Soca Warriors Online Discussion Forum

Sports => Football => Topic started by: Football supporter on May 28, 2015, 04:59:11 AM

Title: Football - Food For Thought
Post by: Football supporter on May 28, 2015, 04:59:11 AM
This was posted on facebook by a guy named Chris Tanner. (I don't know who he is, but I thought I'd share it with you) I presume that Oliver Fowler is an English guy.


nice comment from Oliver Fowler of #changeFIFA ....

"Last night I was looking at a photograph of my great grandfather Joe. His team, Wolverhampton Wanderers, were gathered around the FA Cup. They had just won it against a strong Everton team. Joe was 18 at the time, a pacy striker described by The Times as the best in the world (I took on his genes). As with most players of that age Joe had another profession. He cleaned pubs. It showed on his face. By today's standards he would be considered a street urchin. Whispy moustache, ferrety eyes, skinny legs, a hint of beligerence and so on. He earned next to nothing. Shortly after the big win he broke his leg and never played again. Surgery in the 19th century wasn't what it is now. His was a potentially great career, cut short. They even named a (now demolished) street after him.

Looking at him sat there next to the cup, which was almost as tall as him, I wondered what he would make of the way the game has developed. Initially I thought he would be saddened and disheartened by the game. Horrible people ruining football aren't confined to FIFA. They are everywhere, from the aggressive parents on public field touchlines to small club bullies - in all corners from coaches to players - to.devious journalists to federation bosses with their hands in the till to every other shithead who pervades the game. I thought that he wouldn't recognise the sport he had played.

Then I thought again. Wherever there is money, fame and power there will always be the worst possible people. Even in its formative years I am certain that the seeds of what we witnessed today - the raid AND Murray getting that story - had already been sown. In his final Joe played in front of 60,000 people. That's a large gate receipt. Someone made money that day.

There's a high chance that Joe was already aware of a split between players of the game and everyone else. Could it be that awful twats have always ruined the game? Is the Corinthian spirit a hazy myth?

Recently something clicked between me and football. The conflict between how I think the game - in its entirety of players, spectators and hangers on - should be and how it actually is ended. I realised that letting go of this ideal, and perhaps my love of the game, was liberating.

Awful people will always do their best to ruin the game in some way, just like it's always been, only now the shit is amplified through mass media.

Was there ever such a thing as integrity in the game? Did Joe's team ever try to steal a yard on a throw in or did the ticket master that day off the final trouser half of the ticket receipts? Did the originators of the laws of the game forget to pay for their pints in the pub where they wrote them? Were the original Corinthian team sexist cads?Probably not, but it's not hard to imagine the opposite.

Humans are weak and have always tried to bend the system. Football offers an opportunity for abuse and system bending because it still has this mythical haze around it that seems to hypnotize and stop rational thought. 'The Beautiful Game' may be true as an ideal, but in truth it's rarely beautiful and often downright ugly. In England the game started off as a mass brawl between villages. It was violent and partisan with nothing beautiful about it. It was borne of supremacy and power over rivals.

Nothing has changed other than a romantic ideal that has been attached to it as it became refined over time. Marketing and persuasion designed to sell a product that perhaps Joe would recognise more than I do. After all he played on mudbaths in hobnail boots.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't recognise the game, but that's my fault. I never really understood what it probably was all along."
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