I was chatting to a friend the other day who was raging that Jose Mourinho was "ruining" football due to his negative tactics.
I found it really hard to understand, which shows how behind the times I am. By my way of thinking it is Mourinho's job to win matches for Chelsea, given the resources he has; it is not his job to entertain neutrals.
This is naive. The football-watching populace has changed. Once a team's games would be watched by that team's fans. They would prefer exciting football, but a win's a win. Now so many more games are televised the majority of viewers are not fans of either team, but of "football" generally.
This may be a transition period, where the managers' incentives out of line with the customers' interests. Currently wins are rewarded, by the clubs and the leagues: it may be that (the majority) of viewers care proportionally less about wins. The most exciting league will sway international viewers. Rule change may be in the Premier League's interests. Off the top of my head, here's a couple of ways to bring in the renminbis while ruining the game you all love so much.
No more draws. If it's a draw, there's no extra time or penalties, the team with the greatest number of shots on target, or corners, wins.
Big clocks. No more referees' watches.
No more offside.
Shot counter. You need to shoot after, I don't know, a minute or so?
1. Support the teams of countries you like, root against the teams of countries you dislike
Not much more to say.
2. Support the African teams
Africa has never won a World Cup. Africa is a geopolitical underdog, to put it mildly. The entire continent would probably go crazy if an African team won. So support Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Algeria and the Ivory Coast.
3. Buy a wall chart.
Buy a wall chart and fill it out with your kids. It's like an advent calendar but with scores instead of chocolates. You can get free ones with newspapers, or fancy designer-y ones if you know where to look. Essentially you are turning the World Cup into an extra administrative chore, but somehow it becomes enjoyable.
4. Gamble
Not on individual matches, but on cumulative bets that will draw you into checking each match. A good one is "total number of goals in the group stages / round of 16 etc". DON'T GAMBLE ONLINE. Go to the bookies, make a day of it, keep your betting slips stuck to the fridge using magnets.
5. Have friends around
Football is supposed to be a sociable, semi-background activity. The World Cup especially so. Have people "around for the match", serve up some country-specific food or beverage (this is slightly twee but acceptable for the World Cup), sit around in front of the TV half-watching the match and talking about all the stuff you normally talk about.
6. Just keep it on in the background, like Test Match Special or Wimbledon
A bit trickier this year as it mostly runs in the UK evenings, but yes, you're not actually supposed to concentrate intently on each match. Just let it sort of wash through the house on a low volume. You could even try having the radio on, "football is better on the radio" is an under-explored football hipster notion.
7. Watch matches at immigrant restaurants/bars
Easier in London I suspect, but this is a nice bit of cultural tourism.
8. Flag bunting
Just enjoy flag bunting when you see it. See if you can identify all of the flags. Maybe put some up in your house, or outside it. Embrace the colour.
Sometimes I feel sorry for football, making so much effort to be a genuinely global game of the people, a common sporting tongue, and yet so singularly failing to warm Al's heart.
The 1990s Hornbyisation of football was obviously due a correction, but as in Left politics, just because a few middle class people inevitably get a bit carried away and make fools of themselves is no reason to jettison the whole enterprise. I guess there is the whole issue about feeling socially pressured to be into football, although is that really, really a thing? Would be very interested to hear people's lived experiences on that, I suspect it's overblown but happy to be corrected.
My own pet theory (which quite possibly falls under the category of "middle class people getting a bit carried away") is that some educated, cultured, middle class people struggle with football because, contra Al's last post, it doesn't really offer much of a mirror to one's self in the way that books, films and foreign box sets might. We try to develop narratives around football players, teams, managers etc because that's what humans do, and we can often pull it off, but the football itself is not trying to reach you emotionally or intellectually, to show you something of yourself (you beautiful, complex individual), in the way that a novel does. It is poor fuel for the ego, in other words, not much use for self-actualisation. Just look at attempts to eke social distinction out of football: any more than "moderate" footie knowledge or team loyalty offers rapidly diminishing returns (I think).
