The Slow Death of Football
NEW ARTICLE FROM MATTHEW
<Strap yourselves in, gentlemen, this is a rant. A rant about the people who make football a living hell outside of the game itself. Not just the fans, but the journalists, the media, even the corporations running the show. The culture they’ve created, where fans are more worried about the transfer market than the team on the field, where one bad performance means a player must be sold or released and one great performance means they must win the Ballon d’Or. Where journalists don’t report the facts but rather create a story and narrative. About how City are such a wonderful underdog story, conveniently sweeping their transfer record and the human rights abuses of their owner under the rug. Or how Newcastle have been saved by a known murderer because of how deep said murderer’s wallet is. Or how about the FA? Keeping incompetent refs on the payroll that have cost us games, consistently giving City the easiest draw in the domestic cups and allowing Chelsea to wear their Club World Cup badge only a year after saying we couldn’t do the same. Football is no longer a game for the common man. Instead it’s a dick-measuring contest for billionaires, “Oh I have more money than you and will flaunt it accordingly in how expensively I make my football team”. Look at the World Cup being in QATAR, in the middle of the league season because of how incredibly hot it’d be to hold such an event in the summer in the Middle East. But wait, Qatar paid more money and also paid off FIFA so they’ve got it. Putin did the same thing with Russia in 2018, we just haven’t heard about it because the Kremlin likely assassinated any whistleblowers. Sports themselves are becoming merely another plaything of those who have money, and if you don’t, well tough luck, guess you can’t play anymore (look at Bury FC, Macclesfield Town, Oldham Athletic). If you wish to read further, I’ve got a large list of complaints.
Let’s talk about the plastic fans we abhor so much. What drives them, what makes them so angry in the first place? The transfer market. For us, football is the entertainment and the transfer market is the commercial break. For them, it’s the opposite. They live for the money to be splashed and if their team doesn’t spend enough money for their liking, then the owners must go. What a depressing existence. But that’s not the only problem I have with football fans, let’s talk about those that actually go to the match. We’ve all heard the chants about Hillsborough, about Heysel, about Munich. We’ve even seen City players mocking Sean Cox. “Always the victims”? Vile disgusting human beings. Racially abusing players on social media, telling Marcus Rashford to focus on the pitch because helping starving kids isn’t important enough? Or how about City and Chelsea fans constantly defending what their club does, even saying “We love Roman, he’s a Chelsea fan. He’d never lead us astray.” Only for the bottom to fall out due to the Ukraine crisis and then for him to nearly screw up the process of finding a new owner. From an early age, my mother made sure that I knew I couldn’t trust people, that the average person would more often than not be a bad person. I hate to admit she was right all along. Humans themselves are deplorable beings.
Alright, what’s next, oh yes, the media. I’ve made my feelings on the media very, very clear over the years: I hate every one of them, the nasty soulless husks that they are. Even the news themselves isn’t about honestly telling news anymore, it’s about spinning yarn to try and conjure up a compelling storyline. We are no longer told the actual truth and asked to come up with our own opinion on it, we’re fed someone’s opinion on the news and forced to agree with it. But even worse than that are the shady tactics used to gain such information. Let’s take a look at everyone’s favorite transfer journalist, Fabrizio Romano. He has achieved great fame for always being the first to declare a transfer. But he doesn’t actually get told this from clubs. No, no, he finds some small local journalist who received the news, takes the article, and passes it off as his own, damn near the definition of plagiarism, and nobody has the balls to call him out on it. Romano has done this at least six times in the past year alone, and nobody cares. Because he’s Fab Romano, he cannot be wrong! Really? What a joke. But let’s also take a look at another recent media screwup: the Super League. The more I think about it, the more I think we all overreacted to the initial news. Yes, what was proposed was unfair to the majority of clubs, and it would’ve pumped more money into a sport that already has more than enough of it circulating. The media, led by Carragher and Neville, relentlessly bashed the idea, saying it would kill football. And by the thousands, fans ate it up. The media, for fear of losing out on their cash flow, created the story and outrage that would eventually kill the Super League idea. But what was at the core of that idea? It was to challenge FIFA and UEFA. To tell them that enough is enough. People talk about how it would’ve ruined the game, THE GAME’S ALREADY RUINED. Ajax, Benfica, Porto, other titans of the past have been reduced to mere husks of their former glory because they couldn’t keep up with the massive spending. UEFA and FIFA are now ruining the game further and with their new Champions League format, they’re doing nearly the exact same thing that the Super League proposed. But no outrage, no media controversy. Because the media will still get their money, so they’re fat and happy. Again, disgusting. The Super League wasn’t the right way to take down UEFA and FIFA, but the premise of taking them down is something I am absolutely okay with.
I would say something more about the football associations themselves but I think I’ve already made clear my discontent for them. And this is turning into a crazy long article. But whatever, I still have some things to say. Are the refs truly this incompetent? The blatant Rodri handball against Everton, Liverpool not getting a penalty at the Kop End for almost three years, what about the Everton game that took out Virgil and Thiago for months? Pickford didn’t even receive a booking for what he did to Virgil! Or how about Manchester-born Anthony Taylor being the lead ref for a title-deciding match IN MANCHESTER? You think there might be a slight problem with that? How about Jon Moss trundling down the pitch at the same rate of speed as a snail? Thank God he’s retiring. Nobody ever thinks match-fixing could ever exist, yet Italy had a massive controversy over it in 2006. You think City, with their unlimited cash flow, isn’t handing a few extra bucks to the FA? Or to UEFA? How else do they manage to get out of trouble with FFP? Are their revenue streams just that incredibly good that they can afford whatever they want in a fair way? That’s what their fans think, they think nothing bad is going on whatsoever with City. And the media is the same way! In short, I am quickly becoming disillusioned with this game. Like all other sports, it is not a fair game. And football federations will continue to tilt the scales towards those who have money rather than trying to make it a fair and competitive sport. I keep forgetting that morals don’t exist anymore, that good people are few and far between, and that money isn’t just the king, money is God to people. All that matters is how much of it is in your possession, regardless of where it comes from or how you get it. It’s a dark and cold world that we live in, I’m glad that watching this team gives us all a little bit of warmth.
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