I decided after having overheard and engaged in too many conversations, casual chats and unreasonable drunken slanging matches about the money in football, that I was going calculate how much I’ve actually earned in my lifetime. The point being for me that the next time someone inevitably recoils mid-discourse and says, “but, 200,000-a-week that’s more than most people earn in a…(insert appropriate time-frame according to social stratification)” I’d have some actual solid data to refer to, and at the very least an excuse to steer the conversation towards something that bores me less. I also thought I could then try and crowbar it into a blog post which will in turn attempt to make some point about some issue or another … and so here it is:
Roman went for a dip to cool off.
Since leaving university in 2001 aged 22, I have managed, but for a few months here and there, to consolidate my position as a tiny component part within the wheels of commerce. During that period of time, and also taking into account the part-time and casual work I had while at secondary school, I’ve worked out I’ve earned approximately £70,000 within my lifetime. 32 years to earn what some top players now earn in roughly 3 days. So, if the question is how much money is now in football?, in my own personal context, the answer I can now be satisfied with is: shed-loads.
And so we come to the main body of my post, the reason you’re here, unless you’re one of the Hacker83 hacking crew who are most likely here for my HTML code (Gerrraaadovit you swine! Go on clear off!).
What with all the oligarchs, sheikhs, conglomerates, multinationals and other dodgy bastards investing in football and thus creating a multi-billion pound industry, why is the whole house of cards left at the mercy of the whim of a select few, often unhinged, unquestionably unfit, pathological egotists often found in excruciatingly tight black shorts (a subtle attempt by the manufaturers to remove them from the gene pool)?
Who am I?
When Jack Rodwell was sent off in the Merseyside Derby and then subsequently had his red card rescinded, I immediately thought what a fine job his agent and management team had done in getting him into the headlines and on to the back pages just before we all forgot who he actually was … I also thought that’s not fair. I didn’t stamp my feet whilst crying, cos it didn’t happen to a United player, but I would have, if it would have.
We’ve had ghost goals, handball goals, offside goals, onside goals, through the side-netting goals and through the stanchion goals. We’ve had penalties given, penalties not given, penalties given against Given and Given givin penalties away that are given and then ungiven. We’ve had diving, thumping, slapping, gouging, pinching, grabbing, suplexes and boston crabs. We’ve had just about every kind of wrongful decision and prospering cheat replayed on loop, to death, until we’ve come to accept them as ‘part of the game’, all of it packaged and presented reasonably neatly via the magic box … our telly.
Just guessing – cos I can’t be bothered to Google it – but I imagine that statistically 100% of football fans of professional clubs at some point in an average week watch football on telly (coverage through a camera, streamed, whatever). We all know what telly is, it’s been around for the best part of 100 years. We view the matches and opinion through it and therefore it becomes, possibly in most cases, our primary tool for facilitating our judgments and possibly in some part contextualising those judgements. It’s not unusual to see at least 2 or 3 controversial incidents during a game. Unfortunately, we see it, but the referee doesn’t. If the referee was watching it on telly, then he sees it too and he avoids making the wrong choice. If we were on the pitch and not watching on the telly, we wouldn’t see it and the referee watching at home would perhaps call us a pleb. It’s a very straight forward premise.
Genuine footage of friends watching footy.
Although in a slightly different context (which I am conveniently ignoring), Fergie said it the other week, Telly is god; omnipotent and omnipresent – the all seeing eye. In being a god himself, he knows what he’s talking about. I was constantly reminded at school that ‘it takes one to know one’.
Instead of investing money in goal line technology, sensors in balls, extra cameras, or employing comatose ‘assistants’ to stalk the touchline behind the goal actively avoiding anything actually occurring within the confines of the playing surface. The governing bodies could do a lot worse than simply employ someone to watch the match on telly.
Oh Oh…I only turned over for a minute…again, again…
The company who get the rights to provide the footage that the ‘5th official-telly watcher’ views, inevitably sticks their logo all over the shop and so instead of FIFA, or whoever, having to fork out money on solutions, an actual revenue stream is created. Sepp Blatter said something about how the game is better with human errors, which I actually agree with. However, football fans engage with football on a different level to those people who are actually employed by it. It’s okay for us to say that the controversy adds to our enjoyment of it, like I do. I don’t lose my job or/and my sanity or/and my health just because the opposition forward was half a full length arm tattoo offside and put us out the cup.
Ner ner nee ner ner.
There are a couple of possible reasons as to why making the game fair doesn’t appeal. *Incoming speculative conclusion* a) The governing bodies of football don’t want things to change because with change comes evolution and ultimately the relinquishing of their power. b) The ‘investors’ in football I mentioned earlier without the opportunity to control the climate (ie. cheat, pay bungs etc) would more often than not be less likely to invest. I’m just going to leave this sentence here and you can choose to ignore it if you wish … The flawed officiating of the game creates the perfect platform for match fixing.
Imagine if what you saw on telly became what the match officials saw.
The technology is here and I use it every day of my life.
