With football the problem is Fifa and Uefa, and one day the media will admit it

 

 

 

By Tony Attwood

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One of the many problems with the way many people discuss football is that the discussions tend to jump from topic to topic, often with each topic examined as an individual issue, and then set aside.  This gives the impression that anything and everything is up for debate – when in fact whole areas of football are simply ignored.

Worse, these different topics are not normally connected together, nor related to the rest of football.  And because there is no “joined up thinking” no one ever says, “how come football is facing all these different problems at the same time?”

As a result of this “one thing per artcile” approach, combined with a desperate desire to be talking about what is perceived as the “topic of the day,” the media offers no insight into the notion that if all the issues currently facing football were put together, we’d be hard pushed not to reach the conclusion that football is falling apart. 

Thus there is some awareness of individual issues, such as the proliferation of international club and country tournaments without any thought of the harm this can and probably will do to players. 

Likewise, there are lots of allegations of racism floating around – although these are not actually always racist (for example, being called “Argentinian” is not actually a racist comment as such) but the tribal approach is becoming ever more intense.  For example,

I think for example most of us agree that Tottenham supporters are just regular people who for family reasons or pure chance, such as first becoming interested in football in 1991, when Tottenham last won the FA Cup, forevermore support Tottenham.  We don’t have to feel they are some sort of sub-human species to have a little smirk each time they are talked up in the media as potential winners of something only to slip away. 

Indeed the reality is that since 2008/9 both teams have always finished eighth or above in the League.  The difference between them is that in the league Tottenham have achieved a second and two-thirds, and in the cup competitions they have been runners up four times.  Arsenal have achieved second place three times and  third places also three times, but have won four FA cups.

So yes there is intense rivalry, and some people take that much further than I think they should.  Yet we now have the situation in which the French FA are saying that Argentina’s celebrations of winning the American competition this summer were “racist” (see for example “Wesley Fofana and French FA appalled by Argentina team’s ‘racist’ celebrations.”)

This sort of thing is going on everywhere, as with “Gibraltar’s government and FA criticise Spain players’ chants at a Euro 2024 party” and even the media is now admitting that we can’t go on like this – as expressed in “After Germany’s football fest, rocky road lies ahead for the European game.”

Put in the most simple terms there is a lot going wrong with football but the people at the top are clearly utterly incapable of introducing any change that doesn’t include the concept of “more” and the concept of “bigger”.

And yet up to 1995 the clubs in the top English division each had to play 42 games a season.  This was then reduced by four matches a season – which meant a reduction in income but was done for the “good of the game”.   Yet since then the number of games played by the top clubs has escalated again.

The players’ union, Fifpro, has started legal action against Fifa in June in relation to concerns about player welfare, and football could find itself under serious scrutiny if that does go to trial.  Indeed such a moment could result in questions about the way the almighty Fifa and Uefa have introduced so much football that they are harming players.

And now it appears that no major games can be played without their being major crowd incidents and without total mayhem existing in and around the stadium, and (in the case of Germany of all places), on the trains.

Meanhwile the Copa América final was apparently held up for over an hour, because of fans getting in without tickets.  And there is no point the English saying that foreigners don’t know how to run events, when the Euro final at Wembley was a total disaster which could easily have been foreseen, but wasn’t because of a “this is England”  attitude which suggested everything always worked.

Neither Fifa nor Uefa have any insight into what it is to be part of a gang that wants to express nationalistic feelings – but this is what football is having to deal with.

There will, I am sure, be enquiries – there are always enquiries and then the problems continue.  People died or are maimed in football crushes (don’t forget the Cameroon, two years ago) and one thing is always the same: the organisers of the events are never ever punished. That’s true of the FA’s Wembley fiasco and every other event mentioned here.

And all that comes before we even consider the quality of pitches that are adapted, relayed and generally inadequate, which then means the football isn’t up to much, a lot of the time.   But no one notices because quite rightly they are distracted by crowd problems – which serves to cover the fact that the football isn’t very good.

The problem is Fifa and Uefa, and one day the media are going to wake up to this simple fact rather than joining in the freeloading.