Footy without the fan fare
The picture looked even more promising in Manchester, after police figures highlighted an idyllic evening at Old Trafford where as many as 25,000 ticket holders stayed away.
These are the Premier League’s kind of people. In an ideal world, there would be data confirming that they stayed at home to watch the match on television.
The perfect endorsement of the perfect business model; top, top TV revenue combined with top, top ticket prices. A sweating asset.
As for the persistent traditionalists who insist on paying their money, then turning up at the ground, the league’s director of communications, Dan Johnson, issued a terse warning ahead of the big kick-off.
Forget your photos and videos. “It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it... we are working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity.”
It was the kind of cheerless eye on the bottom line that inspires the now-annual wailing that announces the rebirth of the Premier League. This week, The Guardian’s Martin Kettle led the charge into the valley of tears. “The whole stupid, stretching 10-month juggernaut of Premier League excess is about to grind back into action this weekend — a return that’s about as welcome as a drunk on the late bus home.”
You could have some sympathy for Kettle’s foreboding until he overstretched dangerously in the challenge. “In the end, though, neither the match nor the result actually matter — not in the way that an election or a referendum matters.”
It was a provocative shout, in a part of the world where you are more likely to see a referendum replayed than a cup tie.
On the contrary, the PL matters so much, to so many people, that it might be the only known industry impervious to the kind of natural cycles that the people who run in elections have to pretend to be controlling.
Before every one of its 22 seasons, there has been talk of an unsustainable bubble, of deep underlying crisis, of madness. In that time, attendances have risen by 42% and revenue is up 700%.
“Every year, I am rung up by journalists asking ‘is the bubble about to burst?’ or something similar,” writes economist Stefan Szymanski on the Soccernomics Agency website.
“They are always astonished when I say that this is a stable, prosperous system.”
Amid this unusual certainty, there was another slap in the face for traditionalists this week — the switch of Sky Sports 1 from channel 401 to 402, maybe the boldest move so far of the transfer window.
The move is to accommodate Sky Sports News, which is now Sky Sports News HQ, or the ambitious Sky Sports News HQ HD if you want to contribute more to the coffers.
At least, when we find the HQ, we are still in the tender hands of people who know how much it matters. And now they have the space they needed to show us.
The polls and referendums that these people give us mightn’t mean a whole lot either, but at least we know somebody is listening.
SSNHQHD asked us yesterday would Arsenal win the league. “My goodness, it is looking close; 50/50,” gasped Hayley McQueen. Had we ever, truly, more power in our hands than when the urge rose to tip it one way?
An amusing video did the rounds lately from Vietnamese TV news, where a guest’s phone rings and instead of turning it off, he panics and chucks it out of the studio.
This will never happen on SSNHQHD, where Bryan Swanson or Jim White or Guillem Balague tend to keep their phones in shot, to let us know they are “across” the things that matter.
It is noticeable that the women don’t tend to get phones, but we cannot move too fast, too soon.
They have everything else at their disposal. There is a “soft area” now, where they can bring Jamie Redknapp to reassure us that Glenn Hoddle has forgotten a lot more than most of these foreign coaches know.
And there is a dedicated “Investigations Desk”. They switched over to it in a hurry on Thursday, for urgent word on the sale of Aston Villa, which the lads, naturally, are “across”.
“We are being told that nothing is close,” was the message, and we were in the loop.
It was at the Investigations Desk too where we heard about the attendances furore. Some took it as evidence of the Premier League’s triumph of hype over substance.
Perhaps, instead, the numbers should serve as solace to the people who will tell you the PL doesn’t matter at all. If 6,000 Arsenal fans who already have tickets are able to avoid it, surely they can manage it too.
Sean Maguire missed game six of the World Series because “he had to go see about a girl.”
Would Robin Williams have? Maybe he would. Or maybe he’d have met her after.
Sport and Williams exchanged the usual give and take. The San Francisco 49ers gave him a modern drought, glamour, disarray, the excitement, at long last, of the big day out, and disappointment.
He pulled up a chair at a feast when the SF Giants ended their famine.
Looking at old clips; the young Williams had the cut, from certain angles, of Federer. He enjoyed Federer. “It’s like watching the Terminator. He has it all. There is no weakness.”
He knew well, though, to feel that invulnerable, you got to know vulnerable better than most. “Like stand-up, you have to be ready to move in all different ways. And there’s that kind of solo thing — it’s all you.”
It was the most singular of all individuals who beguiled him. “I am the comique domestique for my dawg and the Equipe Postale,” Williams wrote, in the foreword to Lance Armstrong: Images of a Champion.
Williams lived as strong as any of the yellow band believers. “It is a heavy burden, the mantle of ‘hero’. He carries this weight with all of the grace and talent and motivation possible.”
He was still there on the last big night, when Armstrong resigned, the music he had to face only beginning to swell.
“It was literally like a wake for someone who was still alive, this overall feeling that the dream was over,” said Williams.
Sport let him down with his big love. But better, Sean Maguire would agree, to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
Nik Bendtner: The big man is back in business at Wolfsburg. Legend has it, he took number 52 at Arsenal in tribute to the thousands in his weekly wage packet. He has gone for number 3, at Wolfsburg. Chin up, big man. Just drop the jocks a few times per game.
Robin Williams: Called Sepp “Bladder” during the 1994 World Cup draw. A visionary.
Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad, pictured: Cruelly punished for trying to inject a little Premier League magic into the athletics.
HELL IN A HANDCART
Mauricio Pochettino: Will Spurs ever stop making the big mistakes? They’ve made him speak English and already he sounds half the man, quarter the mystery.
