In the subsequent weeks following England’s exit from the “Greatest Sporting event on Earth” I found myself assessing my relationship with the “beautiful game”, what it has meant to me throughout my life and what it means to me now.
Football and all it entails is so deeply embedded into my psyche and that of so many men who grew up in England in the same era that I quite honestly cannot envisage having lived my life without it’s existence.
I turned 30 last year a superficial yet significant milestone in a man’s life. Superficial in that it is only a relatively meaningless measurement of time but significant in that it can evoke an assessment of one’s life in general.
In the lottery of life I have been extremely lucky. I have always been relatively healthy. I’ve never lived in abject poverty or found myself homeless. I have never been directly affected by natural disasters, war or other great tragedy and I never suffered the atrocities of the labour camp in Siberia which my Polish grandmother and thousands like her endured. So to me these experiences are, gratefully, unknown.
However, just as the reality of these concepts are so alien to me as to be incomprehensible ,as they are to so many of my generation, so too are the expectations, ambitions and attitudes to life held by previous generations in this country or the more unfortunate in the world today.
Even as recently as my parent’s generation and circumstance, general expectation appeared to be to leave school, get a job or a trade, find a partner, get a mortgage, start a family and be content with that, anything else being a bonus for which hard work and sacrifice would be required. In essence whilst those foundations may not have transformed substantially over time, in recent years the desire and expectation to have more than that has appeared increasingly common. No longer are people content to have these things they want, in fact very often, demand, more. Ironically nowadays merely obtaining a job, a house and general security can be more challenging than ever in Britain’s current economical climate.
What in God’s name does the change in society have to do with the result of football match in South Africa you may be asking? At first glance absolutely nothing. However, spending the past few weeks thinking about this I have come to question whether my current discontent with the modern game is attributed to my general discontent with many things in modern society or whether it is merely a case of me personally getting older and more cynical, and perhaps even slightly bitter.
I look at how life has changed over the years and how so much importance is placed on financial success, celebrity and instant gratification and it seems to me that football has followed suit. No longer is football merely a past time of the working man, played by their equals in which for a few hours they could escape the constraints and monotony of their daily lives and an outlet for controlled aggression and pent up frustrations that this entailed. Now it is a billion pound machine, performed by millionaires, dictated by television broadcasters and sold down the river to the highest bidder. Through my eyes, ‘The beautiful game’ started to lose its looks many years ago and its attractiveness continues to deteriorate as each season passes. Regardless of how many expensive cosmetic makeovers are applied by the money men as they continue to polish up and further package the game to market, beyond the shiny aesthetics, for me, football circa 2010, is a mere shadow of it’s former self in terms of its appeal.
Gone is Match of The Day, replaced by “How the big 4 got on”, departed are posthumous knighthoods to real sporting achievers, superseded by OBEs for Beckham- mania, and long vanished are pay on the door everyman- priced tickets as they made way for 300 year waiting lists at £20k a pop (or so some flash Spurs fans would have you believe).
When I was a kid I seem to recall that admitting to being a football supporter was often looked down on with scorn by the literati, a hobby for thugs a pastime for oiks and those devoid of even the minutest grasp of intellect. Now it is dinner party conversation as to how the Arsenal are getting on and Z list celebrities and media luvvies clamour to get their “soccer” references in so as not to miss out on boarding the bandwagon that rolled into town some time in the late 1990s. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not an inverted snob with a chip on his shoulder, far from it, and for every Zoe Ball and Tim Lovejoy there is a Nick Hornby and Danny Baker, however the “gentrification” of the game over the past two decades has been a real turn off.
For years whenever I was introduced to new people of the male gender I would immediately, and seemingly subconsciously, steer the obligatory opening small talk around to “Which team do you support mate?” a process that had probably not changed for twenty years…. until recently.
