Can We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the World Cup?

"Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"

A few days remain before the beginning of a truly exciting event, one of expression, vibrant colours, internationalism where billions of people can share their mutual appreciation of the worlds most popular game, in the football World Cup. 

Only the world cup doesn't belong to football, to fans or to clubs. It is owned by the people in the caption above, an intractable, dull and elitist group who share nothing but backhanders, and for that reason it becomes rather difficult to fully enjoy something that should be a pure pleasure. I would simply like to show you why.

Instead of representing the interests of fans,clubs or players, FIFA acts as a middle man for international companies in each world cup it organiser. Brazil for instance, has had to re-licence the sale of alcohol in stadiums (Budweiser) which had been previously banned for public health reasons, and most tournaments have to create exclusion zones for the sale of local goods and products near the stadium, to protect the interests of sponsors. More importantly, FIFA imposes conditions (under confidentiality agreements only the Dutch/Belgium bid have yet broke) on countries which require wholesale changes to taxation, this from a 'non-profit', 'charity' organisation which pays next to no tax in Switzerland where it is based and further sits on a $1billion dollar 'reserve', which they claim is in case of a World Cup cancellation, rather than for a particularly rainy day. 

South Africa 2010 gave us a physical representation of FIFA's governmental takeover with the infamous 'World Cup courts'. These were fast track courtrooms reserved for World Cup related offences (thefts, sponsors rights being infringed upon) which bypassed the due process of South African justice - which hardly has an impeccable history itself. This is not just an issue for the developing world, the U.K. gave some tax concessions for the Olympics, as well as for the 2011 Champions League final, which suggests they may do again if the U.K. won a world cup bid. 

 

Making such demands is clearly a political act, and leads to a moral tragedy. A lot has been written about the poor conditions within the cities of Brazil, and the obvious inequality of the shining Maracana and Rio's Favelas, the government should be directing their efforts to looking after their own people rather than multinationals. The corporate environment of World Cup makes it hard to really love it, yet this stems from the bypassing of the rules of democratic government. Why do companies need tax breaks to operate in Brazil? That FIFA grant exclusivity to the loss of the local population is shameful enough, but the need to avoid any sort of taxation suggest and excessive level of greed. Tournaments could easily exist without these conditions, sponsors could still make money and football's governing body could surely still exist, it is in fact the completely unnecessary nature of this co-opting of the stare that makes it so saddening.  

To really love the World Cup again, this level of control has top be removed. At the base of it, even the excessive wages cannot stop the tournament bringing a sense of childlike excitement to someone as critical as me. The only way I would stop worrying though, is if FIFA changed its direction quite substantially, restoring some of the freedom and inclusiveness their co-opting of the state seems to rule out. 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/jun/20/world-cup-2010-fans-marketing-justice-fifa

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10091277

http://berkeleytravaux.com/world-cup-changing-countrys-laws-one-tournament-time/

Premier League Sexism

What is a sexist? It is such a complex issue. Are you a sexist if you don’t like certain women? Are you a sexist if you think of all women as second class citizens or mere sexual objects? Are you a sexist if you think power belongs only to men? Are you a sexist if you just say these things and don’t act on them (speech isn’t an action)?

Such a complicated issue, if of course you are a partially retarded dinosaur. I think it is becoming increasingly easy to spot people who are sexists these days, the sort of crusty old men who send emails about “female irrationality” and female colleagues being on/off “your shaft” as if it is actually about humour and less about their own sexual inadequacies and latent Oedipal complexes, the sort of wealthy men that hand around in tired old institutions like the Premier League and the FA, somehow walking away with huge pay packets whilst retaining the illusion of doing pretty much nothing (except sending lewd emails).

Unfortunately the rest of the Premier League and FA boards are similarly retarded dinosaurs, and seem to think that if you are a private sexist then that is all well and good, just as long as he isn’t expressing these views in a poster campaign he can keep his huge pay packet which comes from fans who apparently have to simply accept that at least one sexist dinosaur runs the Premier League. Would he be allowed to say he ‘would like to touch young boys’ in a private email, sending cartoons about this to his diplodocus friends? 

Rani Abraham is now being threatened with legal action by the Premier League, who are apparently powerless to sanction their employee, Richard Scudamore. Even in a clear case of wrongdoing, punishment is enacted on the temporary female worker, not the wealthy male executive – such action is more indicative of how acceptable sexism is than the emails themselves. It is also a problem of class, a colleague of mine was fired 6 months ago for making disparaging comments about a senior staff member in a private email, there is one set of rules for the executives, and one for workers. Executives have become more powerful than the bodies they work for, through football to the financial sector, whilst the Premier League have misjudged how out of kilter they are with public opinion, the sexist triceratops will keep his job and the message to people like Rani Abraham is to put up and shut up. Fortunately, most people have more integrity than executives. 

