Spoilsport?
By Emma.
I’ve long since given up supporting a football company.
The playing and watching of football still has the capaicty excite me. There’s a reason it’s called the beautiful game after all. I also understand – though grew up experiencing elsewhere – the cammaraderie, the excitment and the bond that football gives people. I see in workplace after workplace the instand bond it allows to form and have looked on whistfully and jelously at the easy friendships that form between people who know and care what a transfer window is.
But there is so much that goes along with football culture that I find disgusting and/or incomprehensible that I find the 90 minutes on the pitch scant reward for the way football culture behaves the rest of the time. For me, it’s just not a transaction I feel comfortable making. I can’t trade the pleasures of fandom for the sense that I am willing to support the indulgence and postive reinforcement of the worst examples of greed, misogyny, racism and in extreme case violence and rape.
Some think that I don’t get the tribalism of football. But of all the people in the world to level that accusation at, it ain’t me you’re looking for babe. I understand tribalism – in fact I frequently celebrate it. I’m a collectivist. I got the communal vibe growing up singing in church, I got the my tribe is better than yours vibe growing up an Indie Kid in a school full of Raggas. I’m a renowned Labour triballist. But I know that when a senior player in my tribe brings my team into disrepute, then my role is not to excuse, not to ignore, not to defend, but to call for them to go, for the good of the tribe and because it is the right thing to do.
The problems of football don’t stem from the attitude of the fans, but from the ways in which the game has changed beyond recognition in the last 20 years. The money pouring in from lucrative sponsorship deals, soaring ticket prices and the endless fleecing of fans for new expensive kit year on year has made the investment in the all-too-human players just too big. We’ve invested so much into these individuals, while nurturing only their relevent talent, not them as whole people. We have set them up as football Gods, who like the corporate giants that brought the financial world to its knees are simply too big to be allowed to fail. So their excesses are excused, their poor behaviour seperated from the day job (in ways that few other employees would be allowed to get away with) and they carry on regardless. Quite literally without regard.
But football isn’t a solitary case, and nor are the poorly-behaved players solely responsible. There are plenty of people responsible for the state of modern sport, and despite a few high profile cases, most we will never know or hear about.
But this summer of Sport in the UK is a good time to examine properly our relationship with sport and how it is managed. I’m no purist. I don’t believe that there should be no sponsorship in sport, no profits made on tickets and that players should be paid the minimum wage and be proud. But we need to have a conversation about the balance between the public and provate spheres in so many different walks of life, that as the Olympics highlights areas where there are real conflicts being brought into play, we would be insulting the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect not to learn the real lessons these games are throwing up for our culture nationally and internationally.
It seems according to the commentary I’ve seen today, there’s an attitude springing up that you’re either with the Olympians - weird draconian rules and all – or you’re against them. For me it’s far more complicated than that. The respect and friendship that the Olympics are supposed to promote are anly possible if we examine the true value of it’s excellence, and what we mean by that excellence.
Can something really be termed excellence be produced if the lowest paid workers striving to produce it are forced to live in slum conditions in order to do their jobs?
Can it really be termed excellence when schools in Olympic boroughs (as happened at the school my nephew attends) are told they could be sued for holding an Olympic themed school fete encouraging the take up of sport? Where was the excellence when their invitation to Lord Coe to attend came back with an (understandable) refusal and a (far less understandable) warning about copyright of the Olympic Rings?
I’m an incredibly proud Londoner who was ecstatic when we won the Games. I come from an Olympic borough and I saw this as a great opportunity to raise the hopes, aspirations and chances of kids in East London and further afield. I saw this as a way of showcasing my amazing city and of improving the prospects of local businesses. I saw so much opportunity that I think I’m entitled to say that I now see so much of that opportunity being lost and squandered.
The Olympics have become the pinnacle of a moment in which is has become clear the dominence that the corporate sphere has over public space. But so much of the Olympic activity seesm designed to seperate the games from the City, for example special bus lanes for sponsors getting priority as the rest of London is forced to suffer under a deeply unprepared transport system that already daily fails to respect its customer base.
The Olympics have shown up the private sector and the farcical notion that outsourcing must always be king. It has shown up a lack of civic understanding and planning by the Johnson adminstration in London that no amount of civic pride can plaster over. It has shown us a system so craven to the whim of the moneymen they acceed to the sponsors increasingly insane whims without question or attempt at reciprocation. Our aquiescence has been bought without our knowledge and at a very low cost. We need to have a conversation about the increasing amount of corporate ownership and policing of what was once public. We have gone to the extreme limits. We need a better balance. Not no corporate involvement, but not this cowboy sense that they own the town now. We must be more in charge of our own space.
G4S have failed us. TfL have failed us. The IOC have failed us. Will that stop me cheering on Team GB? No of course not. Will it stop me from marvelling at the modern olympians and their talents? Not in the slightest. But I will not be silenced on the let down that I feel and how far I have fallen from the euphoria I felt at that first announcement. There are serious lessons to be learned from the way these Olympics have panned out. It would be unpatriotic of me not to ask that we learn them.
Tags: Football, Olympics 2012