I’ve sickened of hearing Johnny Come Lately esquire harping on about Liverpool, United or Chelsea despite being born and bred in Tunbridge Wells and having no interest in football until it became a must have fashion accessory. No longer do I wish to feign interest when they regurgitate second hand opinions derived from Sky Sports or Soccer Am. I refuse to entertain conversations with folk so plastic and clichéd that they make Fulham “supporting” Hugh Grant appear to be an ardent connoisseur of the game by comparison. I will no longer engage with those who would sooner recline in their lazy - boy, adorning their replica Chelsea strip in front of their 62” HD television watching SKY’s latest offering rather than actually going to the game or God forbid going down the road to Watford to watch their local team and give them some much- welcomed revenue. But they and their opinions seem to be everywhere these days and so upon meeting folk of a certain profile I no longer enquire as to who they “support” thus saving me from entertaining any banal chat about “how Torres is shit and not fit to lace Rooney’s boots” and other similar warbling of the armchair fan.
Whilst they may whittle away their soulless existences updating their Facebook status’s letting all and sundry know how pleased they are that they watched on ITV their chosen team of multinational mercenaries progress in the Champions League, I take comfort in the fact that I know they will never have the “real” experiences of the highs of seeing Chris Powell jumping out of the tunnel in post match celebration accompanied by the lows of being 3 -1 down to Barnsley on a cold afternoon in SE7.
Although I do despair of these morons, at least they are blissfully happy in their plastic bubble. Those I feel for are the fans of football, including those at the big clubs, who hate what football has become and what it has done to “their” clubs whether it be mass selling out at one end of the spectrum or financial ruin at the other.
Manchester United a club of fine footballing history and tradition, in recent years choosing to disregard the finest cup competition in club football to chase the money and now owned by dollar- thirsty businessmen prompting misguided yet well meaning supporters to don Norwich scarves in futile protest.
Players refusing to sign contracts unless their demands for an extra average national salary is added to their weekly pay packet.
Years of unabashed greed, flagrant exploitation and the ruthless attitude, of those who control the game, have nurtured the footballing monster which in turn has grown and grown and now stands morbidly obese and bloated, corrupt and overindulged, appearing somewhat repulsive to those who remember it in better shape. Modern football synonymous, perhaps, with modern day Britain, as is the increasing disillusionment many now have with both.
From my experience it wasn’t always like this. My first memory of going to a game was as a seven year old in 1987 to see The Football League v Rest of The World at “The” Wembley. I can remember that particular Saturday morning my dad telling me that we had to go shopping for something and reluctantly trudging out to his battered Ford Orion resenting the fact that I would miss Saint and Greavsie to do something that surely was one of my mum's many thankless duties. It was only when we got to the old Kingdom of Leather roundabout in Eltham that I sensed we weren’t going to Tescos. Still nothing prepared me for the excitement and complete awe I felt when we parked in the shadows of the original Twin Towers or later during the game the bemusement I felt when the short, stocky foreign guy kept getting booed every time he touched the ball followed by the expletitives that simultaneously rang out every time he glided past a hapless defender. My dad told me he was a chap called Maradonna who had cheated a few months previously to knock England out of the world cup and I remember wondering why he needed to cheat as he was quite clearly untouchable without doing so.
The next time I visited that magnificent arena was in 1998 for a game that some of you may recall when Charlton won a penalty shootout against Sunderland and a north eastern native named Clive Something- or- other had a reasonably good game. I still maintain that sun- kissed Monday to be the best day of my life so far much to my girlfriend’s disbelief and understandable resentment. I have never since felt so alive or experienced such a broad spectrum of emotions as I did in those few hours that day and regretfully don’t ever imagine I ever will again.
My third and hitherto only other game at the national stadium was a few years back to watch England versus Estonia the result of which I do not recall and, based on the experience, I’m in no hurry to rush back. Perhaps it was an anticlimax after my previous two visits but it just didn’t feel like Wembley. It was New Labour Wembley. New and “improved” Wembley. A fantastic feat of design and architecture costing ten times the GDP of a developing nation for the entire world to marvel at. But to be honest combined with the flat atmosphere and “fans” seemingly more interested in heading down fifteen minutes before half time to part with £4 for a watered down lager and a tepid hot dog it just felt very soulless. Without the iconic towers, the terrible view now eradicated and the sanitised appearance of the concourses I felt like I could have been at Bolton, Leicester or Man City or any of the numerous other out of town monstrosities that now plague the suburbs of many of our city’s landscapes.
Three decidedly different games over three very different decades, which somehow reflect to me the game’s changing status over the past thirty years.
