Are you a football hipster?
The odds have to be pretty good here. You’re voluntarily using your spare time to
read a tiny blog about the experience of being a fan of a third-tier Football
League side. It’s quite niche. It’s cultish.
It’s a long way from arguing about whether Van Persie ought to
celebrate. Just being here means you
must be a bit of a hipster.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, or you’re not sure
whether you are or not, you can (sort of) scientifically find out here, by using
this excellent Guardian quiz. (I am, by
the way, A Bit of a Hipster, but I think I’d have done better if it weren’t for
the fact that I already own that
Dortmund shirt). It’s a fun quiz –
witty, clever and interesting, I liked it a lot.
But one of the things I found most interesting about it was
question three, the one about what you watch on TV. The first two possible answers are “Manchester
United v Milan on ITV1” and “Athletic Bilbao v Shakhtar Donetsk on Sky Sports
Red Button”. It’s clear what the
implication is – yer true connoisseur of off-the-beaten-track football is far keener
to watch the encounter between the men from San Mamés and the team of Dario Srna, Eduardo and Bernard
than the game between boring old United and the dwindling power that is AC
Milan.
What I found most noteworthy, though, is the identity of the
TV Channels in particular. The ITV of
butt of a thousand jokes Adrian “Toby jug of warm piss” Chiles, the deranged
Keane and the appalling Townsend. And
the Sky Sports of the great Gary Neville, the affable Stelling and the “legend”
that is Chris Kamara.
Or the free-to-air ITV and millionaire behemoth Rupert
Murdoch’s Sky Sports, depending on how you look at it.
You see, I think there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance
happening here. Because one often finds
that the people most knowledgeable about obscure football, most in love with
the game beyond the endless United/Chelsea/Barcelona/Real Madrid axis, are the
ones who are most vocally Against Modern Football. While accepting that all-seater stadia have
done a lot to make the game more accessible, they bemoan the demise of the
relatively egalitarian football world of the past, where the game belonged to
the local community, Anderlecht could reach the European Cup final, and the
world’s greatest players were unknown geniuses appearing out of the mist once
every four years for a World Cup. They
are often, in short, Against Modern Football.
As far as I can see, to be Against Modern Football means to
be against the extreme haves-and-have-nots-based market economy that football has
become. Nobody denies that some clubs
have always been wealthier and more successful than others. It didn’t take the establishment of the
Champions League to ensure that Arsenal’s roll of honour dwarfs Shrewsbury’s. But it’s undeniable that the last 20 years or
so have seen the vastly expanded sums of money in football roll
disproportionately towards the “establishment” (or at least the version of it
which happened to exist in the early ‘90s and was then set in aspic) and away
from the smaller clubs. The TV deals,
the sponsorships – you know the stuff.
But it starts with the TV deals.
It starts, effectively, with Sky Sports.
Sky Sports created modern football. Indeed, they didn’t just
create it – they sustain it. And with
every subscription taken out they become more powerful. Yet there’s rarely any sense that they
themselves are a bad thing. Cause and effect aren’t always linked, sure, but it’s
odd for cause to be celebrated whilst effect is bemoaned. Listen to the Guardian’s podcast – you’ll
hear forty minutes of complaints about the state of things followed by an
enthusiastic list of games available that weekend on Sky or BT.
Ah, BT – the channel that hired Baker and Kelly, Richardson
and Honigstein, dressed itself brilliantly in the clothes of the savvy,
intelligent fan and then, just as it was established, threw more money than
ever at the big clubs of UEFA, whilst taking away from the fan who can’t afford
to pay for more TV at home, or whose parents can ‘t be persuaded, the
guaranteed Tuesday night Champions League treat. You have to admire their business acumen,
even if you can’t admire the result. The
attempt to stop Sky having a monopoly has just increased the cost to the fan
who does want to watch everything, and therefore the cash tipping into the
pockets of the biggest clubs. Who saw
that coming, eh?
You win this round, capitalism.
This stuff matters not just because intellectual dishonesty
is a bad thing. I’m not really mad at
the football hipsters. Shock reveal: I
am one. And I watch the Champions League
like everyone else. I’ll go to the pub
if Dortmund v Real isn’t on free-to-air, but I’ll watch it.
It matters because I support Bristol City. And there’s a good chance you support Bristol
City. If you don’t, I’d like to think
you support one of the 85 or so English league sides who missed out on the
golden tickets, although statistically you probably don’t, you probably do
support one of the lucky few.
There are enough closed shops in British life. Very little social mobility. The rich get richer, the poor get shat
on. You die in the class you were born. When John sodding Major makes the point that
this is a problem, you know it’s a hell of a problem.
It’s depressing seeing football, still ultimately two
villages kicking a pig’s bladder at one another, come to this. And while it’s
perhaps inevitable (why should football be unlike basically any other aspect of
modern times) that doesn’t mean just taking it.
Ultimately, while I’d love to sit at home and watch that
Bilbao – Shakhtar game (it does sound very good) I’m not going to consciously
prop up the edifice that sustains those at the top by feeding on those at the
bottom. That’s no exaggeration – read about
the way clubs get remunerated for losing their best kids nowadays.
And while I’m not naïve enough to think that anything I do
or say, ever, can particularly change the status quo, I do wonder whether we
have enough football hipsters, and enough Bristol City fans, to at least knock
a few bits of masonry off kilter.
Otherwise, ultimately, we accept that we’re sacrificing the spirit of the
game purely because we want to watch more of it, in comfort and convenience.
Hipsters. Bristol
City fans. Shall we start with not
subscribing to BT Sport and to Sky?
And then shall we work from there?
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