppose it all had to come to and end.
Post Heysel the Tories kept English clubs out of European competitions. The Tories subsequently reckoned this lost them votes – is Johnson’s outrage an attempt to reclaim some of these votes?
Do you think as well that the replacement of the old stadiums with new ones has affected football?
For example, the Olympic Stadium (cringe) just isn’t the same as the good old Boleyn Ground.
As A Leicester Supporter You Can bring through Local born players,Like Luke Thomas, Hamza Choudhury& Harvey barnes…We won 5,000/1 premiership with a team of Local,Free Transfer &£12m Squad cost, Even in September 2016, so called big six,Arsenal ( Leicester will be out by 2nd round,we got to parity until 2nd leg QF) Spurs,Manchester utd,Manchester city, Liverpool,Chelsea, tried to Ambush our route to European Champions league,A devalued competition As Old European Cup,had ONLY European Clubs league champions….Our Owners,Go babysteps ,Increasing the Ground capacity….our record signings £32M Youri Tielemans ;
£25m Keili iheanacho ..Long may it Continue,but teams like everton,west ham,Wolverhampton,Southampton Could be elbowed aside..
Thankfully I missed all that but have happy memories of Tony Daley tearing up the wing, Gordon cowans spraying balls from midfield, and God running the whole show from the back. UTV.
There was the great story (it might even have been true) about a manager observing the opposing team’s terrace thugs in action. “Appalling bunch of hoodlums you have”, he told the opposition manager. “Wish we had supporters like them.”
B Keavy
3 years ago
Interesting read, and you make some salient points. But a few observations:
Rather like Mark Allen and Judd Trump’s legitimate comments this week about nostalgia in snooker sometimes getting in the way of sufficiently celebrating the present day iteration of the sport’s stars, it appears this article presents a ‘giant killing’ on the part of Burnley over Man Utd in 1968 as a feat from a bygone era we can only dream of today. Yet Burnley won 2-0 at Old Trafford last year and 1-0 away at Liverpool this year! Sure, the Super League, by definition, would have been an existential threat to that happening again, but no need to rely on 50-year-old examples of underdogs winning when they still happen on a very, very regular basis in the Premier League. You could, for example, have chosen Arsenal scraping a 1-1 draw against 18th place Fulham on the day the Super League was announced! (I get that the 1968 example fitted nicely into the way you constructed the article, as part of a broader narrative about your relationship with your own club, but I think the perhaps-unintentional impression it gives that such David vs Goliath results are only ever relics is unfortunate and dilutes the argument a bit – far more powerful to say we need to protect something that was still happening last weekend, and will probably happen this weekend, than something that happened 50 years ago).
Also seems a bit odd to go straight to the rather tired and cliched moan about the “Guardian comments” section – seeking to somehow create a left vs right / ‘anywheres’ vs ‘somewheres’ divide when this story doesn’t feel remotely like an issue that divides people along those sorts of lines – I’m sure there are plenty of people who read the Daily Mail who don’t like football and who were bewildered by this story leading the news too. Politicians were united and vocal in their condemnation of it – Corbyn, Starmer, Davey, Johnson, and many more from across the spectrum on both sides of the house.
The article also seems to pick a fight with people “arguing” that ‘Football clubs are businesses, and their owners can do what they like. And if that means ditching the “legacy fans”, as they dismissively call us, so be it.” Fine, in an academic sense, to pitch your article as a counter-argument. But who was making this argument? Virtually no one. In fact, this story was conspicuous by the almost total vacuum of anyone prepared to defend the idea of launching a Super League. Who are the ‘sceptics’ you talk of who say “who cares?” Other than a few people who made it clear they have no interest in football and so didn’t care themselves about this issue and would rather talk about something else (which is the case with any story – debates about royals / Brexit / general elections / celeb scandals etc etc), I didn’t see anyone propagating the arguments you claim to be railing against.
Just a point about Burnley’s win against Manchester United in 1968, it was not quite the David v Goliath match that it might appear to be now. In the five years prior to that fixture Burnley and the Manchester team had met 13 times with Burnley recording four victories to their opponent’s five. Indeed, earlier that same year Burnley had already beaten by two goals to one a Manchester team more or less comprised of the players who would win the European cup a few months later. Perhaps then the elderly Claret’s supporter described by Dominic Sandbrook should not have been so surprised at the result.
I am sympathetic with the writer’s argument. As a supporter of an unfashionable provincial side I have always said that my affiliation has more to do with a sense of place, heritage and identity than about seeking entertainment or success.
Notwithstanding we should not overlook the fact that football – and indeed all professional sport in this country – has been subject to cycles of fashion and changing popularity. The cult of football sentimentality and nostalgia came in vogue in the late 1980s and has been distorted and redefined to differing degrees by the media. However the decline in league attendances from around 1950-90 is testament that the public’s affection for football has never been fixed in aspic.
Latterly, younger generations have been priced out of live attendance and become used to football as a TV phenomenon. Accordingly they are unlikely to identify with many of the observations in this essay. It was notable that the Real Madrid president claimed that young people were no longer interested in the sport… if indeed football can still be described as such. For older generations, patterns of behaviour and habit have also been broken by lockdown and who knows how enthusiastic they will be to return to stadia.