I had a pretty turbulent childhood and family environment growing up, but other than that I would imagine my life so far has been rather average. I went to a number of schools, some good some bad, I’ve had a fair few jobs some enjoyable but most not. I’ve been in some good relationships with the fairer sex and entertained my fair share of wrong uns. I recently counted there are almost 20 different places that I have called home. Throughout all those experiences, transitional periods and often unsettling times the one sole constant has been football. In fact I can candidly recall that I was more distraught when Curbishley announced he was leaving than when my dad did. So integral was football, and in particular Charlton, to life and my general enjoyment of it.
As a youngster football was my life. If I wasn’t playing it, watching it or talking about it I was asleep and even then more often than not I’d be dreaming about it.
I remember one of my school reports said “Rodders needs to realise there is more to life than football”. As an football- obsessed eleven year old the teacher might as well have written “Rodders needs to realise there is more to live than breathing”. Whilst I may have been less blatant about my Panini sticker dealing in class thereafter it still didn’t curb my enthusiasm for anything to do with the game. Instead of paying attention to the lesson on ox- bow lakes or the feudal system I’d sit there planning how I could persuade the kid next to me whose mum ran a newsagents to swap me the Conventry City foily badge I so needed to complete that page of the album.
I was not a bad player when I was a kid and had trials for the District and Kent and even got offered a trial for Palace (the irony) after scoring 5 goals in the Cray Valley Schools final at Selhurst. However, I moved to Saudi Arabia the week after for two years and played less regularly than Ledley King whilst there and by the time I returned to England had lost any ability I might have had. Additionally I was quite a late developer and at 13 was one of the smallest in my year whilst some of my peers were already pushing 6 foot and sporting full moustaches. Unfortunately I never did regain any sense of footballing ability or playing regularly after being introduced to the evils of booze, cigarettes and women but at least I did eventually grow pubic hair.
I recall travelling to games on the train with my dad back in the late 80s and early 90s and the excitement of being a child amongst grown men packed into rattling train carriages drinking, chanting and making gestures at rival supporters on the platform. I remember one particular night game it actually “kicked off” in our carriage and the fear combined with perverse exhilaration as the scuffle ensued.
I fondly remember the journeys I’d make when I started going to the valley on my own as a 14 year old and the developing a sense of street- wiseness to replace any predisposed naivety. Although I attended many games in my early and mid teens unaccompanied a feeling of camaraderie would ensue from the moment I’d see the odd Charlton shirt dotted amongst the Arsenal, Chelsea, West Ham or Spurs tops lining up on platform one at Orpington station for the train into London even though we would exchange no more than a knowing nod. The feeling would be magnified at London Bridge with the appearance of even more addicks waiting for the train to The Valley. The hairs on the back of the neck would rise as we pulled into Charlton and I’d find myself being swept up and carried along by the sea of people making their way down the Floyd Road bottleneck excited in anticipation of the game but also wary of the presence of high numbers of seemingly giant skin headed men in their forties who talked like they were in Corrie and who rather than soaking up the cultural delights and ambience of Charlton village appeared to be swaggering round menacingly looking for anyone of an equal mindset.
At that age the atmosphere during games seemed to be electric. Hearing grown men frequently screaming at the ref, players being called all the names under the sun and the baiting of opposition supporters was normality at football and novelty as it wasn’t really present in any aspect other of society with such commonplace.
The outcome of a game would shape your whole weekend if not week. When we scored or won the feeling was akin to getting your first bmx at Christmas, only better. When you lost or the other team scored the slow motion horror of observing the ball hit the back of the net was abruptly burst by the distant yet chilling sound of the away support cheering. As the opponents turned to celebrate you would be overcome with the same heart- sinking feeling as when you opened your Christmas present and it wasn’t the bmx you had spent your whole year pining for but in fact a C&A jumper that your mum hoped you would love even though it resembled a Noel Edmonds starter kit.
Still the great thing about it regardless of the scorer or result was that you shared that particular emotion with thousands of others who you knew were feeling just the same as you at that moment. Hugging complete strangers and dancing up and down on the terraces when you scored enhanced the ecstasy. Seeing the shaking heads and disappointed faces when you conceded, diluted the misery. Whatever the feeling was you left the ground with a real sense of belonging and proud to be by the grace of God a Charlton fan before thumbing through the programme to find the fixtures list and work out when exactly you could next go through it all again.
