If I cast my mind back 20 years, I am living a life that revolves heavily around football. Going to the football obsessively, attending every single Bristol Rovers home game and the occasional away game, spending long evenings debating and squabbling on football forums, arranging holidays and other social events to fit in around the football and, if that was not enough, watching as much football as humanly possible, both live and recorded, on the crystal bucket, as well as many of the discussion shows on football. I could not get enough football. So far this weekend, I have seen literally no football, live in person or on the telly and in yet another change from decades ago, I am barely checking the latest scores, either. How times have changed.
It is hard to avoid the media hype. Football is everywhere across the media, some of it actually involving the game itself. Much of it is the soap opera nonsense you get off the pitch. Today, I shall be watching one game on Sky Sports and even then with some reluctance. Liverpool are ‘entertaining’, as we used to call it in the old days, Manchester City.
Unless you have been living in a cave, you will be aware that Manchester City have been found guilty of just the 114 charges of cooking the financial books and going out of their way to not cooperate with the subsequent investigation, between 2009 and 2018, thus rendering, you would think, everything they ‘won’ to have been won crookedly. All was revealed during the long international break and now THE PREMIER LEAGUE IS BACK! and where should City be heading, but Liverpool, who were one of the clubs likely to have suffered due to City’s cheating. The BBC expects the atmosphere to be ‘hostile’. I can only imagine how Sky Sports, who of course, hold most of the Premier League TV rights, will be promoting today’s encounter. While I like – but do not support – Liverpool, because that would involve having some kind of connection with the city and a desire to attend games (I have neither), and want Liverpool to win I am not living under some kind of illusion about what Liverpool are these days.
Sure, Liverpool FC’s traditions remain strong. Their long and illustrious history means that at least some part of Liverpool FC will always remain, but let’s be very clear about what they are today: a part of Fenway Sports Group Holdings (FSG), to quote the internet (so it must be true) “an American multinational sports holding conglomerate which owns Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox, Premier League’s Liverpool, NASCAR’s RFK Racing, and TGL’s Boston Common Golf.” I know that, at least technically, Liverpool under that ownership can still be regarded as a ‘football club’ but as a bit of a traditionalist, I see them more as a corporate entity these days, the plaything of wealthy overseas owners, just like many, if not most, other Premier League (and lower division) clubs.
My own disillusionment with football can be attributed to a fall-out with my own club, the Rovers, over 20 years ago, which frankly I never got over. A dear friend who also supported the Rovers told me in the early 2000s that, after an unpleasant incident at the club, he found he was losing the emotional attachment. Imagine my surprise when my initial bafflement at his loss of faith happened to me, too, although I took a further 12 years to finally walk away. Nothing that has happened since has done anything to change my mind. If anything, my estrangement has become deeper and more profound and my half-love, at most, for Liverpool is nothing like the genuine love I had for the Rovers.
I can feel it’s different today. Whereas I always looked forward to The Match, where I would meet my friends, talk bollocks, drink beer, watch the game and then prepare to do it all again in two weeks, now there is almost a sense of dread about it. Liverpool v Manchester City will not change my world, nor ruin my weekend if Liverpool lose. This is not the club of my heart nor my dreams, as Bristol Rovers used to be.
Not that long ago, but perhaps longer ago than I first thought, I’d be watching the early lunchtime game on Sky, followed by Super Sunday just before tea time. Today will represent, I think, only the second Super Sunday I have seen all season. Honestly, if there was something better to do, I’d do it, and I suspect that during the match itself I will be dipping in and out of my latest book (All The Wrong Moves by Anthony Scaramucci). We’ll probably be preparing and eating our tea during the game, too. Let’s put it this way: football is neither my first, my last nor my everything. It’s just on.
What has happened at Manchester City is one of the worst scandals to ever happen in football. It is not a blip, an accident, a minor breach of the rules. In my opinion, there is not a book big or heavy enough to throw at City. Put simply, they are cheats and cheats should not prosper, they should suffer. Kick them out of the entire pyramid, take away all their titles and trophies, but don’t give the trophies to anyone else. Just leave them blank, to remind us what happened and what will happen to those who will do anything, no matter how illegal, to win. Having said that, whatever happens to Manchester City, or more likely what doesn’t happen, will not affect my life.
Football bears no resemblance to the football of my youth. Money has seen to that, where it costs over £20 to watch non league football, never mind the Premier League cash cow. I’ll confine my TV viewing to the odd Liverpool game and every England game because international football, despite the worst efforts of FIFA, remains the only type of football I remain interested in, unlike players like Declan Rice and Cole Palmer who were too injured for international duty in recent weeks but miraculously returned to play for their clubs yesterday.
Doubtless, the atmosphere at Anfield today will be similar to the poison of the Old Firm derby and I don’t say that with any great cheer. Hate, I find, is such a negative emotion, which has a corrosive effect on one’s mind, and I don’t want my only satisfaction from football to be gleaned on the back of the misery of others.
I know that I am in a minority, as football booms more than ever before, as the demand for the Premier League is greater than it ever has been. But I hate – yes, that word – what it football has become and, as I enter the winter of my life there are better things with which to concern myself. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want Liverpool to batter Manchester City today but so much of that is down to schadenfreude. In truth, I’ll be glad when it’s all over. The game really has gone, at least in my world. And in my case, I am very much at peace with that.