The initiative of the so-called Big Six clubs of English football is an admission of their weakness and the fact that they are financially over-committed and exposed. Quite what the future holds is anyone’s guess but it seems fair to say that they will dictate the fate of the national game. Without doubt, the bubble of the English football industry is likely to burst. Quite what will emerge in the aftermath is anyone’s guess but it will need more than nostalgia to be viable and financially self-supporting.
I agree with much of that, but people have been predicting the bursting of the English football bubble for 30 years now, and it hasn’t happened. The stadiums, corporate suites and souvenir shops etc are still full, and the players and their agents continue to gorge themselves on the TV money.
The current combined debt of the so called big six is £7.4 billion. Despite the TV and other revenues, the Premier League loses around £600 million a year. Covid has worsened an already dire situation. Thus, one can argue that the desire for a Super League was borne as much out of necessity as greed. The situation is even worse in Spain. The prime mover behind the proposal for the Super League was the Spanish owner of Real Madrid, Florentino Perez. Covid has had a significant financial impact on both his own club and its rival Barcelona. Despite the two being beneficiaries for many years of an illegal tax break, one which was not afforded to any other teams in La Liga, the two clubs are perilously close to going under. You are right to say that rumours of the sport’s imminent demise have been with us for thirty years, but the revenue streams you describe are insufficient to maintain the clubs’ present level of spending.
Super League is not born out of greed. UEFA is the greedy one. The bonus of €350m per year is fake. Teams would still be involved in domestic competitions, and they would play in every stadium in Italy, Spain and England. Every week, they would give the fans the league’s games and the games of a new competition that will bring closer the younger generations who are moving away from football.
Here is what UEFA and people don not understand: The younger ones want to watch significant events. They are not as attached to domestic competition as the previous generations. A third of the fans worldwide follow the “Super League clubs”, the 10per cent follows footballers, not clubs, and the most worrying stat is that those between 16 and 24 years old have no interest in football whatsoever.
The Super League simulates what young people do on digital platforms in competition with Call of Duty, FIFA or Fortnite.
Football is experiencing a huge crisis of appeal to the new generations and the pandemic has accelerated the process.
The Premier Lge clubs have forever bemoaned the fact that they have to play too many games – the domestic league, FA Cup and FL Cup competitions have become a distraction to European competition. What has happened is that the clubs have fielded weakened sides in domestic cup competitions in order to keep their star players fresh. In the same way, if these clubs were playing Super League matches midweek it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the Premier League itself would become neglected. What chance those left behind could then generate public interest in much diminished competitive structures?
Maybe, but France ,Italy ,Spain have 3 teams who Dominate….Uk has at least 6-12 but underdogs do win,my own team in 2016. Champions ..Wigan beating Manchester City in 2013 FA Cup final. 1976 Southampton FA Cup win V Manchester Utd .FIFA are corrupt, but ”Prawn Sandwich” brigade ”Own”or think they do Football,not uS Bovril boys..
One can only hope that the total rejection of the European Super League by fans, players and commentators alike will be the catalyst for the aforementioned clubs to unite in addressing the real source of their current financial predicament, namely their cost bases.
Instituting a salary cap for players, banning agents and getting a grip on stratospheric transfer fees would create a more sustainable business model and more money for those lower down the pyramid.
Leicester city,already have ;;Unofficial” Salary cap £100,000 per Week.. for Vardy,Scmeichel GK,Tielemans..Rugby Union has salary Cap,especially after Saracens Scandal
Might I suggest they learn to run their “businesses” more efficiently then? Racking up debt and then tearing up the rulebook suggests there are no mirrors in the Boards of these big clubs and they will learn little.
Let them go under and it will send a message to other poorly run clubs. Sadly, it is for this reason that I think this is a matter delayed but not buried.
There was alarm at the turn of c20th about the scale of football indebtedness and the rising wages. Football economics have indeed continued to defy gravity to ever greater levels of leverage. The demise of the game has been predicted for a long time but the difference now is the sheer scale of the financial commitments coupled with Covid. We are surely well beyond the point where the numbers are manageable in a crisis. There is no denying that there is plenty of money in football, or rather plenty of money passing through football.
Yep, me being one of them and yet, to be fair, football has consistently defied my predictions.
In the so-called ‘top flight’, the wages paid are utterly obscene, its ‘characters’ mostly character-less, brand based, PR led obsessives and it’s become little more than the plaything of dodgy corporate sponsors and all but anonymous distant oligarchs at various stages of their global elitist ascendency and/or descendency into ignominy.
In pre-covid times it was chuffing everywhere on our screens and its hype nigh on impossible to avoid.
It’s kept the endlessly tiresome, insufferable Gary Lineker in clover, in our living rooms and in the Twitter-centric headlines, it’s got next to naff all to do with where it actually takes place given the ownership and provenance of its here today, gone tomorrow players, and yet there it is still there clinging to the rock like a wretched blessed limpet.