Now whilst these aspects might not have changed over the course of time many other elements of going to football have. I ruptured a ligament in my knee in my early twenties which is a reoccurring injury meaning that I can’t even have a kick about in the park without it going and frustratingly means I can’t play. The last time it went last summer was during a kickabout in Regents Park and I remember crying when I went to bed as I realised it meant I will probably never ever be able to play again at any competitive standard. I can’t really remember more than one or two occasions in which I had been reduced to tears previous to that since I was a child.
It has been distressing seeing us fall down the league in the manner we have done so in the past few years but this has been softened by the sense of unity and solidarity you get when you go to the valley and see all the fans and drown your sorrows with your mates after (and increasingly so before) games.
I was looking forward to the World Cup with so much enthusiasm. A sabbatical from the frustrations of personally not being able to play and some welcome respite from the seemingly unending disappointment and heartbreak of following Charlton over recent years.
Perhaps, wisened from previous England campaigns or possibly due to a deep resentment of the obligatory media hype that precedes such occasions I was dubious about the team’s prospects in South Africa. Whilst having no realistic expectation of anything other than maybe reaching the second round or quarters before coming unstuck in heroic fashion against a better quality of opponent, inevitably in a penalty shoot out, I still secretly harboured hope that this would be our year. Ignoring the oft cynical, yet justifiable declarations from many friends who declared that they have no interest in the “overpaid prima donnas” I eagerly anticipated 4 weeks of top class football of which England would be my central focus. With military precision I planned everything from how I would start the inevitable negotiations with the missus who would soon find Hollyoaks and Eastenders no longer priority on the tv, worked out what pubs would be airing the games and even cultivated an array of infallible reasons as to why I would not be attending certain meetings at work during a select few weeks in June and July.
I was all set and anticipating the World Cup with the same enthusiasm as I have since I was a nipper, at the same time praying none of our key players would break a toe nail before they got on the plane.
My fantasy of England being crowned World Champions soon dissolved as an gaff against the USA, an impotent effort against Algeria and a nail biter with Slovenia sent me crashing back down to reality as we limped through to the second round to face the old enemy.
Just as the England team failed against the Germans twenty years ago so too did their predecessors in this year’s tournament. Unfortunately that is where the comparison ends in my eyes. The disparity between the courageous failure of Robson’s men in as they nobly crashed out of Italia 90 in an episode that still brings a tear to the eye of even the most hardened England supporter, and the whimpering performance of Cappellos’ boys signified how much in twenty years football has changed.
It is not so much a criticism of the individual players as disdain for modern football in general. I sense that there is an element of integrity and honesty when Jermaine Defoe claims that he is proud to pull on and England shirt and recalls how as a boy he like many of us was inconsolable after Waddle’s sudden death penalty narrowly missed the Mir Space station. Regardless of Terry’s and Cole’s indiscretions off the field I also believe that even they too hurt after what transpired to be a dismal campaign. There is more to it being down to individuals for my disdain for the current England team and many modern day footballers than their individual character flaws. Historically their have always been saints and rogues in football. For every Bobby Moore or Gary Lineker there was a Robin Friday or a Vinnie Jones. George Best’s antics in one weekend would most probably make the collective shenanigans of today’s supposed rogues look like a holiday with the Caravan Club by comparison. Yet today’s young pretenders seem to lack the character and charm of those who graced our tabloids before.
A phrase quoted in the excellent TV Series The Wire states “Don’t hate the player hate the game” regarding the police’s constant battle with drug dealers in Baltimore. Now, whilst in an obviously less sinister context, it can be applied to modern footballers as it is in fact the modern game of which they are products (in many senses) of which has some major bearing on the lifestyles of these ordinary working class men. After watching the moving Gazza’s Tears documentary recently my initial reaction was anger at how far removed the current crop of players were from the Butchers and the Pearces. It was only when I stopped to think that if they had been earning the money and enjoyed the celebrity that the players of today do I realised that it would have been unlikely if a troubled individual such as Gascoigne would have even managed to be in a state to get on the coach to Turin let alone run rings around opponents. It is the game that has changed since then and not those who partake in it.
