shedhead
06/05/2005, 5:33 PM
I just sent a message to another forum chastising them for their obsessions about English football that I thought I would share with some like minded souls.
............................
The problem with Irish people is that they are convinced that football is one big aesthetic spectacle and they forget the underlying social dynamics that people in the stadium come to love. This is simply because they rarely if ever go to games and when they do they tend to be one-offs, internationals, trips to England, whatever. The outcome is that they have this expectation of what football is all about which jars with the reality of people who are at games week in, week out. As such the idea of loving fast flowing, fast passing, dribbling, look Mum no hands football is all the rage in Ireland. But this is what happens when TV selects the best game to show, then normally they see the highlights and forget that while, as Brian Clough used to say, 'it only takes a second to score a goal', it takes 89 minutes and 59 seconds to do everything else. Whilst Real and Barce are playing beautiful football in Spain, what about Malaga versus Albacete? That's football too and whilst not very interesting for the likes of yourself is really just as important as every other Spanish league game.
For the vast majority of football fans, the quality of the football is besides the point. Most teams have cycles and rarely dominate over the long-term (unless its Celtic and Rangers and that's even more boring) so over the course of supporting a team, you eventually see them play bad football in some armpit of the country, desperately defending to earn a 0-0 draw, whilst it is raining and freezing cold. It isn't the football that keeps the fans warm, it is the love of being there. Then when your team does produce great football and achieves at the highest level, it is a glorious feeling that the people there will remember for the rest of their lives.
So yes football is being raped but not by negative tactics of Greece and co. but by the armchair brigade, the prawn sandwichers and the band wagoners who drive (or are driven by) the BSKYB agenda of football where it is all transcendent, all of the time. Well it isn't about that, its about being part of a club and a community of people with shared values and dreams, its about going to football matches on your wife's birthday, its about telling all your house guests to be quiet whilst you listen to the results on the radio, its about booting down motorways in a foul temper because you are about to miss the first five minutes of the game which is a mid-table clash, its about blowing all your money on traveling to games.
We believe in all this ****** that we are the best supporters in the world - let me tell you a truth - we are the worst. Why did Ireland exceed other countries in looking for World Cup match tickets? Because football supporters in other countries spend all their money to games week in, week out - traveling up and down their country watching bad football games but loving every second of it whilst we sit here and sneer at our own game which incidentally is getting better all the time despite the smug eliteness of the Anglophones who live in our little island.
So all of you Anglophones who are so worried about the state of English football and to a lesser extent the upper echelons of the Champions League participants, please remember that Shelbourne are playing Finn Harps this Friday. It will no doubt be a bad football game in the aesthetic spectacle idea that impresses you all but in the wider existence of football for those clued in to the spirit of supporting games, it is what the weekend is all about
............................
The problem with Irish people is that they are convinced that football is one big aesthetic spectacle and they forget the underlying social dynamics that people in the stadium come to love. This is simply because they rarely if ever go to games and when they do they tend to be one-offs, internationals, trips to England, whatever. The outcome is that they have this expectation of what football is all about which jars with the reality of people who are at games week in, week out. As such the idea of loving fast flowing, fast passing, dribbling, look Mum no hands football is all the rage in Ireland. But this is what happens when TV selects the best game to show, then normally they see the highlights and forget that while, as Brian Clough used to say, 'it only takes a second to score a goal', it takes 89 minutes and 59 seconds to do everything else. Whilst Real and Barce are playing beautiful football in Spain, what about Malaga versus Albacete? That's football too and whilst not very interesting for the likes of yourself is really just as important as every other Spanish league game.
For the vast majority of football fans, the quality of the football is besides the point. Most teams have cycles and rarely dominate over the long-term (unless its Celtic and Rangers and that's even more boring) so over the course of supporting a team, you eventually see them play bad football in some armpit of the country, desperately defending to earn a 0-0 draw, whilst it is raining and freezing cold. It isn't the football that keeps the fans warm, it is the love of being there. Then when your team does produce great football and achieves at the highest level, it is a glorious feeling that the people there will remember for the rest of their lives.
So yes football is being raped but not by negative tactics of Greece and co. but by the armchair brigade, the prawn sandwichers and the band wagoners who drive (or are driven by) the BSKYB agenda of football where it is all transcendent, all of the time. Well it isn't about that, its about being part of a club and a community of people with shared values and dreams, its about going to football matches on your wife's birthday, its about telling all your house guests to be quiet whilst you listen to the results on the radio, its about booting down motorways in a foul temper because you are about to miss the first five minutes of the game which is a mid-table clash, its about blowing all your money on traveling to games.
We believe in all this ****** that we are the best supporters in the world - let me tell you a truth - we are the worst. Why did Ireland exceed other countries in looking for World Cup match tickets? Because football supporters in other countries spend all their money to games week in, week out - traveling up and down their country watching bad football games but loving every second of it whilst we sit here and sneer at our own game which incidentally is getting better all the time despite the smug eliteness of the Anglophones who live in our little island.
So all of you Anglophones who are so worried about the state of English football and to a lesser extent the upper echelons of the Champions League participants, please remember that Shelbourne are playing Finn Harps this Friday. It will no doubt be a bad football game in the aesthetic spectacle idea that impresses you all but in the wider existence of football for those clued in to the spirit of supporting games, it is what the weekend is all about