Yes, the Internet is currently flush with examples of top ten thises and top ten thats. We have a top 100 list that’s doing gangbusters. There are tactical retrospectives, player retrospectives, match retrospectives galore. I expect future years will see the “Top Ten Throw-ins of 2018,” and “The Reader Poll of 2027′s Worst Goalmouth Clearances.”
Then there are the trend posts, of which some are looking back in anger at the Year in Racism. There was Sepp’s buffoonery amid images of him glad-handling Tokyo Sexwale (although the one with him schmoozing with Robert Mugabe would have been more illustrative of the nature of Blatter’s friendship). There was controversy over whether John Terry called Anton Ferdinand “blind” or “black”, and controversy over whether Luis Suarez referring to Patrice Evra as “negrito” on the field of play was alright because, you know, it’s cultural imperialism to imply that this so-called “widely-accepted” Uruguayan habit might just, in fact, be objectively offensive.
While not really “worse” than these appalling developments, the galling inability for fans to step outside their tiny club wheelhouse to see the bigger footballing picture was to my mind the more noxious theme of this past year. Not that 2011 saw a startling break from the past as far as partisan morons are concerned, but the age when opposing fans would applaud objectively stunning goals now seems a century away, rather than a mere decade and change.
In the blogosphere, the ideological devotion of certain fans to their clubs has become a running gag. The splendid new football blog The FCF doesn’t feature a comment section, which may be (unconsciously at least) one of its most attractive features. The reason should be obvious to anyone whose read anything of quality on the web. Take James Lawton’s brilliant chiding of Rio Ferdinand this morning for his comments over what constitutes “greatness” in regard to Gareth Bale (answer: a bag of trophies, which might surprise fans of George Best, let alone admirers of Lawton’s example Sir Tom Finney, or my own in Matt Le Tissier).
Here’s a sample comment:
Its clear now why you arent writing for the guardian.
Gareth Bale better than Ryan giggs?
Gareth Bale better than George Best?
I am barely older than the Premiership, but for you to make such a claim is ludicrous in the extreme.
It’s not hard to tell where this ire is coming from, considering the leading examples also include Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney. It’s the young that I fear for. The FCF yesterday featured the weird YouTube ramblings of a girl who looks no older than twenty attempting to defend Luis Suarez. What’s truly sad is all of her arguments are clearly ready-made, handed to her by countless online club apologists rejoicing in the same, tiny (and tinny) echo chamber.
Not that United fans, who rendered their verdict on Evra’s benign intentions and angelic innocence long before a jot of evidence reached the public sphere, have come out of this thing looking any better. In the wake of my own opinion on the Suarez FA verdict, the only thing more tragic than the automatic Twitter unfollows was the number of United supporters who took their places.
Then there are the endless La Liga El Clasico debates on the tedious minutiae of dives and counterdives, head games over who’s more evil, Pepe or Busquets. All the joy of watching two of Europe’s most talented teams seems lost on those with an actual stake in the game. One wonders reading the voluminous back-and-forth attacks if these people even enjoy football, or whether they’re just a rhetorical variation on the English hooligans who traveled to games not to take in football but to stand outside the ground trying to pick a knife fight.
This is not to tar all fans with the same brush, but, as in politics, the idiots tend to be the loudest. And that’s the real problem. No football writer has written more eloquently on this subject of late than Andrew Thomas:
This would obviously be a problem if modern fandom…. hadn’t so completely sacrificed its own integrity to the facile and stupid idea that the fan should and can only be, in the words of SF previously, “the propaganda wing of the club”. This is a total and complete inversion of the natural state of things. You owe them nothing; they owe you everything. Without you, they would not exist. If someone does something cuntish whilst wearing your badge — the badge that you love, revere, adore, and worship — then your voice should be the first and the loudest to condemn him. What he does, he does in your name. His shit stains your shirt.
The silence from the level-headed (if they do in fact exist—as of writing, it’s an article of faith) is the real shame here. When fans complain of ticket hikes and exploitation from club chairman only to sheepishly shell out for another season ticket, that silence is deafening. It’s downright ridiculous for a fan to wear Green and Gold in protest against owners sitting in a seat they’ve paid over a thousand pounds to the Glazers to sit in. Or to believe that players like Suarez, under the multi-million pound employ of corporatized clubs, are unquestionably innocent merely by virtue of their shirt and their goal-scoring record.