If nothing else, one good thing to come from this lockdown and the ESL debacle is that its genuine supporters will finally see it for what it is and give it all up as a bad job or, hopefully, perhaps seek their football fix from more local, almost inevitably smaller, less glamorous teams, which, ironically, at least increases the chances of the ever uglier game regaining some of its long lost beauty again and undeniable associated social benefits.
Last edited 3 years ago by G Harris
J StJohn
3 years ago
F.A. revenue 500,000,000
UEFA revenue 500,000,000
FIFA revenue 4,500,000,000
This is about these apparatchiks protecting their money.
Charles Rense
3 years ago
I’m happy that my country’s national sport isn’t anybody else’s national sport. it isn’t even ours! A sport with the same name as your national sport, but played completely differently is really our national sport. But we call this other sport (one of only a few popular team sports that doesn’t involve moving back and forth across a field) our national sport. And we hire mostly foreign people to play it. And we make our best sports movies about it even though everyone thinks it’s “boring”. God, I love baseball!
I had the pleasure of watching 2 baseball games on visits to the US. Dayton Dragons on one occasion (don’t remember their opponents) and Atlanta Braves vs St Louis Cardinals on the other. Both games had fantastic atmosphere and are wonderful memories for me… I had a great time. The actual gameplay was mind numbingly dull both times. In many respects, baseball reminds me of cricket. I too love baseball, but would never watch it on TV.
It’s a game that you can have a productive conversation with someone while watching! You don’t have to whisper, but you’re also not drowned out by cheers or frequently distracted.
On a business trip to Wisconsin my host very generously took me to see a basketball game. Wonderful stadium, good food, pleasant family atmosphere, and of course thrillingly American, but the game itself is a 40-minute-long penalty shootout. The final score was something like 103/102.
William Murphy
3 years ago
Thanks so much, Dominic. I love the parallel you drew with religion. That good Catholic Elgar not only wrote The Dream of Gerontius, but a football anthem? A truly heavenly sign.
And, speaking of music, the very visible fact that some musicians, managers, record producers, etc make truckloads of money off the adoring fans (true fanatics here), does not invalidate the intense experience of the devotees. Like the football supporters, they will follow their heroes to the ends of the earth.
John Standing
3 years ago
African kickball is not Englishness – a fact which English football fans might have become aware, briefly, when all the sick knee-taking started. Somewhere along the way that reality seems to have been lost to the delusional habits of club tribalism.
Colin Haller
3 years ago
Well, we are pack animals, and football is about tribalism, so yes, it matters.
That doesn’t mean that a lot of grifters aren’t simultaneously milking the punters — it is possible for two things to be happening at the same time, eh?
drdavidajames
3 years ago
A wonderful article: football as faith. Absolutely right.
Stanley Beardshall
3 years ago
City fan since Frank Swift was their goalie; stopped watching as soon as the stadia were emptied – no fun without the fans and canned sound doesn’t help…
robertgsutton
3 years ago
For a noted “left wing historian,” this is rather quite conservative. Thanks, Dominic! Keep up the great work with the podcast, as well.
Eden K.
3 years ago
All true, if mainly for men. I know some women feel this way about football but I’m certain they’re in a minority. Just as something to muse on, if football is about so much more than the game itself, and even provides answers to universal yearnings around competition and continuity and belonging, what’s the equivalent for women? I can appreciate how deeply fans feel about all this, but I can’t say I’ve ever felt it myself and not sure where those impulses are directed towards for me and others for whom sport plays pretty much no part in our lives…
Ted Ditchburn
3 years ago
I think the Super League is not driven by English Clubs at all but by continental clubs who see the financial power of the Premier League ever expanding and creating a de facto *Global league*which translates into ever more money, glory and support for Premier |league clubs.
That’s why , lost in the nostalgic picture of grasping oligarchs and blank faced American Owners was the fact this is being driven by three Italian giant clubs (former giants) and three Spanish ones who fear the state of the Italian game is the future to come for them.
A couple of years back every finalist in the European competitions was from the English League and that might happen this year again.
In addition former giants of European football (if we want to indulge in jumpers for goalposts reminiscing) like Benfica,Ajax, Anderlecht, Celtic, Standard Liege, let alone any given Eastern European team are increasingly not even also rans, while Nordic teams are little more than makeweights and others that today feel like *contenders* are already showing signs of slipping away…Shalke 04, Valencia, Sevilla, Roma, Fiorientina and even Lyons.
The fact is that had the League somehow happened Borussia Dortmund and Bayern and PSG would have joined in, and the five *invitees* would also — the likes of Valencia, Porto, etc.
As things stand the likes of a Dortmund can see themselves slipping away even compared to the new rising stars, who are..English…like Leicester, but also Everton, West Ham and others in England who are mid level clubs here but very powerful compared to Europeans.
The *Greedy Six* are perfectly happy with this, and perfectly happy to stay in this system, but also don’t want to miss out on any breakaway… which is why they were so hyper quickly able to step back and abandon the project when it was clear it would not work..this time.
For Real and Barca the issue is that even with their status as ultimate giants, without the ever increasing revenues of the English Premier League their turnovers cannot keep pace.
