About a month into the new football season and I am still not fully engaged with the return of The Beautiful Game. In fact, I’m not even partially engaged with it. Football, which once dominated my weekends, determined some of my social arrangements and influenced holiday bookings, has slipped down my pecking order to the extent that I barely care at all. It’s been a strange yet somehow liberating experience.
Take this weekend. Despite there being dozens of live games on offer via the various subscription channels, I watched the grand total of no games at all. I have not bothered with BBC’s legendary Match Of The Day for many years and apart from the occasional non-league game, I have barely attended a match since my days of actively supporting my only team, Bristol Rovers, ended in 2018.
When, around 25 years ago, an old friend told me he had lost the emotional attachment to his team, also Bristol Rovers, and was walking away, I found it hard to take in. A football club is, after all, a club for life. Your feelings, your emotions, that unique connection never goes away, does it? Yet, what seemed impossible a quarter of a century ago, has happened to me.
In a very limited way, I have adopted Liverpool as the beneficiary of what fandom remains and frankly it isn’t much. I am attracted, as much as anything by the club’s history and what it stood for, although even that is being diluted by an ownership model that is frankly little better than any other in the Premier League and arguably worse than some. I have zero interest in going to watch them play ‘live’, so to speak and I would never cancel any social engagement just because they had a televised game. With no familial nor geographical ties, I have no right to call myself a fan, supporter or anything else, other than an armchair viewer. Frankly, that’s enough.
Yesterday’s ‘Manchester derby’ was in many ways no such thing. A grand total of three Mancunians started the game between a club jointly owned by the USA USA USA Trump supporting Glazer family and tax dodging Big Jim Brexit and Abu Dhabi’s own Manchester Citeh. United’s ramshackle stadium was packed to the gills. I read a book, listened to music, watch the tail-end of the Irish Golf Open. There was a time when I would have vegetated in my armchair, hoping the team I hated most – usually Manchester United – lost, but schadenfreude is such a negative force I have even weened my way off that. Increasingly, I am finding it impossible to watch a football match in which I am not positively invested. Tonight, Sky Sports is showing Leeds United v Newcastle United. Great for Dirty Leeds and Toon fans, but what’s there for me? Like War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
It’s ironic, really, at a time when there is more televised football than ever, I am watching less of it. Sky boasts of showing over 1500 games a season. One channel shows non league games, others show leagues from all over the world. If I was to watch even a few of these games, I’d have no time to do anything else. Instead, I am taking the easy option by watching none of it.
None of this is to decry those who still have the obsession. A small part of me still hankers for the Saturday afternoon 3.00 pm match, bookended by lengthy pub visits, but the truth is I’d be more than happy to just to the pub bits these days. Another friend of mine does exactly that these days. I might one day join him, going home just as the game kicks off.
At first, I was a little sad that my lifetime of supporting a club appeared to be grinding to a halt. Now, I am happy with the way things have turned out and, perhaps surprisingly, part of me wishes I’d become disillusioned a long time before I actually did.
The future suggests TV overkill has a long way to go. Next season, Paramount has nabbed the Champions League coverage and Sky has acquired the right to the two lesser European competitions so we know how that will go. “Just go to the ‘red button’ to watch Reykjavík Bromwich Albion’s preliminary round clash with Tiraspol Alexandra.” I’ll take a rain check on that one, ta.
One day, when I am even older and more infirm, I’ll doubtless welcome the fact that I can see out my final days dribbling in front of a television showing 24/7 football. Until then, I’ll stick with the post football life. At least until The Big One on Sky next Saturday lunchtime, Rochdale v Oldham. I can hardly wait …
