England, Euro 2008, Global, Premier League
The Beautiful Game, 2008-??
International tournaments offer the purest kind of football, argues Mike Martin, as the Premier League makes an unwelcome return.
If Euro 2008 has shown us anything, it is that international football is the best kind of football. Or at least, better than club football. Not necessarily in terms of footballing quality - there is no reason why Michael Ballack should play better in a white shirt than in a blue one - but simply in terms of enjoyment.
Scarcely can a more wrong letter have ever been published in a national British newspaper than one I now recall in last Sunday’s Observer: “For most fans in this country the tournament has been a minor distraction before the serious business for the proper teams in the Premier League begins again.” The correspondent, a fellow Chelsea fan, I regret to say, goes on to describe the Championships in Austria and Switzerland as a ‘pointless European placebo’.
In one sentence, the writer summed up everything about the Premier League that makes me care less about it than the international game. It is serious. Oh dear. It is business. Ho-hum. It has ‘proper teams’; when has anything in sport been anything other than absurd? Simon Barnes of the Times’ ‘golf principle’ is apt - either all sport is ridiculous or none is. What makes Manchester Utd proper and, by implication, Spain improper?
Most English football fans, incidentally, do not support one of the increasingly inelastic Big Four. Most support somebody like Preston North End, or Gillingham, or Portsmouth, or Sheffield Utd. Most care about England. The only ones who are really apathetic towards England are the one-eyed followers of the Champions League teams, for whom Steven Gerrard playing for England is little more than a needless risk of injury just days before that crucial Champions League group match, most of which are now no more challenging than the average league game.
The UEFA Champions League has many fine qualities but it assumes an importance far out of proportion to its actual emotional connection with the population. A glance at ITV’s ratings history confirms as much. Manchester Utd v Chelsea in Moscow: 14.6 million. England v Argentina, 1998 World Cup: 25 million. The Champions League merely massages the egos of a self-perpetuating elite while being little more than a chance for most fans to watch some football without the shortcomings of partiality. If anything is a footballing placebo, then it is the Champions League. It kids us that if the Big Four are alright, Jack, then all club football must be in fine shape. As any Leeds fan will tell you, it isn’t.
I am grateful to José Mourinho for many reasons but none more than the fact that Chelsea finally winning the league in 2005 makes me obsess less about their results. We’ve done it. Twice. Before Abramovich’s arrival in 2003, I would have not expected two titles in my lifetime. Now, it is not the end of the world if Aston Villa get a late equalizer. Life, as Nick Hornby wrote in “Fever Pitch”, is no longer shit because my club is shit. So football is now enjoyable again.
It helps that international football is the ultimate sporting meritocracy. It is often argued that England’s players under-perform for their country; it might have something to do that when Gerrard, Rooney, Ferdinand and friends play against Croatia or Russia, they are facing greatly superior opponents than on most Premier League matchdays.
Hands up those of you who thought that Euro 2008 would have been improved by any of the trappings of the Premier League? Agents? Interminable, pointless transfer speculation? No thanks. Mercifully, Andrei Arshavin does not play for Russia because it is his contractual duty; he does so because he is proud to do so. Now the Euros are over, we are set to be ‘treated’ to weeks of bitter-tasting contract details, transfer fees and media bullshitting as Chelsea, Arsenal and Barcelona squabble for his services. Please wake me up in August.
I love the Premier League but only the bits between kick-off and full-time. This is because I love football. The game of football, where 22 players agitate a bag of wind for 90 minutes. That is enjoyable. The endless transfer rumour mill that happens ever July isn’t. It is like the long snaking queues that must be endured to board a roller-coaster at Alton Towers. European Championships and World Cups are about football and the enjoyment of it. What will we remember about this year’s tournament in years to come? The fabulous skills, the great games, the colour and the atmosphere. We will have forgotten the media’s self-satisfying pontification on Cristiano Ronaldo’s future, Martin O’Neill’s negotiating of Gareth Barry’s transfer fee while with the BBC’s team in Vienna or Luiz Felipe Scolari’s defection from Portugal to Chelsea.
No shirt sponsors by law, no player transfers, no takeover rumours. International tournaments are as close as the game gets to perfection because they are football at its purest. In other words, they are sport. Real sport. And if England’s absence from one competition has helped us realize that we like football - that is, like watching football matches, not following our club sides with such parochial fervour that reason and fair appreciation become alien concepts - then it might just have been worth it.
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4 comments for “The Beautiful Game, 2008-??”
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Couldn’t have put it better myself. Nothing can beat international tournament football and the purity of the spectacle, against the hyperbole and money, money, money of the Premier League.
Excellent piece & your points are well made. In fact you basically explained why I don’t watch the English Premier League anymore. Inelastic top 4, egregiously poor bottom half of the table and overpaid “superstars” whose egos are even bigger than their undeserved paychecks (not that I’d so no to 100 grand/week, nor should they.)
For pure competition I prefer the Bundesliga. For technical skill & tactical complexity Serie A. For a combination of all three La Liga. That’s enough to keep me interested each weekend of the season & leaves no time to be put to sleep again by another boring game from England.
I think we are coming to a stage where international football might become more important than ever and this is true regardless of what Mr Wenger has to say.
The quality of teams might not be as high as the best club sides in the world but it isnt far off and it is nice to see people care about what they are playing for. The players pride of playing for their countries is something that we don’t neccessarily see week in week out in the premiership and should be praised. Too often I see players not trying enough for their clubs but happy to spend their millions when they finish.
and David H above is pretty much spot on.