I see your point, Wolves. I don't particularly agree with that article at all. I don't know if it's always obvious when I'm joking. However, I would note that you keep talking about all these great clubs owned by their supporters or whatever (most of which seem to be pretty minor league?) yet you're still watching the world cup. Isn't that kind of like wearing a Poison Girls shirt to a Spice Girls gig?
Fairly minor for the most part, yeah. I think the highest placed team that's supporter owned is Exeter City in League One (that's the third level down, due to the insanely confusing ranking of English football). Some draw decent crowds though, and clubs only tend to get taken over or set up by supporters when something disastrous happens so they'll be starting out from a low position and most of these takeovers/start-ups are fairly new.
But onto the world cup. One of the things I find fascinating about football is the duality of it. One the one hand you have the private businesses that care only for profit who run the clubs and the world cup. Then there are the fans. For them these institutions are permanent entities created essentially by the fans, but exploited by private enterprise. The teams they support simultaneously transcend and are in thrall to capital. Because capital gets everywhere, seeping into the fabric sometimes unnoticed. This duality gives rise to another interesting duality: simultaneously supporting football and then cataloguing and resisting its abuses against people. That's why a thread about the world cup
should contain not only discussion of the game on the pitch but what human rights abuses are being committed in its name. The passion for the former actually seems to fuel the anger against the latter for many. For example, if you want to read about the horrible crimes committed by Premiership football clubs a good place to start would be 'The Beautiful Game; Searching For The Soul Of Football' by David Conn. A book by a committed Man City supporter, nobody
but a football supporter would have done that level of research into Valley Parade, Hillsborough or Arsenal's move from Highbury to the Emirates. Or there's 'When Saturday Comes', an excellent football magazine that devotes a large amount of its pages to detailing the terrible things done in the name of football. For many, critique of football itself goes hand in hand with being a football supporter.
Football teams differ from bands or other forms of entertainment in that so much is about geography. I'm anti-nationalist but I don't have a problem with people having some friendly regional competition. Football teams form a focus of belonging, a way of asserting regional identity without actually (or perhaps I should say necessarily) doing any harm to anyone from another region. Like York City being described by Conn as a focus for working class people who live in a place that's become massively built around preserving itself as a tourist attraction for outsiders. But the football club is
theirs, to its fans it belongs to the locals and allows them to show a different face to the outside world. So for a small example from the world cup, there was an England fan being interviewed on TV after the drawn match with Algeria. He was saying he'd been hanging out with Algerian fans after the match, and they'd said their team had played with heart but the English side had lacked passion and he'd had to agree with them. The important bit there is the hanging out with the Algerian fans. Ordinary people from two different countries coming together to slag off England's inability to score. Or then there's the humanisation of North Koreans. When it comes to the game the dictatorship isn't so important for a little bit and the men on the field are treated as fellow human beings. The regime most of them live under isn't brushed under the carpet but the political conditions of their country isn't the only significant fact about the team and their fans anymore. They're fellow football supporters, to be commiserated with when they too take an all-too-familiar kicking at the hands of Portugal. I'm pretty thoroughly drunk, but I hope that at least suggests some reasons why I find enjoying such a sponsor-drenched and abuse-laden event as the world cup acceptable.
I'm looking forward to England vs Germany. I reckon Germany will most likely win, but I have high hopes England will get it together enough to make it a good match. They don't usually bow out without a fight.
