Some Remarks About Football

SOME REMARKS ABOUT FOOTBALL

Football as a Life Form

From the chaos of the kickabout, through the rules of the Victorians
into the cyberpitches of the new millennium, football has evolved into
a mature life form. A life form is a creation of consciousness, it
lives in our dreams and generates memes. Like many such creations,
football's evolution has been almost exponential in the twentieth
century.

New Bonds for Old

In former years football's cash links were primarily between fan and
fan, fan and player.

However, strong new cash links have evolved, bonding club and capital,
fan and entrepreneur. So far, this adaptation has been largely
successful.

The Songs of the Crowd are Made Manifest in the Players' Flesh

The fans are the soul of the club. Tribe and territory, wit, hate,
scorn, love fear, habit, glory - the fans' motives are many, mixed and
variable. Football without the crowd is like a medieval painting to a
modern eye, it lacks depth. The fans bring a 3D perspective to the
game. The songs of the crowd are made manifest in the players'
flesh.

What Is a Club?

It is a collection of the past and present - indeed it appropriates the
future as well. It is an ongoing entity, comprised of fans and
buildings, players and mascots, shirts and flags, fouls and goals, lies
and videos, the living and the dead. The club interacts with other
clubs. Clubs can only exist in relation to other clubs.

Metaphysical Questions Such As ...

What then of the first club? How does a team become a club, could there
be a first team, or must there have been at least two? Does one team
presuppose other teams?

...Are Probably Not Worth Pursuing

The rhythm of the fans is the music of the stands.

Who Is More Important - The Fan Or The Player?

Like two sides of a coin they are different but indivisible.

Generally speaking, the player has more coins.

The Referee

The Referee and the laws the referee represents, also brings an
objectivity to the game. Football is not a solipsistic delusion,
codification brings a grammar to the game, enabling it to reach a fully
human consciousness. With codification, there is a proper framework, a
language, to discuss football, the laws bring a structure of discourse.
In essence the referee is a player. A chess king, lacking the powers of
queen and rook, aiming to remain inviolate at he centre of the
action.

A match needs a referee more than an orchestra needs a conductor.

What Distinguishes the Pundit from the Fan?

It is the difference between watching fish in a tank, and being bubbles
in a stream.

There is a similar distinction between the fan and the spectator.

The Role of Players

This structure of laws and witnesses (fans) endows the players with a
fully realised role. Their actions have meaning. To use a painting
analogy, they are not merely waving their brushes about, paint is going
on canvas. The canvas is the objective world that codification
ensures.

The fan may see the picture, but will not have the practical ability to
express it on the pitch. However, they may be a part of the picture and
a part of its creation.

Perfect pitch

Some players have a perfect picture of the game and are able to express
that vision in practical terms. Players such as Hoddle and Di
Stefano.

Destruction and Creation are Indivisible

In a game the canvas is being continually destroyed as one picture is
replaced by another. The artistic creation of the player is destroyed
as it is created, each pass each tackle no longer exists as it is made.
This is the dilemma of the destruction of the present.

The camera and the written word bring different dimensions into
play

A Script For Football

The theatre has similar characteristics to live football. There are
moves and actions continually being superseded, though there is
generally a script governing these actions.

In football the script is minimal and repetitive: the referee blows a
whistle, the play commences and ends within the rules of Association
Football.

Where Does a Goal Exist?

In the ball that crosses the goal line? In the signal of the referee?
The reactions of the players? The scores in the newspapers, the joy of
the crowd?

A Goal is a Conceptual Construct in an Emotional Maelstrom

At the highest levels of the game.

However, what of the child kicking a ball alone in the garden?

Are their goals only constrained by their own imaginations, do they
need validation by the parent at the kitchen window?

Great Players and the Laws of Physics

Great players may know little about the theories of Einstein and Newton
(Isaac), but they are masters of space and time velocity and impact.
What does it mean when we say great players create time and space for
themselves? What is it to operate in a different dimensional framework
to other mortals? Do the great players also make more time and space
for themselves in the kitchen or down the disco?

The Player Is Inexhaustible

Some commentators say the fan wishes s/he was playing on the pitch.
Perhaps, but perhaps they wish to lose themselves in those players, yet
still remain themselves subject and object, witness and
participant.

The player is inexhaustible, a thousand, a million, an infinite number
of fans may partake of him or her.

In What Sense are Players Real?

In what form do they exist? Yes, there is a dyed blond called David
Beckham, but once he wears the disguise of the red shirt, like Batman's
caped crusader he is another ego in disguise.

As with Batman the disguise is not particularly heavy - why do people
never recognise the well-meaning millionaire?. However, is Batman
identical to wealthy philanthropist Adam Ward? Is the Man Utd number 7
identical to David Beckham?

'A.L. Super Al...'

Is 'A.L. super Al , super Alan Shearer', a fictional character?

Surely 'Chopper' Harris' tackles were as real as those of Ronald Harris
Esq. - or were they extra-real, supercharged, like one of Shearer's
broadsides. The tackles doling out extra pain and fear, fuelled by the
energy of a crowd that is not just watching but is actually part of the
tackle (or the recipient), part of one of Shearer's broadsides blasting
into the Wembley net.