If you'll allow me to go completely overboard, I would say that this is the beauty of football: it provides an arena in which you can come closer to negating the self by dissolving into the crowd. Not just today's crowd, but a century of crowds before you, up and down the country, across Europe in fact, any settlement larger than a hamlet fielding a team, kicking off at three o'clock, men in flat caps, jumpers for goal posts etc etc.
There are experts who can decipher a game of football like a text - part of the mesmerising effect of football is that there are underlying patterns to the seeming chaos that only reveal themselves after you've watched quite a lot of it (it took me about ten years of football viewing to realise that, rather than just keeping your eyes on the ball, you should always be trying to identify the potential passing options of the player in possession). But I don't think that this is the point of the exercise for the casual fan, anymore than being able to give credible tasting notes is the point of drinking beer. It's a space where you can vacate yourself and just join in for the sake of joining in, to empty yourself out temporarily and become a vessel of something bigger, something communal. The fact that the big, communal thing to which you are submitting yourself is totally pointless makes it even better - a colourful, harmless religion.
Best of all, this vacation of self carries on after the match. A footie conversation with a taxi driver / random bloke in the pub / office security guard where you both just spout the conventional wisdom, barely taking your brain out of first gear - what a beautiful thing!
Anyway I have some suggestions on how non-football fans can enjoy the World Cup (a tournament designed for non-football fans), but I've gone on too long so I'll do it as a separate post.
You know that bit in The Commitments when that guy says of music, "I don't know why you bother. Everything's shite since Roy Orbison died." That's pretty much how I feel about football since van Nistelrooy went to Real Madrid.
A simpler time
It's hard, being drawn to football without liking it much. You need a framework.
I can't watch football as a fan. I don't care about any of the teams. In my 20s I could identify, at a pinch, with the players. Now I'm too old for that and I haven't watched any games for years.
Recently though, I've found myself obsessively following results. The key is the managers. I doubt I could name more than twenty Premiership players, but I'd have a fair stab at most of the managers. Greying men, their primes behind them, trying to ride chaos. These are the guys I can relate to.
The third stage of my interest in football might kick in when I'm in late middle age: an identification with international managers, the semi-retired. Right now, though, I couldn't care less about those old geezers. And I don't care about their players. So how can I care about the World Cup?
Today I nearly texted our mutual friend Kenny to see what his plans are for tomorrow's La Liga decider, assuming it would have some absurdly late post-tapas kick-off time and we could watch the Cup Final and Spanish decider together in succession. But they're at the same time, 5pm BST!!!
Are all of the football hipsters really going to watch Madrid-Barcelona instead of our own domestic, "magic" cup final? Am I a bit UKIP for even caring? Will I watch the Cup Final while secretly wishing I was watching the other match? Yes, yes and yes?
Why is the Cup Final kicking off at 5pm? I guess I should be grateful it is actually ending the season. But what's wrong with 3pm, where's the clash?
I try really hard not to be a dick about Americans blogging about the "EPL" but there was a particularly obnoxious piece in Grantland a few months ago arguing to the effect that the added insult to Theo Walcott's injury was the fact it took place during the less lucrative (and possibly less internationally broadcasted?) FA Cup. The article basically called upon fans (of top sides anyway) to take a sensible, grown up approach to the FA Cup and stop caring about it, to give our blessing to weakened teams blah blah blah as those are just the realities of the game.
It's true that there is a disparity between the prestige of the FA Cup and the meagre financial rewards attached, but is the onus really on the supporters to resolve that disparity by adjusting our feelings to the financial structure of the game? Maybe it could be the other way around?
Here's a way to do it cheaply as well - the winner of the FA Cup is exempted from financial fair play regulations for a year. No one will play a weakened team again ever.
Anyway I'll text Kenny tomorrow and see what he is doing.
