Mark Samuels

Football is a business. Actually, it isn’t – it’s a sport. But there’s a chance you might have forgotten, given the media’s obsession with football clubs and their cash concerns.

There’s one type of cash concern in football, like Accrington Stanley struggling to survive. And there’s another, where big clubs are struggling to stay as big clubs. Take Liverpool, for example.

Ex-footballers gracing screens with their oh-so-obvious banter keep telling the watching populace that Liverpool “simply have to qualify for the Champions League”‘ because of cash concerns and a need to attract the best players. But it’s a sport and I couldn’t give a stuff about who needs to be in a specific competition because of business issues.

Then there’s the big club justification – “Liverpool are a massive club that deserves to be in the Champions League”. Liverpool, of course, are a massive club with a “brand” (another dreadful term that has become associated to Sky-era football) that commands global recognition. Good for them. But such prestige does not mean Liverpool – or anyone else – has a divine right to be successful.

Look at Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, et al – all of whom are big clubs, finding they have no divine right to be in the top flight, never mind Europe.

Football is cyclical, you see and teams drop from the elite. Nothing is more sure. Liverpool are struggling, Manchester United have their own financial concerns – Manchester City are spending big, Spurs are on the up. Things change.

Look at the Villa. We were the biggest club in the world in the late ninteenth and early twentieth century; we were the global “brand”. Post-Second World War football in Aston has seen some high points and quite a few low points. At the minute, the Villa are thinking about being successful again. We shall see.

But no club has a right to success. And no club “has” to be in any competition, despite what the pundits would have you believe.

So, England have qualified for the World Cup Finals. Good. But Clive Tyldesley? Bad, very bad.

Me and our Clive have a love/hate relationship. I could, of course, just turn the sound off. But shouting about his commentary is part of the fun. As a mate of mine said many years ago: “The best times in your life are shouting at the TV with your mates”. Sad but true – and it’s as true now as it ever was, even if the person you’re shouting with is your slightly scared two and a half year old daughter.

Anyway, I digress – Clive Tyldesley. Grrrr…

My God, does he have to talk so much? When Barry Davies retired, he was quoted as saying he felt there was not enough silence in modern football commentary.

Our Clive, on the other hand, has made a career of filling every potential second of airtime with words. He rarely commentates in the traditional sense; you don’t get “Lampard, to Rooney, to Barry…”

Instead, you get a running babble of facts, clichés and opinion. What you get is something like this: “John Terry will be the eighth captain to lead England to a World Cup Finals”.

So bloody what? I mean, who cares if he’s the millionth? What difference does it make? And anyway, how does our Clive know who’s going to be captain in 2010? It should be Terry but football – as Tyldesley is likely to remind us many, many times – is a funny old game.

But what’s really funny is his Wikipedia entry. There’s the disclaimer at the top of the page that declares: “This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately”. And at the end of the entry – in the ‘Other Work’ section – is this beauty:

“He has also wrestled oxen professionally.”

Catch it now. It probably won’t last for long. Unlike Tyldesley’s commentaries, which go on and on and on…

I love major sports events and major sporting venues. Actually, I love rubbish sports events and rubbish sporting venues, too.

I remember dragging my wife to watch Austrian non-league side FC Eurotours Kitzbuhel in a pre-season friendly. We were on holiday; it was her special treat. We’ve also watched old men bowling in Malta and she’s been spoilt with visits to a bunch of empty football grounds across Europe.

Sportplatz Kitzbuhel: Why my wife loves me

Sometimes major sporting venues are more than the sum of their parts. Snooker at The Crucible in Sheffield really has to be experienced. It’s a pretty awful theatre that – somehow – comes alive during the snooker. I think it’s the quiet intensity of having to sit in silence, watching a couple of blokes in suits smacking balls round a table with polished sticks.

Cricket at your regular haunt – Edgbaston, in the case of my youth – is also great. Especially during mid-week county matches, when the only people there are you, your unemployed mate and pensioners. And watching football live is always wonderful, of course.

But Wimbledon is rubbish. Thanks to our overuse of aerosols and rack-mounted servers, it’s normally too hot – despite everyone saying it always rains. And it’s always too busy. Unless you queue for 17 days, you can’t get on the main courts – which means you spend hours trailing round the minor courts, watching amateur British players lose stinky mixed doubles matches.

Other venues have an aura and a sense of excitement. Wimbledon doesn’t; it’s just full of people in caps, who eat too many strawberries and drink too much Pimm’s. It’s like the Chelsea Flower Show, actually – boring, busy and over-rated.

Don’t bother going to Wimbledon. It’s one of those rare events that’s actually more enjoyable on television. Again, like the Chelsea Flower Show.

“It was a moment that summed up the vein-bulging temper and perversity of the modern football fan,” begins David Hytner’s review of the Arsenal vs Wigan game  from last Saturday. “It perhaps went even further and offered pointers about society in general.”

Hytner was referring to Arsenal’s own fans booing Emmanuel Eboué for a series of mistakes. Eboué was eventually substituted. Whether the incident offered a broader comment on society is a moot point but I really liked this part of Hytner’s review:

“Blame the credit crunch. Attending matches is not cheap, especially in these parlous times and, after a hard week, some modern fans have no time for underperforming players, particularly not those who earn in a week what they do in a year. They pay their money, they bubble with indignation and they have a right to express their opinions. Loudly. Call it Wembley syndrome. The England players Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole would relate to that. Many supporters no longer feel the duty to support. They are now consumers and, if the product is not up to scratch, they wonder why they should tolerate it.”

Everyone is a consumer now; everyone is obsessed with consuming. Rather than being about cheap boiled sweets and empty stands, football is more about champagne and Sky’s TV money. The ordinary man (or woman) on the stands has been pushed to the side, not just by money-obsessed executives – but also by the game itself and its obsession with ‘markets’ and ‘consumers’. And that is the saddest thing of all.

Nick Drake would surely have approved of this:

Nick Drake performs Rainbow (kind of)

There’s real attention to detail, especially the sad face at the window. But it’s just the titles – no Zippy, I’m afraid. The orange one often appears in YouTube searches in our house, primarily because my daughter is a big fan of Rainbow. She is not the only fan, though.

Personally, I like the DVD where Zippy’s cousin from the US, Zippo, turns up and spends most of the episode rapping. I can’t find it on YouTube, but take it from me – it’s excellent stuff. By means of an apology, here’s some more information on Zippo from Wikipedia :

Zippo, Zippy’s cousin, identical in appearance to Zippy, who would make the occasional guest appearance. Originally portrayed as an eloquent Frenchman, but a later episode depicted him as an American-accented rapper with loud, flashy clothing.