Ginola, Ginola

I am not at one with M. D. Ginola, but I am at one with 'Ginola,
Ginola, Ginola' as he dances down the wing his white shirt flapping
with the ghosts of Jones and Waddle, mixing with the cries of the
crowd. Do I want to be Ginola? I am Ginola, I am Chris Waddle, I am
Cliff Jones, and so are thousands of other Spurs' fans, living and
dead.

Is the player worried by his public appropriation by thousands of eyes?
The banks of cameras stealing his soul. The player has a public soul on
show for a price. The player 'in situ' is a superhero, driven by the
wind of a thousand voices. Players become larger through the crowd,
feeding on us, gorging themselves.

Do Players Steal Our Souls?

Perhaps the player is appropriating our souls, our identities, our
money certainly. We make him fitter, stronger, faster, he is ours but
only as the superpro, we wouldn't want an ordinary person.

Offpitch Ethics

What about the cameras following the players off the pitch, like
tracking Hamlet offstage, seeing him shave in the morning, searching
for his shoes.

Does the crowd own players the way a player may own a racehorse? A
stupid suggestion surely. The player is not led back to a stable after
the match. He drives back to a mansion laden with beautiful objects and
the finest food.

Can Only Creative Players be Great Players?

We tend to talk of the Cruyffs and Peles as great players rather than
as great midfielders, inside-forwards and strikers. Is it more natural
to talk of Tony Adams as a great player or as a great defender, Dennis
Bergkamp as a great player or great striker? Beckenbauer was a great
player, but as a defender he was still creative.

When it comes to great creative players, to give them a job title
somehow denigrates them.

Chiaroscuro

Yet the attacker needs the defender like the moon needs the night. Only
by conquering the defender do you become a creator.

So can the tackle, the block. the fear, the tidying, the clearing
justify the attribute of greatness?

If we look for an an analogy with art, we can list great writers such
as Kafka and Shakespeare and hardly feel the need to add the word
creative.

Defenders as Critics

Certainly we can see defenders as critics and censors, was not Baresi
the great editor, very little rubbish got past him and what of Gordon
Banks as the ultimate censor, even stopping the best at times.

Iconoclasm and the Flat Back Four

However, what of the iconoclasts of art, the destroyers who clear out
the crap to start again. The angry young men, the new wave, the Tracey
Emins and Jackson Pollocks of this world?

Is Damien Hirst's half sheep akin to the product of a tackle by Norman
Hunter.

It's Not All In The Game

Destruction and creation can be indivisible, but only within the laws
of the game. A firm but fair tackle is not an assault from the back. We
do not expect to see mass murder and the bloody application of
formaldehyde in the Tate Gallery. At this stage we call for a referee
or the police, not for an evaluative debate.

The Apotheosis of a Footballer

Is a beautiful moment to behold. Many, perhaps all fans, will remember
such an occasion. Perhaps it is a condition or definition of
fanhood.

I have witnessed two such moments of the flesh.

A1

May 1981, the FA Cup Final Replay between Spurs and Man City. The stop
spin parabola of Hoddle's dinked pass over City's back line, all
Meissen and physics as it arced into the killer zone, delicate and
spinning in the warm Wembley air, to be pounced upon by the ravenous
hounds of Archibald and Crooks.

Sixty thousand Spurs' fans roared as Hoddle climbed into the
clouds.

A2

Fifteen years later, another summer's night at Wembley. England against
Holland and Shearer parades before us, shoulders like a panther,
hungry, powerful spreading fear, square force and wonderment across a
continent.

England's final goal is Shearer's brutal coup de grace. Inspired by
Gascoigne, engineered by Sheringham, and finished off with an almost
routine blast of brilliance.

England were waving to the world and Shearer was carrying the biggest
sword.What Defines a Club's Identity?

The fans may provide the soul, but the administrative brain and muscle,
the players' bodies and bones, can also be seen as key determinants of
identity.

Which Club is the Most English - Man U or Chelsea?

If the fans are the key to a club's identity, what do we make of
Chelsea who currently (1999) have a less than substantial English input
into their playing and managerial staff, yet whose fans remain, in my
experience anyway, largely 'pro-English'.

Manchester United currently provide far more players for the English
team, yet sections of their crowd in the season just ended have chanted
for Argentina on more than one occasion.

Individual fans have also written into letter pages or expressed on
phone-ins their rejection of other English fans' support in their quest
for victory in Europe. 'Man United represent themselves and nothing
else' is one view sometimes expressed.

Individual fans have also urged the manager to withdraw United's
players from the English squad.

Such evidence would suggest that Chelsea are therefore the 'more
English' club.

Clearly a more in-depth look at the respective fans' views would be
needed before any such opinion could be validated.

If, however, the players are the key to a club's identity, then United,
who regularly field a higher proportion of English players in their
first team, would currently be seen by most people as the 'more
English' club.