The End Game for the present system will probably come when English clubs do make up the last 4 in European finals for a consecutive series of years at which point it will have to change.
The ESL is a premature attempt to address this problem and because this issue has not been articulated fully (really) let alone addressed…but is clearly a dominating factor for European clubs… it will continue to drive integration of the game globally..either by default the ESL becoming ever more the world’s league of choice, or a structured (and more lucrative in terms of marketability) European League.
That the attendances and TV deals in Serie A are so low…and the CHampionship in England is third best league in terms of attendance in the world, after the Premier League and the Bundesliga, only reinforces the point that the combination of a functioning pyramid, an ultimate eco system of fans and rivalries and the Thatcherite concept of the Premier League outside the FA system, has been a phenomenal British, and specifically English, success story, that illustrates the era where soft power has become ever more significant and illustrates the way such cultural soft power can so easily translate into real revenues in what is now a very interconnected planet..
Espen Uldal
3 years ago
It seems that people want to live of feelings and therefor leave the world to be taken over by cold hearted monsters, while they think they keep the cold-hearted monsters down with their “feelings”.
We constantly talk about fighting for the “little people”, usually on a mobile device made by a company that runs sweat shops in Asia, and underpay their workers, while we bye stuff on the Internet on PC’s made by the same brand that makes the mobile phones. And where do we buy stuff on the Internet? Well, often from a company that talks about equality all the time but will not let its employees become member of a union. We know we do that because its owner is the richest man in the world.
Then we all talk about the climate, while we do all the stuff, we want others not to do in order to save the climate that is acting better today than it was 100 years ago.
And when it comes to football, we all stand up for the “little” people, by teaming up with the conglomerate that gets all the money in football and make “all those rich clubs” pay up to a union that does absolutely nothing, except arranging huge tournaments primarily in countries that breaks with all the human rights it says it fights for. This conglomerate also makes these countries build huge stadiums, build by underpaid slaves, for huge resources that could have gone to make lives better for the “little people” in those countries.
But when somebody who actually make their own money and analyze what has to be done to actually modernize the sport they live off – after they have payed most of it to the conglomerate – they are called greedy people.
They are called greedy by the conglomerate and these fair-minded people, who all happens to hate money hungry capitalists even though these people do nothing all day but to support these power-hungry and totalitarian unities.
And so, when someone outside the publicly recognized totalitarians, attempt something that the publicly recognized totalitarians have already done several times in order to claim more of other people’s money, the public that feeds of feelings, goes amok. Then they begin to tell themselves that they know what they are talking about and protesting against.
And so, evolution is halted.
The stupid people run the world from the streets of ignorance. And they are controlled by the totalitarian companies that nod compassionate to their feelings, while they laugh of their naivety and take their money.
The Super League project was made for people and the next generation of “little people”. The “little people” that the conglomerate does not care about.
The Super League project was made for the young people who follow one team, one player, who wants more action and is ditching football to play FORTNITE and Counter Strike, because the conglomerate is not in touch with real people.
The Super League project was made for more intense matches while older generations could still enjoy the months long leagues.
The Super League project was made for the modern and future football fan and new markets.
The Super League project was a great idea, and it still is.
But it was not invited by the conglomerate, and the conglomerate could not make any money out of it. So, it was deemed greedy. And so, the uninformed followed.
Now the totalitarian conglomerate has regained its power. Now it can keep setting the prices, demanding so much in tv-rights, that “the little people” can’t afford to watch a match or a league on television.
The middleclass, however, who can afford it and love equality and has the correct feelings that makes them compassionate, can now sigh in relief, as they have saved the poor man’s game out of the claws of the wicked capitalists who has ruined the game for centuries by putting billions in the game.
So now everything is back to normal. The middle-class sheep has done their part, making sure the prices for watching the game on tv are kept for the few and away from … the little people.
God Save the conglomerate for keep making football a global sport to watch for everybody … who can afford it.
And may God save the flocks of rightful people who with their feelings makes sure everything stays as unequal as possible.
”Climate derangement”Syndrome iS not universally settled,like Environmental nuts think. 1) Springs in UK are later 2) Antarctic Ice is expanding 3) polar bears increasing not decreasing 4) Environmentalists stopping natural Forest clearing have made it easy for Arsonists &lightning,more fuel on forest Floor
‘When Boris Johnson spoke out against the Super League proposals, I scrolled idly through the comments on the Guardian website. As usual, they met all my expectations.’
Ironically, the Guardian’s football coverage is very good and the only section of its site that I can, very occasionally, bear to visit. That aside, here is something I wrote about the 1980s for a article that UnHerd an everyone else turned down:
‘Of course, those were the days of real fans in real grounds. I was punched in the face at Reading, terrified when I went to Millwall for the first time, and present at Stamford Bridge for the League Cup semi-final in March 1985 when the Chelsea fan ran on to the pitch and attacked Clive Walker after he’d scored for Sunderland against his old team. Halcyon hooligan days!’
I vowed as long ago as 1996 that I would not put any more money into English football. It had already become a racket with sanitised stadia and grasping players and agents etc. It’s a thousand times worse now as my Derby County head for relegation coached by a man (Wayne Rooney) who is being paid 100k a week or whatever.
