the demise of football

Thomas Friedman famously offered the 'Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention', on the basis that no two nations with a McDonalds within their borders had ever gone to war. Allow me to offer its successor: the 'White Goalposts Theory of Crisis Resolution'. This theory states that we will know that our present economic crisis is being resolved (rather than deepened), once a front-bench politician comes out and publicly attacks football, in terms of its business models, culture and economic norms, and not only for its sporadic eruptions of racism or corruption. My prediction, for what it's worth, is that this event will occur in October 2013, and that the politician in question will be Yvette Cooper, Leader of the Labour Party.

Football was once such worthless political currency that Margaret Thatcher publicly questioned whether England should be allowed to compete in the 1990 world cup, due to the threat of hooliganism. Euro96 was the turning point, although English hooliganism was still rife at the Euro 2000 championships. Since Euro96, no politician has had the guts to question any aspect of the game or its status within our media, public sphere or national self-image. The 'old' aspects of the game - racism and FIFA corruption - are routinely attacked, but the 'modern' game cannot be questioned.

But look how grizzly things are getting. I read last week that Carlos Tevez may be prepared to take a pay cut from his £250,000 a week job at Manchester City, on the one condition that his new club has it written into his contract that he remain the highest paid player in the squad. Wayne Rooney's behaviour regarding his Manchester Utd contract was criticised by many, but politicians repeatedly duck these issues, despite viewing consumerism, (some) advertising and (recently) X Factor as fair game. Energy oligarchs have removed whatever sense of 'level playing field' may have remained in the English Premier League, turning the top of the football labour market into a far less dignified version of what goes on in boardrooms, as players shamelessly strategise towards remuneration increases (hilariously still termed 'wages') through any means possible.

What precisely are we celebrating when we enthuse about football? Increasingly it is referred to as 'athleticism', in which case lets all start following Usain Bolt. If we have to turn our backs on the tediously-adored Barcelona at the same time, then so be it. It's a price worth paying. The football-obsessed sports shops in British high streets have nothing to do with athleticism or even physical exercise any longer. Just try buying some new laces, socks or functional trainers in JD Sports. You could come out dressed from head to toe as Michael Jordan, but there are much cheaper ways to get a fancy dress outfit.

Football is more interesting as a bellwether of contemporary capitalism, and should be criticised accordingly. Not long ago it was PLC ownership structures that looked like they were stripping the heart out of clubs, seeing them run 'for profit'. Now the problem is the opposite: they are owned by private billionaires, run 'for power', but at a vast loss. Roman Abramovich's takeover at Chelsea in 2003 thefore anticipated the broader trends that I've argued the present crisis will unleash.

Regulation School Marxists define a capitalist crisis as a situation where neither 'more of the same' nor 'less of the same' will resolve the situation. Our present debt crisis is a case in point. More debt makes it worse; paying off debt also makes it worse. Resolving such situations requires a fundamental revaluation - innovation not only in policy measures and mechanisms, but in the culture and values that underpin how government and business institutions operate.

The challenge of resolving a serious crisis is that it involves a degree of truth and reconciliation regarding the past. One often has to accept that critics (sometimes quite eccentric ones) are right, and even that they have been right for a long time. The demise of Keynesianism was as slow as it was because it involved coming to terms with the fact that full employment was no longer a useful goal of policy. This was a severe moral revaluation, not simply a technical paradigm shift. The enemies of Keynesianism (the monetarists) had to be welcomed in to the fold. This takes time and much pride swallowing. There is also some first mover advantage on these occasions, just as Britain seemed to benefit from giving up on the ERM, before its terms were loosened anyway.

To accept that football - or should we say 'Football' as an idea - may actually be part of the disease, and not a harmless supplement to our economy would take some pride-swallowing. The idea that 'talent' has its 'desert' in very large amounts of money is so ingrained, we so want it to be true, that we carry on adhering to it no matter how grotesque the spectacle it generates. The media maintains the pretence of separating Ashley Cole the 'talented' footballer from Ashley Cole the unruly working class 'yob' (as if the latter is just his unfortunate inheritance), ignoring the obvious liklihood that football is far more responsible for his noxious personality than his upbringing.

Those on the liberal-left are able to see through the rhetoric of bankers, when they demand that London remain a 'level playing field' so as to ensure that their industry's 'David Beckhams' are still attracted to work here. The liberal-left is able to debunk football as a metaphor. But why not go a stage further, and attack the whole sorry charade that's been making fools of so many people (me included) for the past 15 years?

Why must Jonathan Freedland write a sensible argument about extreme inequality in pay, but in the same article offer a justification for Wayne Rooney's £250k a week? Once you give in to the neo-classical vision of a labour market, that wages are simply a reflection of 'demand', then the door has been left ajar for the likes of Fred Goodwin. Why not just take the bull by the horns, and accept that the whole thing should just be shipped off to a vast in-door Nike sports complex in Dubai where it belongs? Is it not possible that the constant news reports of footballers attacking women, of fans being charged £50 a ticket and replica shirts being 'outdated' every 9 months, of Manchester Utd's Nani having a life-size marble sculpture of himself in his house do not happen inspite of the vast sums of money that are now at stake in this game, but because of it?

