That was the start of the end of international football

 

 

 

• 6 new players tipped for Arsenal (makiing 65 in total), 2 more leaving (total 28)
• Why this summer’s Arsenal transfer window will be deemed a failure by the media

By Tony Attwood

Is football in a difficult position?  Consider perhaps the Champions League final in Paris in 2022.  Or the Sunday’s Copa America final, which the UK media describe as “a tournament rife with discord.”

Of course in England this can all be blamed on silly foreigners who simply don’t know how to organise anything because quite simply they are not, well, basically, English.

Except we might recall that “Questions to be asked after night of Wembley chaos as Real Madrid’s historic Champions League victory is overshadowed by at least 53 arrests inside and outside England’s national stadium.”

Oh but that was foreigners again, proving the point that they don’t know how to behave. Except England fan disorder at Euro 2020 final almost led to deaths, so perhaps we should just blame all the organisers who patently obviously simply can’t organise the proverbial …. 

Behind the scenes, what is actually happening is a power struggle as a result of which people are getting seriously hurt, property is being damaged, and many of us feel that anything organised by Uefa or Fifa is never likely to be safe, because, well it isn’t. 

Instead of overcoming the problems that now occur at every single major event, what we are seeing is the president of Fifa, Infantino, attempting to take on Uefa’s Champions League, in a battle for the control of Big Football.  Something which Manchester City’s owners are undoubtedly watching with amusement as they plan their next attempt at a complete footballing coup and then offer their support to the winners.

So we have had chaos in Germany in terms of everything from delayed trains to the ability to get into the grounds, and chaos in South America as the Americas try to show the Europeans that they can disorganise everything just as well as Europe can. 

All of which comes in advance of a new Champions’ League format, starting this September, with extra games and undoubtedly added chaos in a format which I suspect a lot of people don’t know quite how it works.

So taking myself as a sample of one, I was bemused enough to decide that this season I’d just renew my Arsenal season ticket without the option of the European games.  I watched them last season, but found that most of the season ticket holders who sit around me were not going to the Champs League games.  So I’m following suit..   

Meanwhile like Arsenal, Uefa and Fifa are now both locked into cycles of events in which each one needs to generate more money than the last.  And at each event, TV is increasingly restricted from showing the real chaos that exists while journalists (to their eternal and absolute shame) increasingly pretend a) nothing much is amiss and b) they know what the format is all about, (when quite clearly some of them don’t have a clue).  Still the free drinks in the journalists’ bars help and you can always ask the other guy.

Of course the basic idea is all of this is that it is the fans who cause the chaos, get blamed by the journalists from their press box, and get arrested by the overly enthusiastic local police.   Except that breaks down as we find that the “Colombian Football Federation president and his  son arrested amid chaos at Copa America final.”  Apparently, they are “accused of fighting security guards near a tunnel where the media had gathered.”

Or as the New York Times put it ‘It was inhuman’: Why the Copa America final was delayed and dangerously close to disaster.”

Meanwhile, The Athletic came up with Fox’s Copa America final coverage showed network is incapable of covering off-field turmoil,” and the New York Times responded with “Argentina wins, everyone loses,”

The problem is that as Fifa and Uefa fight each other for dominance, each big event is seen as a tune-up for the next big event and each becomes a bigger disaster.   So as the New York Times has “Copa America was seen as a tuneup of sorts for America’s turn as 2026 World Cup host, but we come away from the tournament with big concerns.”

Of course not everything the papers predict comes to pass.  The Telegraph gave us a load of laughs here in leafy rural middle England with its headline “German authorities fear Russian agents will provoke fights at the Euros final.”  I’m not sure if there is evidence of that (it was in the anti-Russian Telegraph, so probably not) but it was a change from “Families of England players face major travel CHAOS as they look to attend the Euro 2024 final” which was as far as the Mail went in reporting the complete cock-up that was most of this summer’s football.   

Still, at least the Independent retained its sense of humour with “Lightning, hailstones, YMCA and 36 minutes of football: Inside the chaos at Euro 2024’s Dortmund fan park.”

And so in the end we get to the inevitable, as “European members of the players’ union, started legal action against Fifa in June,” over the issue of player welfare.  And that’s not a bit of tweaking around the edges.  The union is complaining that Fifa is violating competition law.  And in Europe that is very much big time.

In short we now have a football world in which everyone thinks he is bigger than everyone else, whereas in fact everyone is actually more incompetent than everyone else – but still gets free drinks.