Fraserburgh, I’m with you on your proposed article. I’ve been a Villa fan from the late sixties, through relegation to the 3rd Divison taking upwards of 25,000 fans to Blackpool , being chased around such badlands as Wigan, Preston, Bristol etc al, before igot to the truly terrifying journeys to Millwall, West Ham, our neighbours across the city and those “cheeky chappies ” from Scouseland. My memory such as it is was that it was great fun with my mates from the same area, and I and my mates never got involved fighting with anyone who didn’t attack us first. Happy days
Happy days indeed. Chelsea and Leeds fans would routinely smash up parts of the Baseball Ground, and I can remember Derby fans doing much the same at Shrewsbury as we sank to another defeat in the relegation season of 1983/84.
However, it all got out of hand at Heysel. And from that point on I suppose it all had to come to and end.
Post Heysel the Tories kept English clubs out of European competitions. The Tories subsequently reckoned this lost them votes – is Johnson’s outrage an attempt to reclaim some of these votes?
Do you think as well that the replacement of the old stadiums with new ones has affected football?
For example, the Olympic Stadium (cringe) just isn’t the same as the good old Boleyn Ground.
As A Leicester Supporter You Can bring through Local born players,Like Luke Thomas, Hamza Choudhury& Harvey barnes…We won 5,000/1 premiership with a team of Local,Free Transfer &£12m Squad cost, Even in September 2016, so called big six,Arsenal ( Leicester will be out by 2nd round,we got to parity until 2nd leg QF) Spurs,Manchester utd,Manchester city, Liverpool,Chelsea, tried to Ambush our route to European Champions league,A devalued competition As Old European Cup,had ONLY European Clubs league champions….Our Owners,Go babysteps ,Increasing the Ground capacity….our record signings £32M Youri Tielemans ;
£25m Keili iheanacho ..Long may it Continue,but teams like everton,west ham,Wolverhampton,Southampton Could be elbowed aside..
Thankfully I missed all that but have happy memories of Tony Daley tearing up the wing, Gordon cowans spraying balls from midfield, and God running the whole show from the back. UTV.
If you haven’t already read it , Animal QC. My preposterous life, by Gary Bell QC, is a wonderful eulogy to those halcyon days.
There was the great story (it might even have been true) about a manager observing the opposing team’s terrace thugs in action. “Appalling bunch of hoodlums you have”, he told the opposition manager. “Wish we had supporters like them.”
Interesting read, and you make some salient points. But a few observations:
Rather like Mark Allen and Judd Trump’s legitimate comments this week about nostalgia in snooker sometimes getting in the way of sufficiently celebrating the present day iteration of the sport’s stars, it appears this article presents a ‘giant killing’ on the part of Burnley over Man Utd in 1968 as a feat from a bygone era we can only dream of today. Yet Burnley won 2-0 at Old Trafford last year and 1-0 away at Liverpool this year! Sure, the Super League, by definition, would have been an existential threat to that happening again, but no need to rely on 50-year-old examples of underdogs winning when they still happen on a very, very regular basis in the Premier League. You could, for example, have chosen Arsenal scraping a 1-1 draw against 18th place Fulham on the day the Super League was announced! (I get that the 1968 example fitted nicely into the way you constructed the article, as part of a broader narrative about your relationship with your own club, but I think the perhaps-unintentional impression it gives that such David vs Goliath results are only ever relics is unfortunate and dilutes the argument a bit – far more powerful to say we need to protect something that was still happening last weekend, and will probably happen this weekend, than something that happened 50 years ago).
Also seems a bit odd to go straight to the rather tired and cliched moan about the “Guardian comments” section – seeking to somehow create a left vs right / ‘anywheres’ vs ‘somewheres’ divide when this story doesn’t feel remotely like an issue that divides people along those sorts of lines – I’m sure there are plenty of people who read the Daily Mail who don’t like football and who were bewildered by this story leading the news too. Politicians were united and vocal in their condemnation of it – Corbyn, Starmer, Davey, Johnson, and many more from across the spectrum on both sides of the house.
The article also seems to pick a fight with people “arguing” that ‘Football clubs are businesses, and their owners can do what they like. And if that means ditching the “legacy fans”, as they dismissively call us, so be it.” Fine, in an academic sense, to pitch your article as a counter-argument. But who was making this argument? Virtually no one. In fact, this story was conspicuous by the almost total vacuum of anyone prepared to defend the idea of launching a Super League. Who are the ‘sceptics’ you talk of who say “who cares?” Other than a few people who made it clear they have no interest in football and so didn’t care themselves about this issue and would rather talk about something else (which is the case with any story – debates about royals / Brexit / general elections / celeb scandals etc etc), I didn’t see anyone propagating the arguments you claim to be railing against.
Just a point about Burnley’s win against Manchester United in 1968, it was not quite the David v Goliath match that it might appear to be now. In the five years prior to that fixture Burnley and the Manchester team had met 13 times with Burnley recording four victories to their opponent’s five. Indeed, earlier that same year Burnley had already beaten by two goals to one a Manchester team more or less comprised of the players who would win the European cup a few months later. Perhaps then the elderly Claret’s supporter described by Dominic Sandbrook should not have been so surprised at the result.
