Did Hell Clasico mark the death of the beautiful game?
By CHRIS HATHERALL
HOW long can football go on allowing its core values to be eroded before eventually it alienates the very people who make it the biggest sport in the world?
The recent El Clasico clashes were a joyless, painful reminder of everything that is going wrong at the heart of the game just at a time when it reaches its economic and popular zenith.
It’s all very well saying there have been uglier, more violent, more depressing matches in the past and football will survive; of course there have and of course it will. But the way FIFA and UEFA ignore the underlying ill health of the game is stocking up problems for the future.
Barcelona’s play-acting, Jose Mourinho’s ugly posturing and Real Madrid’s cynical tactics may not be the tipping point — we are still a long way from that; but if we continue to ignore the alarm bells ringing around Europe then football will one day find it has no divine right to flourish.
Already there are reports in France that rugby is emerging as the sport of choice of a younger generation and it is growing rapidly in England and Ireland too with attendances rising and many clubs searching for bigger stadia.
Of course nobody is suggesting rugby is likely to eclipse football in popularity or financial muscle in the near or even long-term future; but shouldn’t soccer’s governing bodies be at least a little bit concerned?
Barcelona, reportedly the greatest club side the world has ever seen, harmed their reputation with the constant diving, simulation and play-acting that marred the Champions League games with Real but it is the aggressive and negative aura surrounding big matches these days that is of even more concern.
Just why exactly is football so angry?
Seeing a player or manager smile is so rare these days that it’s worth praying for a Liverpool goal just to see Kenny Dalglish’s face light up and remind us of the times when scoring goals was fun. These days players are booked for celebrating, ex-players are subjected to vitriol from the stands and managers glower menacingly on the sidelines for 90 minutes before ranting aggressively at referees and blaming everyone but themselves for a defeat.
Every match is reported not for the glorious football on show, not for Messi’s skills, but for the controversy that surrounds it and the inevitable bad behaviour of at least one of the combatants.
Jose Mourinho knows how it works; he knows he can dominate the headlines and leave his players to concentrate on themselves, he knows how to heap pressure on the referee, he knows how to make the game ugly and make himself look good in the long run. But what he doesn’t know is how to put the joy back into the game — and that’s what it really needs.
At the route of it all, of course is money; the very commodity that underpins the sport and makes it so successful.
It is money that makes every match so pressurised, makes every mistake so crucial and leaves players alienated from those the terraces — especially in a week in which Arsenal and Manchester United have decided to put up prices despite the economic climate of austerity across Europe.
Unfortunately, how much a player earns and how much a television company pays for screening rights are probably out of our hands; but how the game is played, the spirit in which it played and the rules for punishing those who shame it, are there to be moulded.
Now, with the El Clasico debacle still fresh in the mind, is the time to act; before it’s too late.
By LIAM MACKEY
SO just how bad was the ‘Battle Of The Bernabeu’?
One well-known commentator summed it up best: “the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football, possibly in the history of the game.”
Furthermore, the commentator added, if the authorities didn’t take steps to eradicate this sort of thing, the very future of the sport itself was at stake. Well, who could possibly disagree with that?
The only problem is that the game referred to was not the so-called ‘Battle Of The Bernabeu’. It was, rather, ‘The Battle Of Santiago’, between hosts Chile and Italy at the 1962 World Cup, and it was the venerable David Coleman who was driven to paroxysms of outrage by the repeated outbreaks of punching, kicking and spitting which disfigured a game which has gone down in infamy.
Still, for all Coleman’s apocalyptic pronouncements, football not only survived but thrived thereafter, a useful lesson for all those inclined to rush to hysterical judgment.
And it was again hysteria, rather than commonsense, which characterised much of the response to that ill-tempered Champions League semi-final first leg in Madrid just over a week ago.
There were two strands to the game which dominated the negative headlines. One was the strong-arm approach of Madrid which, allied to Jose Mourinho’s ultra-defensive tactics, virtually amounted to a betrayal of the club’s reputation for swashbuckling football.
That was more to be pitied than deplored, however, notwithstanding the fact that the levels of physical intimidation employed were frankly pale in comparison to the routine violence of football back in what we now tend to think of as a golden age for the game. Put it this way: George Best, having come up against men like Ron Harris and Tommy Smith, would have been amused rather than abused by Sergio Ramos trying to play the hard man.
For more annoying was the feigning and fakery of a couple of the Barcelona players, an aspect of the modern game which can only be considered an embarrassment. And especially when it comes from a team generally synonymous with the finer things in football. It’s not entirely new, of course – remember Frannie Lee in the penalty box, anyone? – but it is increasingly prevalent and, also, because of the ubiquitous tv cameras, increasingly visible.
And therein lies the obvious solution. Just as the disputed goal can be instantly clarified by the all-seeing eye of the camera, so too can most instances of so-called simulation. And since there’s nothing quite like a red or yellow card to concentrate minds, all that’s needed to eradicate the practice is the will of the football authorities to support match officials with the kind of simple technology which is instantly available to us watching at home.
Sadly, the preference for hysteria over commonsense means it will probably be some time before football makes use of the best deterrent at its disposal. Much simpler to wail about the rot at the root of the beautiful game and how a generation of kids is going to grow up with its moral compass all askew.
When all this hot air has blown itself out, the outstanding memory of that night in Madrid will be of Lionel Messi slaloming through the home defence to score that breathtaking second goal for Barcelona – a glorious reminder that, in football at its best, it’s stimulation not simulation which continues to capture hearts and minds.
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