Can I, just for once, be controversial? Okay. Let’s go. I think the decision of the Premier League to play La Marseillaise before each game this weekend is a step too far. I am not going to launch an online campaign to stop it because, for one thing, I don’t feel that strongly about it. I just think it is unnecessary. And here’s why.
Before the England v France game on Tuesday, football in this country paid it’s very moving tribute. The fact that the prime minister and a senior member of the royal family attended raised the level of importance to that of a tribute by all of the United Kingdom, as well as England. To me, the tribute represented the culmination of how we as a nation felt after last week’s atrocities in Paris. What is the point in the Premier League, a private company let’s not forget, having their own tribute, completely separate from the nation’s tribute? What are they trying to demonstrate or prove? That despite the obscene billions they are rolling in from Sky subscriptions that they also have a previously unseen heart?
What next? Should the Downs League in Bristol install PA systems before this week’s fixtures so as to play the French national anthem and so demonstrate that their clubs care too?
Richard Scudamore, the Premier League’s chief suit, notes that 72 French players ply their trade in his league: “Given how close we are, as well as the long-standing relationship that exists between the Premier League and France, playing La Marseillaise as an act of solidarity and remembrance is the right thing to do.” What long-standing relationship is that, then? The Premier League hasn’t actually been around that long, although you’d probably never guess when watching Sky Sports. In fact, you’d think football didn’t exist at all before the money men got their grubby mitts around the top division of what used to be our national game. Money talks, doesn’t it?
Why not do something more useful, like holding collections at the games this week and encouraging the billionaire owners to donate some cash to the families of the victims? Or perhaps Mr Scudamore could hand out a few bob from the bulging coffers of the cash cow that the Premier League has become?
I am sure Scudamore and his Premier League are sincere in what they are doing, but to me it merely reflects the level of self-importance they feel and how they put themselves on a parapet above the rest of the game which continues its steady decline at the grassroots.
The national game has already given a wonderful tribute to the innocent victims of terror in France. Is there really any point in a private company, which sometimes operate within the structures of the English game, except when it comes to money, doing another one? Football in this country has already spoken. That will do for me.
1 comment
When Hillsborough happened, there was the usual tribute/minute’s silence at subsequent football matches.
At the time, I had stopped going to Bristol Rovers matches for several reasons, including the travel to ‘home’ games.
But I felt a kind of pull to take part. So I went to the enemy camp at Bristol City to take my place in it there.
All those football fans who would like to “do something” could only do it if they were among the small minority of football fans at Wembley.
Now they can “do something” up and down the country at places far more convenient. And not in church;)
That’s good.
Fund raising, donations are good too. They can be done as well.
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