Boxing day 1963 Burnley beat Manchester utd 6-1
I am sympathetic with the writer’s argument. As a supporter of an unfashionable provincial side I have always said that my affiliation has more to do with a sense of place, heritage and identity than about seeking entertainment or success.
Notwithstanding we should not overlook the fact that football – and indeed all professional sport in this country – has been subject to cycles of fashion and changing popularity. The cult of football sentimentality and nostalgia came in vogue in the late 1980s and has been distorted and redefined to differing degrees by the media. However the decline in league attendances from around 1950-90 is testament that the public’s affection for football has never been fixed in aspic.
Latterly, younger generations have been priced out of live attendance and become used to football as a TV phenomenon. Accordingly they are unlikely to identify with many of the observations in this essay. It was notable that the Real Madrid president claimed that young people were no longer interested in the sport… if indeed football can still be described as such. For older generations, patterns of behaviour and habit have also been broken by lockdown and who knows how enthusiastic they will be to return to stadia.
The initiative of the so-called Big Six clubs of English football is an admission of their weakness and the fact that they are financially over-committed and exposed. Quite what the future holds is anyone’s guess but it seems fair to say that they will dictate the fate of the national game. Without doubt, the bubble of the English football industry is likely to burst. Quite what will emerge in the aftermath is anyone’s guess but it will need more than nostalgia to be viable and financially self-supporting.
I agree with much of that, but people have been predicting the bursting of the English football bubble for 30 years now, and it hasn’t happened. The stadiums, corporate suites and souvenir shops etc are still full, and the players and their agents continue to gorge themselves on the TV money.
The current combined debt of the so called big six is £7.4 billion. Despite the TV and other revenues, the Premier League loses around £600 million a year. Covid has worsened an already dire situation. Thus, one can argue that the desire for a Super League was borne as much out of necessity as greed. The situation is even worse in Spain. The prime mover behind the proposal for the Super League was the Spanish owner of Real Madrid, Florentino Perez. Covid has had a significant financial impact on both his own club and its rival Barcelona. Despite the two being beneficiaries for many years of an illegal tax break, one which was not afforded to any other teams in La Liga, the two clubs are perilously close to going under. You are right to say that rumours of the sport’s imminent demise have been with us for thirty years, but the revenue streams you describe are insufficient to maintain the clubs’ present level of spending.
Super League is not born out of greed. UEFA is the greedy one. The bonus of €350m per year is fake. Teams would still be involved in domestic competitions, and they would play in every stadium in Italy, Spain and England. Every week, they would give the fans the league’s games and the games of a new competition that will bring closer the younger generations who are moving away from football.
Here is what UEFA and people don not understand: The younger ones want to watch significant events. They are not as attached to domestic competition as the previous generations. A third of the fans worldwide follow the “Super League clubs”, the 10per cent follows footballers, not clubs, and the most worrying stat is that those between 16 and 24 years old have no interest in football whatsoever.
The Super League simulates what young people do on digital platforms in competition with Call of Duty, FIFA or Fortnite.
Football is experiencing a huge crisis of appeal to the new generations and the pandemic has accelerated the process.
Then maybe the Big Six would be better advised to invest in e-sport.
The Premier Lge clubs have forever bemoaned the fact that they have to play too many games – the domestic league, FA Cup and FL Cup competitions have become a distraction to European competition. What has happened is that the clubs have fielded weakened sides in domestic cup competitions in order to keep their star players fresh. In the same way, if these clubs were playing Super League matches midweek it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the Premier League itself would become neglected. What chance those left behind could then generate public interest in much diminished competitive structures?
Maybe, but France ,Italy ,Spain have 3 teams who Dominate….Uk has at least 6-12 but underdogs do win,my own team in 2016. Champions ..Wigan beating Manchester City in 2013 FA Cup final. 1976 Southampton FA Cup win V Manchester Utd .FIFA are corrupt, but ”Prawn Sandwich” brigade ”Own”or think they do Football,not uS Bovril boys..
One can only hope that the total rejection of the European Super League by fans, players and commentators alike will be the catalyst for the aforementioned clubs to unite in addressing the real source of their current financial predicament, namely their cost bases.
Instituting a salary cap for players, banning agents and getting a grip on stratospheric transfer fees would create a more sustainable business model and more money for those lower down the pyramid.
Leicester city,already have ;;Unofficial” Salary cap £100,000 per Week.. for Vardy,Scmeichel GK,Tielemans..Rugby Union has salary Cap,especially after Saracens Scandal
Might I suggest they learn to run their “businesses” more efficiently then? Racking up debt and then tearing up the rulebook suggests there are no mirrors in the Boards of these big clubs and they will learn little.
Let them go under and it will send a message to other poorly run clubs. Sadly, it is for this reason that I think this is a matter delayed but not buried.
Glazers have bled Manchester utd dry, £400million in debt!
