The sanitisation of English football

Whether you like it or not, of have chosen to ignore the fact, football is a working man’s sport. It always has been, historically at least. It has been stolen by the money men and Sky Sports (and the general media have followed suit) and the vast riches that their investment has provided for football clubs or more specifically, the players that play for them, their stratospheric weekly wages, and the fees that the biggest leeches in football command. Player’s agents.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a subscription to Sky, I watch the occasional game of football on TV. I’m not adverse to televised football or the game being made available for a wide audience. Football certainly isn’t elitist, quite the opposite in fact. I recall a story my father has told me more than once, during his younger days where by him and a group of friends on a beach in Spain, engaged some locals in a game of football. None of his friends spoke Spanish, none of the Spanish lads spoke English but by the universal language that is football, a game was conducted on the sands of a certain holiday resort, lasting for 3 hours and sunburning my Dad half to death in the process. Football is a language, spoken by most of the known world, it brings people together, unites them in a common goal, and in its most basic form, provides entertainment. Or at least, it used to...

What I’m more frustrated with isn’t so much the fact that players like Emile Heskey and Carlton Cole have managed to carve out a substantially well rewarded career off the back of limited football ability, it is the growing number of football clubs that seem hell bent on destroying any kind of soul a club has by restricting the supporters to what they can say or do at a game, or how the are allowed to act. Football clubs will protest that they aren’t doing this at all but they are. They are stifling you, the supporter and it has been such a slow process that you probably haven’t even realised.

Hands up who remembers “The referee’s a w*nker” chant? Very popular in times gone by. What do we have now? “You don’t know what you’re doing” which is conveniently sung in the same tune.

Now I’m not saying everyone has to swear and abuse the referee just to generate an atmosphere (although let’s face it, it used to play a big part of a matchday experience) but this is an example of how we have been very slowly conditioned to accept that football is a place where you can’t swear, or abuse what has always been historically considered something of a joke figure.

Sky Sports would be absolutely delighted (though they would deny this) if at a packed Old Trafford, Etihad or Emirates, tens of thousands of supporters sat there singing broadcastable songs, and applauding the referee when he gets a basic decision correct. That may well sound ridiculous to you but that is not far off what is happening, and the orchestrator of the very reason why football has become sanitised, won’t stop until the job is complete. And those that have vested commercial interests in your club, are only too happy to assist this family friendly product, knowing the rewards far outweigh the desire from the common supporter for a proper football atmosphere.