At some point in the future this will appear obvious. Soon after that, we will find it difficult to ever believe we tolerated, even celebrated, this circus in the first place - just as, by the 1990s, it seemed extraordinary to think that governments once targeted full employment. For the time being, any politician would shudder at the thought of criticising the game, as opposed to its undesirable 'externalities' or its metaphorical distortions. Which, according to the White Goal Posts Theory of Crisis Resolution, only goes to show how far into our current crisis we are: not even half way.

Comments

[CharlieMcMenamin]

It's also worth noting that culturally bothy football and the City have a 'get out of jail free' card in terms of basic cultural politeness as practiced in the rest of the country.

Perhaps a front rank politician will comment on the Saurez and Terry race abuse cases, but I'm not holding my breathe.

[Dave Boyle]

The Premier League (PL) is a wonderful metaphor for British culture, society and economics - there's something about how essentially, the PL is a neo-liberal intervention in a sport which has been built on social democratic lines (gate sharing to maintain competitive balance, transfer payments to smaller clubs to keep inequality within acceptable levels. The arguments in its favour (wealth, global appeal etc) are measures of success which come from a different set of values and ethics than those which predominated before and still exist at large in football's communities (connectedness, egalitarianism etc)

There's a danger that one posits a golden age, of course, and that era before was marked, as was much of british capitalism, but underinvestment, poor R&D, a self-satisfied attitude which prevented the understanding of just how much other countries had done to invigorate their activities, and industrial relations based on mutual antagonism made workable by a sense that such antagonism was the steady-state for a relationship neither could conceive of escaping.

It's this difference in values which lead to the continuing scepticism of people towards the PL despite everything, and why the PL are right to say they are very good at the things they do which they are good at, but that doesn't seem to cut any ice with people who think they're very bad at things they don't really care much about (national team, 'England', 'English football', equality etc).

That in turn mirror a similar move in the wider economy away from productive industry to financialisation, where governments have used almost identical arguments to justify the importance of the city of London. There's a neat link between the political economy of new labour and the PL, that represented everything that new labour was about even though the impact on many of its heartland clubs in the Football league has been negative, just as it accepted financialisation in the UK economy to the cost of manufacturing industries in those same heartland communities etc. And, like the real world, the increasing inequality between clubs has been managed by the use of debt by the bottom of the heap, where keeping up with the Joneses is less a cultural or psychological choice and more an absolute requirement of a system which is closed.

There's more too - the wave of new ways to get capital mirror the wider economy. IN the early 90s, the favoured method is flotation, where market discipline will trump the inflationary dimension of salaries. At its height, 22 clubs were floated, now down to just 3, with one soon to leave, another likely to be dragged off, leaving Arsenal. They couldn't arrest salary rises, but did make a killing for the previous owners.

Mother hubbarb's next trick was securitisation. We should have been more alive to this, when during Leeds' administration, one of the creditors was the New York State Teachers Pension Fund; they were described as 'Teachers' as if this were some corporate concern, not missing the fact that pension funds were being piled into owning parts of loans of various varying risky loans. After this phase passed, the next trick was, as you say, to find the high-net worth resource oligarch. In the meantime, the league threatens to take off from its previously territorial anchoring. The Premier League becomes the EPL (it never needed geographical denotation until it started to be a global concern) and sponsors increasingly become companies people have never heard of, who don't actually trade in the UK, but are present in places where league is avidly watched.

[IanC]

An excellent post and all too true.

As with resistance to the neoliberalised economy, there are pockets of counter-cultural practice. The football equivalent of co-ops, mutuals, farmers' markets and Transition Towns are the revolted fans' start-up clubs such as FC Manchester and the restored Wimbledon FC. My forecast is that Yvette Cooper will latch on to one of these and to the idea of Real Football in the Community they nostalgically represent. (Incidentally, her husband's chances of leading the Party vanished with the successful baiting of Balls over weak bank regulation, City-worship and the gong for Fred Goodwin. Balls can't possibly live any of that down and nor should he be allowed to.)
One of the signs of middle- and upper-class cultural prolier-than-thou affectation, all intended to distract attention from vast inequalities of income, wealth and mobility in the neoliberal age, has been to pretend to be a fan of a Premiership club. I only believe anyone is serious about this if the professed fanaticism pre-dates the Premiership and/or is attached to a club that rarely if ever wins anything.
What will the Eurozone debacle and the self-maginalisation of the English mean for the grand neoliberal Eurovision of a Champions League detached completely from domestic competitions?

[Dick Pountain]

I'm probably disqualified from this discussion because I've detested football ever since I was forced to play it at school: my strongest feeling of revulsion and betrayal by New Labour came not with the invasion of Iraq, but when all my NL supporting friends became ostentatiously enthusiastic football freaks, for reasons you have just skewered in your post.

It sounds as though you may have been one yourself Will, and if this is so then this confession and conversion is rather moving as well as being a very acute analysis.