I would liken my current feeling for modern football to be that of a middle aged man in a stale marriage that has long lost its spark. Waking up every morning and retiring every night next to his wife longing for her to return to the once beautiful bride who made him the happiest man in his life yet now confines him to an existence of frustration, disappointment and misery with Talking Head’s “Once In A Lifetime” stuck on loop within his internal monologue.
Unfortunately the spark in my relationship with football is harder to rekindle as its progression has been and continues to be so far out of my control it is not merely a case of visiting a marriage counsellor or popping down to the local Anne Summers to spice thing up. Equally, when all avenues have been exhausted in a marriage there is still some opportunity of meeting a new partner to share your journey through life with....unfortunately that prospect is not open to football supporters who cannot just go and "pull" another football club when the going gets too tough.
Perhaps this comes across as a bitter rant because the club I hold dear to my heart is going through a poor patch on and off the pitch. It’s not but I wish it was just that. I recall even when we reached the heady heights of the Premiership feeling that my love for the game was in demise. After the initial novelty of arriving in the top flight I soon witnessed first hand how the game had changed so much from the first time I set foot on the terraces of the Covered End. Amidst all the abba tributes, opera singers, “brought to you in association with”, “sponsored by” in “conjunction with”, stock market floating razz mattaz I felt complete disillusion.
Don’t get me wrong I’m sure lots of people enjoy the face painting, foam hand waving, all seater, mind your language “football experience” but for me it seemed a sad departure from the rawness and soulfulness of years gone by that made me fall in love with the game in the first place.
Sky changed the face of British football but for all of the billions of pounds they have brought I do not think they have made the game the slightest bit richer. The opposite in fact. As I sit hear in 2010 reading that some Arsenal season tickets will be selling for nigh on £2k and the papers are rife with transfer news of mediocre footballers signing multi million pound contracts I feel very disillusioned with the whole circus.
I don’t want to pay £30 a month so I can see the Big Four play out a two way title challenge. I don’t care which premiership footballer has been caught philandering with a Wag- wannabe in a Mayfair club and I cant get excited that England’s flops will soon be lavished with praise when they perform wonders in the Champions League.
Yes the game has changed for the better in many ways, the Kick Racism Out campaign spearheaded by Charlton is one of them, however for every great initiative there has been a multitude of additional implementations which have diluted the passion and left once roaring arenas into soulless, venues devoid of any atmosphere or fervour.
Karl Marx wrote that religion was the opiate of the masses. May years later, Bill Shankly aptly observed that football is like a religion and assured it beheld more importance than life or death. In an increasingly secular society, consumerism appears to be the number one form of substitute to spiritual fulfilment. It leaves me wondering where those football faithful whom Shankly’s rhetoric was aimed at are left to worship having being no doubt priced out or somehow excluded in other ways from their now gentrified places of worship.
I envisage that I will continue to go to Charlton for the rest of my life and look forward to the day when I take future generations of my family to The Valley and perhaps they too will rue the day they first pledged unfaltering allegiance to the little club in a forgotten corner of South East London. It’s a significant part of my history, it’s a substantial part of my life and it’s a fundamental part of me. However, when I look back to those younger days the game seemed purer, organic almost. When I look at it now it appears plastic, gold plated even and I struggle to relate to many aspects of its modern form.
Unless football does truly implode and those in control of the game really get back to basics and instead of understanding the cost of everything but start to actually embrace the true value of the game I cannot see things changing. Money will continue to talk. Clubs with histories richer than a multitude of billionaire chairmen will fold without a passing thought from the Big Boy obsessed media. The Ramseys, Cloughs and ,closer to home, Curbishleys will be consigned to folklore as clubs continue the reloving door policies of hiring and firing “Special Ones” in search of elusive, yet essential success.
Whether it is no better or worse than it has ever been and maybe I am looking through rose- tinted spectacles and longing for an era when football seemed better because maybe the world around me in general seemed better I’m still not 100% sure but what I do know is that I don’t feel the same way about football as I did. I still love and will no doubt always love the game but now it is tainted love and with a heavy heart. I don’t know if my relationship with football will ever get back to the heady highs of days gone by although I truly hope it does. But as the game is now with each Sky advert I see, each FIFA/ FA initiative that further dilutes the spirit of football or each story of the next club of many facing financial meltdown it just leaves me thinking …"Please can I have my football back mister?.”
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