The world awoke this morning to news that in excess of £200+ million had been exchanged between teams for their new pawns...I mean players. Quite staggering when you think about it...and quite upsetting for Bob Geldof when he sits down and thinks how many months of campaigning he’d have to do to attain such a figure for the third-world.
“Football. It’s a funny old game, isn’t it?” Well, actually, no – not really! It’s clearly become less of a frivolous hobby to be mindlessly watched and take your mind off just how rotten the obligatory accompanying cheap pint you’re downing to drown out the sound of your wife’s annoying voice actually tastes, and somewhere along the line has become more of a ruthless acquisitions business, and less of a competition. Unless that competition is outbidding other clubs to attain a “star” player. Not that I’m altogether phased by this, but rather astounded at the amount of money forked up for these mere human beings, and if they were honest too, these players would also tell of their amazement, albeit through limited diction, of being worth £35 million.
Football was once about the game. Now it’s about the players, and the celebrity world within that game. With players grabbing headlines in the media more for G.B.H, gang bangs, drug abuse and falling off bar stools drunkenly, rather than scoring goals, it really has to be assessed how involved are the fans in the actual performance of their team? Do they care more about the next signing than the present team? How involved are the players? Do they care if their team is middling in the premiership table just as long as they’re a VIP come Saturday night? More on that later.
With fans burning jerseys in anger and rebutting the decisions of their board to let their respective players go, the feeling you got as these sights were aired live on the news was that something really bad in the world has happened, like you know, a Government had put their country into a “double-dip” recession...but no, a player was sold here, and a player was sold there. If only these people were as caught up with politics as they appear to be in football...
With these transfer fees there is a risk that football will alienate the average fan leaving them feel something other than unrequited love for their team, and that’s bad news for any club! I myself am a huge fan of the highly addictive but rather frustrating brilliant Football Manager games, and when I bid £35 million for Andy Carroll this virtual-reality game shut down for me being so unrealistic.
If this trend is to continue Football will become more about the haircuts and sponsorship deals...just been informed it mostly is like that already...well, it can get always get worse! Instead of these fans burning jerseys with their ex-players name on the back they should burn their fucking season ticket. With the game gone so crazy, and without restriction, there is no limitation to what cost a team may stretch to sign another uneducated athletic lucky bastard. And without the fans there is no game. If this trend is accepted, whereby a team can potentially buy their way out of the bottom of the table as opposed to playing for it, in the future, the transfer market will become a hybrid game of Monolopy and Top Trumps, and that’s hardly going to be worth watching with the smaller teams getting crapped on and the bigger teams, as always, still underachieving.
Football needs a reality check. And these footballers, yeah you, Andy Carroll, you need a hair cut and an ankle tracker.
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