Disunited We Sit

The weekend comes and you have some small freedom. You love football, and thus you pay Sky Sports £50 a month to watch said game alone or at most with a small amount of friends. You do not go to a stadium and stand with other people, hang around the ground before and talk at length with anyone who will listen about formations, signings, other teams games etc. In short, you are the modern football fan.

None of this is your fault though. Unfortunately you have been subsumed into the cult of the individual, though help to escape is available if your truly wish. Cult's are only seen as ridiculous from the outside, they have their own internal logic which reinforces the cult behavior, so lets start with how you first got involved.

Football matches can be expensive. Most of the professional leagues are a struggle to afford for most without significant sacrifices (of sexual partners, long term relationships, other important interests), ticket prices go up above inflation most years and yet stadiums rarely get filled. Consequently the atmosphere has deteriorated at the game, you can't stand, you can't drink or smoke, and in places like the Emirates only the posh twats are left. In short, the product has got worse whilst the price has gone up, so you rationally stayed at home, and bought into the Sky ideal of sitting on the sofa and watching their adverts. Sky then pump their increasing revenues into the game, players get paid unjustifiably large wages, big media becomes a more significant and cohesive actor than fans as a unity. TV money has contributed to the deterioration of the live product, not least by scheduling games at ridiculous times, and constantly across the weekend (and week). Nobody asked for this, it just happened.

As a rational consumer, you aren't going to pay more for less, and thus you substitute for another similar good just like good neoclassical people should. You have separated out and lose the experience of collective action, of spontaneous unity and shared joy which football revealed to people every weekend for years. What you have forgotten is that football is not a product, and that is how they got you in to the cult, my friend. It is created as a spectacle by gatherings and organisations of people to enjoy in itself, the money is paid in to fund the collective aspirations and should be reasonable to the wages of the collective. Football can be changed by the people that support it, it isn't a bag of fucking crisps or razor blades which you can just substitute for something else, it is a living expression of unity. Football has resisted disunity for years, even when other realms of society have fallen away. These ideals have been retained in other countries, and they can be here too, though only with fan involvement.

There are affordable games available in the non league for those keen to wean themselves of corporate sofa football, however only when fans harry teams and leagues into improving the atmosphere and experience in stadia through re-introducing standing and letting people drink again not to mention lowering ticket prices will we see a change. Wages for players need to be capped, we can hardly kick sky out of the equation, however the more people that goto the ground the less watch there programmes, and it can be reduced to a reasonable amount of games. I would love it if sky changed first, however the leaders of cults tend to be dogmatic - far better to escape back to the real world and face up to these wider problems in the games which are turning people off.

Before you start whingeing that you live 200 miles away from your team and therefore cant get to the games etc, you might want to start asking why that is. It will almost certainly be because of current societal forces, however the response to this is not bleak acceptance and moving to London, it can be resistance and pride in where you are from, through resistance and pride in football. I can hardly blame people for being part of the cult, I am only trying to break you out of it. Unity is strength, leave the cult of the individual and join me and the others back in the lovely, cruel real world.

Hillsborough - A Quarter Century of Injustice

Twenty six years ago, Nottingham Forest played Liverpool in an FA cup semi-final at Hillsborough. 51,627 people watched John Aldridge score twice to claim a 2-1 victory for Liverpool and everybody who attended the game got home alive. The following year, 96 people did not.

The disaster, as anyone who has looked into it will tell you, was not an accident. The management of the ground on the day was corporate negligence on behalf of the bodies responsible, particularly the police, whose decision to open an exit gate and not man or shut a tunnel are considered the primary causes for the deaths of fans. What angers most is that nobody has been punished for this action and indeed the subsequent cover up and doctoring of police reports and withheld documents to the original Taylor report. There are number of excellent sources which describe the events of that day and the scandalous cover up.

What is important to remember about the 15^th April 1989 is that it could have been anyone, any team. It could have happened to the Forest fans, it could have been Manchester United or Leeds United, in short any team whose working class fans had what is euphemistically referred to as “a reputation”. This would seem to have affected the way the fans were perceived by the police.

