Diary: The beautiful game loses its shine

Half way through the footy season this week and I’m not missing it one bit. I decided to take a year off from following football – or “fubble” as the petulant and often incomprehensible Sir Alex Ferguson calls it. It’s been a bit like fasting for Lent – but an awful lot easier. Plus it’s freed up time for all those little jobs I’ve been putting off – like tidying my sock drawer.
Last year’s match between Omonia and Manchester City was the turning point for me. If I do have any local allegiance it would be with Omonia, but not because of politics or a preference for Keo over Carlsberg. No, my support was secured when I met the captain once and he seemed like a very nice chap. In fact, I nearly fell on him in a dads tug of war match at my daughter’s school. This was on the eve of an important clash with Apoel – imagine how popular that would have made me. My preference counted for nought though at the Omonia shop where I went to purchase tickets. Ignoring my protestations, they insisted that they could only offer me tickets in the Manchester City away section.
Have you been in the away supporters section of an English side? It’s the natural habitat of the hard core nutters who you wouldn’t want to share a railway carriage with. International travelling fans are the worst and this lot would have made the characters from Shameless seem quite at home in Brideshead Revisited. They’d been knocking back the beers all day and were in high spirits. The extreme sunburn on their bare backs was periodically lashed by their friends with rolled up shirts. A teenager with Down’s syndrome took the brunt of this horseplay – literally their whipping boy. It was a medieval scene and throughout the mayhem I was the only one trying to enjoy the match through Leica opera glasses.
But loutishness wasn’t the problem – I was expecting that. It was when the players dutifully approached the fans at the end to thank them for coming. There before me stood a bunch of awkward, shuffling boys sheepishly lifting a hand to wave to their supporters. These self conscious lads personified an annual salary roll of £100m – more than the club’s income – and that’s what struck me. “Fubble” will be the next greed-driven bubble to pop after the banks.
Rooney’s on over £100k a week, yet as Rodney Marsh so eloquently puts it, “he always looks like he’s got the hump.” Ronaldo, the kid from Madeira, went to Madrid for £80m. Beckham’s worth a couple of hundred million. Even Rafa Benitez would walk away with £18m if Liverpool could ever afford to sack him, which they can’t.
And they’re not even articulate – the media bombards us with inane footy waffle and incisive questioning like “how do you feel?” It’s not wholly the players’ fault that “I’m over the moon” becomes the standard reply. Rafa was on the radio the other day saying that if Liverpool win the next Champions League match “we will be happy” and then if they win the one after that “we will be happy”. He concluded by saying that if they went to the final and won “we will be happy”. Gimme strength.
Perhaps the most pathetic part of this spectacle is the vicariousness of footy fandom. What on earth do these celebrity salaries and lifestyles have to do with me, the man on the terrace? In the feudal hierarchy of big business soccer I am a mere serf. A friend congratulated me recently on a favourable Liverpool result, but I had nothing to do with it – I don’t play professional football because I am too old, fat and talentless.
It’s not even a “beautiful game” any more. Not since Eric kung fued that fan in 1995, Vinny grabbed Gazza by the Jacobs, and Zidane head butted Amterazzi in a World Cup final. Not since the introduction of theatrical diving and TV images of players mouthing obscenities at the referee. What a fine example to our kids who look up to these idols.
There’s nothing beautiful about a sport staged by billionaires and cigar chomping agents haggling over stratospheric contracts which value cash over success.
“At the end of the day, the bottom line is it’s a game of two halves”. It’s a game alright – a very lucrative one – and we’re the ones being played. I’m calling half time on my participation.

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