A Further Look at Fans and the Question of Identity

To help untangle this debate, we need to analyse what is meant by a
'fan'. I have mainly used the term to denote a person who, fairly
regularly at least, even if it's only ten times a decade, goes into a
stadium to see their team compete in three dimensional matches.

However, many of the bigger clubs have huge armies of fans, who have
never seen their team play in the flesh. Many indeed live in countries
far removed from the team's physical home. This further complicates
matters of identity.

The Global Terrace

Why should the Man U fan in Australia, the Chelsea fan in China, the
Arsenal fan in Singapore, be either pro or anti-English? Naturally the
same questions could be asked about the Juve fan in Scotland, the
Marseilles fan in England and so on.

Players also now roam the world, not necessarily in a search for
identity, but certainly to further their careers.

The Bigger The Club

The more complex the identity. Rather than ask whether Man U is
English, we may wonder whether it is a physical entity at all or a
virtual brand in demographic cyberspace.

Or should that be hyperspace?

There is a strong possibility that such clubs' traditional identities
will finally hit the recycle bin in a digital wipe-out.

The player breathes in the crowd and breathes out football

Myth is made when adoration is exchanged for talent, even fear.

Football Is Not a Sport

For the fan, it is something central to our existence. We think of
football as naturally as we think about food, family or sex. For some
people football is a sport, for others it is something to watch when
there is nothing on the other side. For the fan, football is a part of
what you are, what you do, your way of life and its interactions with
the ways of the world.

Fan Varieties

Fans come in many different shapes and sizes, often too large for the
seats provided.

We are, of course, usually a mix of stereotypes and
individuality.

The Critic Fan

Varieties include the critic fan who is not the player. S/he is telling
the player where to run, when to shoot, how to pass. Doubtless in
Elizabethan times s/he would have had plenty of advice for Romeo and
Juliet.

The Involved Footballer Fan

Who is the player, the superpro, kicking every ball, evading every
tackle.

The Blind Patriot Fan

My team right or wrong.

The Fan as Devotee

Worshipping the players, perhaps displaying a wide array of icongraphy
such as replica shirts or a tattooed buttock.

Me

Some of the above, plus like most of us, knowing a story I told
myself.

I walked through the gates of White Hart Lane and saw the heroes that
were Blanchflower and Mackay, Greaves, White and Jones. I felt the
noise and pressing physicality of the crowd and witnessed the drama of
the game unleash itself. Something deep was forged between my heart and
brain, football would never be a sport again.

No-one Remembers The Loser of a Semi-Final

The fan has no choice but to remember.

The Club is in Your Heart Like the Surf in a Storm

The fans are the minstrels and tribe tellers of the game. In them, the
club is eternal.

When contemplating death the fan does not 'get things in perspective'
by saying 'it's just a game'. The fan says 'I must go to more
games'.

You're (Not) Singing (Any) More

When their team is losing, fans reveal different facets of their
character. Some become critical, some cheer louder. When you cross
swords in the heat of battle, is that the time to complain about your
sabre? After the battle we can all be generals, provided we've
survived. No club ever died through one result, many have perished
through a lack of love.

How Can I tell If I'm Not a Fan?

If you turn on the TV and see 22 men chasing after a ball, you are
watching a sport. If you are witnessing an event, however tawdry, that
is imbued with myth and tradition, then you are almost certainly a
football fan or confusing the sugar in your tea with something
else.

Football Is a Means of Communication

When some people dismiss the importance of football by referring to it
as 22 people kicking a ball about, one can ridicule this reductionist
approach by comparing its usefulness to a description of Beethoven's
violin concerto as being about some wood, some string and someone
pushing away with a stick and some catgut.

For a more considered refutation of the reductionist argument, we might
take a detour via some basic philosophy.

First There Is a Mountain

The Zen koan 'First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain,
then there is' sums up much of philosophical inquiry.

Mountains exist, but in pursuing the useful but dangerous human
practice of thinking, we can lose sight of them. What are these
mountains all about? Are they for climbing or parking your sheep on, a
penthouse for the gods, a piece of poor farmland, a source of national
pride, a territorial marker or a mass of electrons and neutrons
spinning giddily to create an illusion of majestic solidity?'

Being human we may never agree on the exact meaning(s) of mountains,
but we learn to get along with them, maybe improving or damaging them,
but we deal with them and can speak meaningfully about their many uses
and attributes.

Talking The Walk

Now, you may say this hasn't taken us very far, and I could see your
point. However, to quote my old professor, 'philosophy is like a walk,
it's not so much where you start or where you end, it's what you get
form the journey'.

The mountain may look the same as when we first started thinking about
it, but through that thought process we can appreciate our original
vision and our 'new enriched' vision, even if we lost sight of it at
some stages along the way.

Just as a walk isn't only about getting from A to B, and a mountain
isn't only something that's x miles high, so a football match isn't
just about what takes place from the first kick to the last. It is
something to cherish and remember, to prepare for and analyse, it
provides a structure for discourse, football is a means of
communication.

Date mostly written: 1999