I sense a push-back on the horizon, but the problem with digital culture is that it easily allows fans to cut out dissenting voices, to tailor Twitter feeds to tell you only what you want to hear, to read fan-biased writers except when a blogger encourages you to troll a newspaper writer because they haven’t paid fealty to your particular clubs list of “legends.” Here’s hoping 2012 sees a return of objective civility, and a much-needed re-injection of self-effacing irony among club supporters. Also, world peace, and a solution to man-made global warming.
Brilliant. Couldn’t agree more. Top level football is now little more than a circus, watched by many not so much for the football itself as for the surrounding cacophony of insanity and hatred.
How is calling someone “black” racist?
“Hey black guy, my name’s Steve.”
“Excuse me?”
I don’t follow.
Then I can’t help you…sorry!
But if someone is black, how is calling them “black guy” offensive? Is calling a tall person “tall guy” offensive? I’m sorry if I sound rude, I just want to know more about this. I don’t condone racism but I get really frustrated how society views racial abuse as the only type of abuse that is unacceptable. IMO suspending Terry is opening up a can of worms because if you suspend someone for calling someone “black ****” you should suspend anyone who verbally abuses another person or group of people.
I’d say the Internet has given these partisan idiots a bigger voice now, as opposed to them being more numerous now than in the past. Whereas you would only have heard them at the pub before & after a match (or haranguing you at family dinner) now they have the ability to spew their prodigious bile all around the world with nary a thought.
Oh, and tbkh…. It’s called context, and tone, and most importantly intent (which in the Suarez case MIGHT be the only leg he has to stand on).
tbkh
Why is that a can of worms? In some sports they do suspend/punish people for any kind of abuse, and nobody complains. Why? Because abuse is unpleasant and unacceptable.
If a Man Ure fan can write a shite blog slagging off Liverpool every week,
while wanking to a picture of Sir bacon face, then why can’t us ‘apologists’ back our
club. And when was the last time you went to a game in England you pleb?.
Was that loud enough for you?.
Me a Man United fan. Oh dear.
Uh oh. Ignorant scouse still sees this as a Man United vs. Liverpool issue.
Get over yourself and see beyond football and the crest on the shirt – this is about basic human rights. This goes beyond a GAME (which I think people still forget that football is), it goes beyond the FA trying to target Liverpool like “they always are” (LAUGH), someone was offended because another completely disregarded universal human rights and stooped so low as to comment on the colour of their skin and implied that it somehow makes them inferior. How can you defend that? Seriously, what year/country/decade do you live in that you think this is ok? Please tell me, I am concerned. A lot of you idiots have been popping up everywhere. What do I need to do to get rid of you lot?
Doubt you even read the 115 page report the FA released detailing how and why they made their decision, huh? How much discrepancy showed up in Suarez’s story? Typical uninformed ignorant fan with a keyboard at his hands thinking the world is against his club. Wake up.
When did I mention Suarez ? And I doubt anyone other than the independant panel has read that report anyway, divvy. I’ll defend my club whenever any “uninformed ignorant fan with a keyboard at his hands” slags my club off, so fuck off.
Celeste, I read the report – truth be told, wasn’t too impressed by their “findings”. I’d rather go up against a Soviet or East German commission.
It all boiled down to Evra said this, Suarez said thát. The FA didn’t think Suarez’s story was consistent enough in certain aspects, therefore, they chose to believe EVERYTHING Evra says (most importantly, that Suarez called him “negro” seven times, a charge he denies, which is now being recklessly reported as fact throughout the media)…and at the end of the day, it’s still one person’s word against another. Nothing was “proven”.
Ya but god forbid we LFC fans defend our player after we read the “facts” and disagree with how it was handled. Instead now we can all just be blanketed as partisan morons who are just being fanboys with no possible right to voice our concern as we are backing a noted racist now. Oh wait no he isn’t a racist just says racist shit according to the FA and Evra the two most trustworthy and accurate sources on racism and how to deal with it.. wtf…