Why did football fans have this reputation? The context of the previous decade was one of a reassertion of class power, a class of people in London who were not the sort of people who went to football, privatization and attacks on industry act as evidence of a class war against the sort of people that did. The police were co-opted by the Thatcher government to be the soldiers of this battle, and had spent a decade fighting working people across the north, Liverpool being a flash point amongst others. When people climbed over the fences, the police decided this must be some sort of hooliganism, formed a line, held back ambulances and rejected their role as public servants by standing and staring as bloody bodies appeared. These beliefs come from the history I have described, and perhaps inform the lack of care given to the planning of the entry into the ground, leaving the tunnel to the central pens unmanned unlike the year before.

Hillsborough should not be looked at in isolation. The police, F.A. and organising authorities did not just wake up 25 years ago and let 96 people die. Their negligence must be taken in historical context to understand it, and further to understand why it is they have evaded justice and the media reaction, because this was part of the attack and disregard towards the way working class people lived, in favour of the new service economy. Working people were no longer citizens, they were the troublesome other as far as the new elite was concerned, and this process continues to this day.

There is hope. The scenes at Anfield today and at grounds across the weekend show that communities still continue despite individualism, that football can still express the concerns and passions of working class people despite its corporate, sanitised environment. Hopefully, we will see justice for the 96, and with it start to put the sorry neoliberal experiment to death. We would do well to remember that ‘economic restructuring’ has far reaching effects, ones as important as life and death, on workers globally. Economics should never become more important than that.

You’ll Never Walk Alone.

These sites give good accounts of what happened.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7992845.stm

http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/report/HIP_report.pdf

Is this the last World Cup?

Dramatic, I grant you, but all you need do is pause for a moment to consider who the subsequent hosts are and you can quickly write them off as events that any fan who is also a human being should want to participate in.

For Russia, see Sochi 2014 – $51 billion siphoned to corrupt officials, homes bulldozed, roads of caviar to glorify a repressive conservative regime, not to mention the ever so slight racist tendencies of the nation’s club supporters.

Qatar might be even worse! The death toll stands at more than 500, for an event that is 8 years away, to be played in a desert with no footballing heritage but with FIFA’s main requisite of a corrupt government in need of golden elephant projects, where workers are treated as expendable.

My only consideration is if Brazil can provide a glorious end to international football competition, the most successful nation with the most exciting style of play and attitude must surely deliver a 5 week party that I can reflect on in the football empty summers of 2018 and 2022.

Sadly this is not straightforward. 5 people have died building the stadia required, and the new Maracana has been developed over precious public facilities (including a school) to the anger of local residents. As Roy Hodgson and the right wing press like to repeat, ‘Brazil is a nation that loves football’ – which, if true, gives even more weight to the protesters angry with the high government spending on the tournament at the cost of spending on healthcare, transport and education. The only hope from Hodgson et al is that the police keep every one in line so as we do not spoil the party.

For a few seconds, I want to agree. I want to be dancing a carnival through the streets of Rio, drinking and singing with fans of teams from all over the world, enjoying Brazilian hospitality as we forget our problems and celebrate the wonderful and beautiful game we love. The reality will be sanitised fan zones, rank and file of fat corporate clients and little if any representation from the poorer nations. Brazil and its public, will like every country before them, make a net loss on the tournament, as the money flows out of the country to Budweiser or into the pockets of the corrupt. When I stop indulging selfish fantasy, and put my political head on, I hope the tournament is disrupted by protests, I hope the people’s frustrations are heard, and we can start seriously looking at FIFA and how they allocate tournaments. There is no reason why it should be a corrupt corporate fairground, which excludes almost all fans from its half empty stadiums and increasingly half hearted games.

Perhaps Brazil’s legacy to the tournament could go beyond one final party, and instead start us on a path to bring the game back towards something we can all enjoy, without playing in deserts or people dying in the attempt to legitimise repressive politicians. Sorry Bill Shankley, but there are more important things than football, lets hope one day it will be peoples lives rather than money and power. 

A Taste of Things to Come

Sochi 2014. Russia 2018. To major sports events both alike in dignity, which are and will be the scene of human rights controversy and corruption so rank that even some of the old Soviet bloc would be turning in their graves, if they weren't still heavily involved in the Russian power structure. 

Gay rights seems to be the issue of choice for the Western media, it is straight forward and clearly delineates them from us. It is interesting to note though, that states in the USA prohibit sodomy, as does the 2010 Commonwealth games host India - which received little mention at the time. Google does not choose to 'bravely' comment on these issues (though it does provide forums for dissent - tax free!).

Russia passed the anti homosexual law recently, however the temporal proximity of a law hardly means it is more repressive. Russia has hardly been a beacon of humanitarianism in recent years, yet they were still selected to host an Olympics and a World Cup. The recent responses seem to think that the decision to grant these events is made in a vacuum, trapped in a void behind a seperate dimension, rather than as a result of international and entirely uncorruptable authorities, and that the games themselves are an apolitical expression of athleticism. They are not. Sports events are used by the corrupt to self promote, and to get together the various elites which care not a bit for gay rights or the rest of the worlds population.