There was alarm at the turn of c20th about the scale of football indebtedness and the rising wages. Football economics have indeed continued to defy gravity to ever greater levels of leverage. The demise of the game has been predicted for a long time but the difference now is the sheer scale of the financial commitments coupled with Covid. We are surely well beyond the point where the numbers are manageable in a crisis. There is no denying that there is plenty of money in football, or rather plenty of money passing through football.
Yep, me being one of them and yet, to be fair, football has consistently defied my predictions.
In the so-called ‘top flight’, the wages paid are utterly obscene, its ‘characters’ mostly character-less, brand based, PR led obsessives and it’s become little more than the plaything of dodgy corporate sponsors and all but anonymous distant oligarchs at various stages of their global elitist ascendency and/or descendency into ignominy.
In pre-covid times it was chuffing everywhere on our screens and its hype nigh on impossible to avoid.
It’s kept the endlessly tiresome, insufferable Gary Lineker in clover, in our living rooms and in the Twitter-centric headlines, it’s got next to naff all to do with where it actually takes place given the ownership and provenance of its here today, gone tomorrow players, and yet there it is still there clinging to the rock like a wretched blessed limpet.
If nothing else, one good thing to come from this lockdown and the ESL debacle is that its genuine supporters will finally see it for what it is and give it all up as a bad job or, hopefully, perhaps seek their football fix from more local, almost inevitably smaller, less glamorous teams, which, ironically, at least increases the chances of the ever uglier game regaining some of its long lost beauty again and undeniable associated social benefits.
F.A. revenue 500,000,000
UEFA revenue 500,000,000
FIFA revenue 4,500,000,000
This is about these apparatchiks protecting their money.
I’m happy that my country’s national sport isn’t anybody else’s national sport. it isn’t even ours! A sport with the same name as your national sport, but played completely differently is really our national sport. But we call this other sport (one of only a few popular team sports that doesn’t involve moving back and forth across a field) our national sport. And we hire mostly foreign people to play it. And we make our best sports movies about it even though everyone thinks it’s “boring”. God, I love baseball!
I had the pleasure of watching 2 baseball games on visits to the US. Dayton Dragons on one occasion (don’t remember their opponents) and Atlanta Braves vs St Louis Cardinals on the other. Both games had fantastic atmosphere and are wonderful memories for me… I had a great time. The actual gameplay was mind numbingly dull both times. In many respects, baseball reminds me of cricket. I too love baseball, but would never watch it on TV.
It’s a game that you can have a productive conversation with someone while watching! You don’t have to whisper, but you’re also not drowned out by cheers or frequently distracted.
No Relegation or Promotion is antithesis of Sport,Franchised nonsense
On a business trip to Wisconsin my host very generously took me to see a basketball game. Wonderful stadium, good food, pleasant family atmosphere, and of course thrillingly American, but the game itself is a 40-minute-long penalty shootout. The final score was something like 103/102.
Thanks so much, Dominic. I love the parallel you drew with religion. That good Catholic Elgar not only wrote The Dream of Gerontius, but a football anthem? A truly heavenly sign.
And, speaking of music, the very visible fact that some musicians, managers, record producers, etc make truckloads of money off the adoring fans (true fanatics here), does not invalidate the intense experience of the devotees. Like the football supporters, they will follow their heroes to the ends of the earth.
African kickball is not Englishness – a fact which English football fans might have become aware, briefly, when all the sick knee-taking started. Somewhere along the way that reality seems to have been lost to the delusional habits of club tribalism.
Well, we are pack animals, and football is about tribalism, so yes, it matters.
That doesn’t mean that a lot of grifters aren’t simultaneously milking the punters — it is possible for two things to be happening at the same time, eh?
A wonderful article: football as faith. Absolutely right.
City fan since Frank Swift was their goalie; stopped watching as soon as the stadia were emptied – no fun without the fans and canned sound doesn’t help…
For a noted “left wing historian,” this is rather quite conservative. Thanks, Dominic! Keep up the great work with the podcast, as well.
All true, if mainly for men. I know some women feel this way about football but I’m certain they’re in a minority. Just as something to muse on, if football is about so much more than the game itself, and even provides answers to universal yearnings around competition and continuity and belonging, what’s the equivalent for women? I can appreciate how deeply fans feel about all this, but I can’t say I’ve ever felt it myself and not sure where those impulses are directed towards for me and others for whom sport plays pretty much no part in our lives…
I think the Super League is not driven by English Clubs at all but by continental clubs who see the financial power of the Premier League ever expanding and creating a de facto *Global league*which translates into ever more money, glory and support for Premier |league clubs.
That’s why , lost in the nostalgic picture of grasping oligarchs and blank faced American Owners was the fact this is being driven by three Italian giant clubs (former giants) and three Spanish ones who fear the state of the Italian game is the future to come for them.
A couple of years back every finalist in the European competitions was from the English League and that might happen this year again.
In addition former giants of European football (if we want to indulge in jumpers for goalposts reminiscing) like Benfica,Ajax, Anderlecht, Celtic, Standard Liege, let alone any given Eastern European team are increasingly not even also rans, while Nordic teams are little more than makeweights and others that today feel like *contenders* are already showing signs of slipping away…Shalke 04, Valencia, Sevilla, Roma, Fiorientina and even Lyons.
The fact is that had the League somehow happened Borussia Dortmund and Bayern and PSG would have joined in, and the five *invitees* would also — the likes of Valencia, Porto, etc.
As things stand the likes of a Dortmund can see themselves slipping away even compared to the new rising stars, who are..English…like Leicester, but also Everton, West Ham and others in England who are mid level clubs here but very powerful compared to Europeans.
The *Greedy Six* are perfectly happy with this, and perfectly happy to stay in this system, but also don’t want to miss out on any breakaway… which is why they were so hyper quickly able to step back and abandon the project when it was clear it would not work..this time.
For Real and Barca the issue is that even with their status as ultimate giants, without the ever increasing revenues of the English Premier League their turnovers cannot keep pace.
The End Game for the present system will probably come when English clubs do make up the last 4 in European finals for a consecutive series of years at which point it will have to change.
The ESL is a premature attempt to address this problem and because this issue has not been articulated fully (really) let alone addressed…but is clearly a dominating factor for European clubs… it will continue to drive integration of the game globally..either by default the ESL becoming ever more the world’s league of choice, or a structured (and more lucrative in terms of marketability) European League.
That the attendances and TV deals in Serie A are so low…and the CHampionship in England is third best league in terms of attendance in the world, after the Premier League and the Bundesliga, only reinforces the point that the combination of a functioning pyramid, an ultimate eco system of fans and rivalries and the Thatcherite concept of the Premier League outside the FA system, has been a phenomenal British, and specifically English, success story, that illustrates the era where soft power has become ever more significant and illustrates the way such cultural soft power can so easily translate into real revenues in what is now a very interconnected planet..
It seems that people want to live of feelings and therefor leave the world to be taken over by cold hearted monsters, while they think they keep the cold-hearted monsters down with their “feelings”.
We constantly talk about fighting for the “little people”, usually on a mobile device made by a company that runs sweat shops in Asia, and underpay their workers, while we bye stuff on the Internet on PC’s made by the same brand that makes the mobile phones. And where do we buy stuff on the Internet? Well, often from a company that talks about equality all the time but will not let its employees become member of a union. We know we do that because its owner is the richest man in the world.
Then we all talk about the climate, while we do all the stuff, we want others not to do in order to save the climate that is acting better today than it was 100 years ago.
And when it comes to football, we all stand up for the “little” people, by teaming up with the conglomerate that gets all the money in football and make “all those rich clubs” pay up to a union that does absolutely nothing, except arranging huge tournaments primarily in countries that breaks with all the human rights it says it fights for. This conglomerate also makes these countries build huge stadiums, build by underpaid slaves, for huge resources that could have gone to make lives better for the “little people” in those countries.
But when somebody who actually make their own money and analyze what has to be done to actually modernize the sport they live off – after they have payed most of it to the conglomerate – they are called greedy people.
They are called greedy by the conglomerate and these fair-minded people, who all happens to hate money hungry capitalists even though these people do nothing all day but to support these power-hungry and totalitarian unities.
And so, when someone outside the publicly recognized totalitarians, attempt something that the publicly recognized totalitarians have already done several times in order to claim more of other people’s money, the public that feeds of feelings, goes amok. Then they begin to tell themselves that they know what they are talking about and protesting against.
And so, evolution is halted.
The stupid people run the world from the streets of ignorance. And they are controlled by the totalitarian companies that nod compassionate to their feelings, while they laugh of their naivety and take their money.
The Super League project was made for people and the next generation of “little people”. The “little people” that the conglomerate does not care about.
The Super League project was made for the young people who follow one team, one player, who wants more action and is ditching football to play FORTNITE and Counter Strike, because the conglomerate is not in touch with real people.
The Super League project was made for more intense matches while older generations could still enjoy the months long leagues.
The Super League project was made for the modern and future football fan and new markets.
The Super League project was a great idea, and it still is.
But it was not invited by the conglomerate, and the conglomerate could not make any money out of it. So, it was deemed greedy. And so, the uninformed followed.
Now the totalitarian conglomerate has regained its power. Now it can keep setting the prices, demanding so much in tv-rights, that “the little people” can’t afford to watch a match or a league on television.
The middleclass, however, who can afford it and love equality and has the correct feelings that makes them compassionate, can now sigh in relief, as they have saved the poor man’s game out of the claws of the wicked capitalists who has ruined the game for centuries by putting billions in the game.
So now everything is back to normal. The middle-class sheep has done their part, making sure the prices for watching the game on tv are kept for the few and away from … the little people.
God Save the conglomerate for keep making football a global sport to watch for everybody … who can afford it.
And may God save the flocks of rightful people who with their feelings makes sure everything stays as unequal as possible.
”Climate derangement”Syndrome iS not universally settled,like Environmental nuts think. 1) Springs in UK are later 2) Antarctic Ice is expanding 3) polar bears increasing not decreasing 4) Environmentalists stopping natural Forest clearing have made it easy for Arsonists &lightning,more fuel on forest Floor