What is noticeable is the reluctance to confront with a real determination the outrageous spending involved in the games. There is no campaign to boycott or protest against this, despite it being an example of an equally serious issue, that a country as powerful as Russia is run by a system of corrupt crony capitalism that allows $8billion to be spent on a 30 mile road. Why do we not want to challenge this so openly? Corporations so close to the government they can do what they wish perhaps look far to similar to what happens in the west, whereas a campaign for gay rights can create a bit of political capital and shows that the 'Ruskies' are still a bunch of 'Commys'. It is a political decision to have such a narrow focus. 

These issues will not concern sports bodies, and as the 'Olympics is not about politics' I guess they needn't mind. I'm sure itt was sheer coincidence that the games were revived by Imperial Britain at the height of its empire and neoclassical pretensions, its charter contains political statements and it has a whole bureaucracy to support its operation - all apolitical matters.

MONEY, THAT'S WHAT I WANT

Forbes, The Times, MTV etc enjoy making a fetish out of the lives of rich people, and their popularity suggests they are not alone. There are plenty of others who find the excesses of the rich sickening, indeed the lives of the super rich can be so gross that they are not to be aspired to. Footballers in the top European leagues fall into this category, yet it comes as no surprise to find some of their colleagues are not so luxuriously rewarded.

Inequality is not unique to football, though this is a fitting example. Many staff are on agency contracts, which apparently absolves the clubs involved from any responsibility, and are generally not paid the living wage, yet the players will earn in excess of a £100,000 a week for playing football (or sitting on the bench, and regardless of whether they play well or not.) Is this the market? Football is a very strange market, yet the value of the wages the players command is drawn from the lack of suitable replacements, yet the wage demands bring clubs to the bankruptcy or the brink of it. The cleaners etc are replaceable, there is an international reserve of labour waiting to take their jobs and the logic of the market is such that their pay and conditions are forced down through various means.

Not many other businesses will operate on these terms, with perhaps the exception of our forever loveable heroes in the financial sector, though they did used to have high revenues and will probably be handed them again after leaning on the state for a few years. Not much of the money these days comes from the fans directly – television, advertising, sales in ‘emerging markets’ etc form an increasing share of the big clubs earnings, yet instead of the owners benefiting from this boom it seems that a select few of the workers have cashed in. Again, we can see an analogy with the gods of finance, shareholders have lost out in the long term whilst the senior bankers and executives continue to be very wealthy.

The reason I bring this up is because it is all so unnecessary, so petty and so blatantly unfair that within one business someone should be earning so much money it puts the whole operation in financial jeopardy whilst others have to take extra jobs to subsist. Sky keep pumping more and more money in, is it actually at a point where a football club can’t shift a grand off a top p-layers weekly wage to ensure 3 or 4 employees who contribute to the running of the club can afford heating? Are the payers that greedy?

As with a football club, it is with the world. There are a lot of money and resources floating about, yet they seem to gravitate towards a small cadre of people, regardless of desert or effort from everyone else. So, why am I even surprised? Because football isn’t the financial sector, it isn’t food production, it isn’t the world economy. It is an association of clubs which belong to the communities and groups which formed them. There is no need for a profit incentive as the club exists for the sake of playing a game, and it should have the basic democratic structure where those that contribute to the club should have a say in its running, like a mutual or co-operative. There should never be poverty wages in premier league clubs where their earnings are so grand, and in smaller clubs people volunteer in order to be part of the club. Low wages are a much wider issue than the scope of this blog, my concern is more that if such blatant injustices have crept so unchallenged into football clubs, what chance do we have changing these problems in wider society.

For a football team, the market creates a basement price for its low wage workers. They, like all low wage employers put their arms in the air and submit to the gods. Regarding their superstars, they operate against the interests of their fans in paying outrageous wages in a market so distorted by the money from free market television companies like Sky and associated advertising, whilst courting the big money corporate sponsors and hospitality sales to further boost their income to cover the costs. Ticket prices go up, the game is more sanitised and dare is say it… boring!!... at the top level than it has ever been, yet those who clean the boardroom are like the rest of us in that their wages don’t go up for 30 years. It is a wonder how much extra effort can be made to accommodate the whims of £180,000 per week Yaya Toure, yet none of this extra finance can be used to reduce ticket prices or pay the living wage to those who work in the ticket office, even though the owner is a non-domicile multi-billionaire. Football has all of society in a few hundred yards, though societies change and so can football.