The Heart and Soul of the Beautiful Game

A very famous player once said; ‘No play, movie or TV programme, work of literature or music, induces such polarization of emotion on a weekly basis. We curse football for having this power. Conversely, it is football’s power to so readily and regularly corrupt emotions and senses that is the addictive and enduring appeal of the game. It’s an intangible power. It exists somewhere out in the ethers. IT IS THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE GAME.’

Whether you are a player, a manager, coach, director, supporter, kit-man, tea lady, or whatever; football possesses the power to make the week ahead sparkle with a sense of joyous well-being, or black with the unpalatability of unrealized hope and expectation.

It’s what football does to you – it pulls and tugs on your emotions, your sanity, it questions your judgment, your rationality. Football can sometimes make you do irrational things, sometimes to the detriment of family and loved ones – I think we can all cite cases in relation to this point. It causes argument. It certainly makes us all opinionated – no bad thing because if we all agreed with each other the world would be a poorer place.

As most of you know, I have followed Manchester United Football Club for over half a century. I have seen the good times, the tragic times, the mediocre times. I have shared those ups and downs, and the period of dark despair, and undoubtedly the Club is etched into my heart and soul. There is never a doubt that I will carry my love of Manchester United with me until I draw my last breath – I love the Club like my favourite barmaid. I also love the game of football and that is also so very important to me. Having said that, it does not mean that I have to have total agreement with everything that goes on within the Club, and within football in the present day – far from it.

During the last few weeks, I returned home to England, and back to the Manchester area. As always, my path took me back to the seat of all my old nostalgia – Old Trafford. Even today, after all these years, I still get that same old surge of excitement, anticipation, drama, call it what you will, that I have always experienced since I was a young boy, as I join the crowds walking down the Warwick Road – I know it is now called Sir Matt Busby Way, but to me and thousands more of my generation, I am sure that we will always remember it as it was. It turned out to be a rather chastened experience and one that I thought that I would never experience in my lifetime. I came away bitterly disappointed, feeling so flat, downhearted, and so deflated – and United had won 3-0!

During the last few weeks it has given me time for thought and reflection as to why this should have happened to me and probably why that has happened to many more folk of my generation. Something has happened to the heart and soul of the Club and the Game which I love so much.

I read a little analogy the other day that probably puts things in a nutshell. It was about a man, who as a young boy, was given a penknife as a birthday present by his dad. Throughout his life, this person loved and cherished that knife which had been given to him on his thirteenth birthday. During the later years of his life things had happened to that knife. Firstly there came a time when he broke the handle, and after his initial disappointment and sadness at breaking it, he replaced that handle. Some years later, the blade broke, so he bought a replacement blade and the knife was as good as new again. The strange thing was, this person always referred to that knife as; ‘the knife that my father gave to me on my thirteenth birthday.’ In reality, it was anything but! In the cold light of day, that knife was totally different – both the handle and the blade had been replaced – no part of the original knife remained. For all of that, this person still loved that knife, believing it to be the one that his father had given to him as his birthday present all those years ago.

It is a story that we can equate with the way we think about Manchester United and the game of football in general. Manchester United and the game of football is totally different now than it was when I first started watching the game back in the early 1950’s. However, the emotional attachment that I feel for both parties has always remained unchanged. Manchester United and Football’s basic function, symbolism and, more importantly the power to dictate our feelings and affect our sentiments, remains unaltered. As in the story about the knife, our feelings of emotional attachment remain constant, even though the Club and football is almost unrecognizable now from how it was 50 years ago.

Whether the changes that I have seen and experienced over this period of time have been for the better or worse is another argument. As you get older, you do get nostalgic and yearn for things past, and sometimes, I have to agree that nostalgia can cloud your vision. I make no bones about being a soccer romantic, I don’t feel the need to apologise for that. I love the history of my Club, the history of the Game, and as you know, I love to relate those histories, because I feel they are important in not only understanding what Manchester United is all about, but what the game of football is about also. Football has undergone a metamorphosis from the working class game that I knew all those years ago to the multi-million-pound celebrity led industry that it has become today.

Don’t get me wrong, the modern game still has a lot to offer, but it is all far from being a bed of roses. Since the advent of this infernal Premiership, a lot has happened that has badly affected the game in England, and set it back in terms of quality, progression, spectacle, understanding, and has affected the perception and the way that a club’s fans are treated. It has most certainly taken away the romanticism of the beautiful game. The advent of the television money in 1992 spawned a whole new outlook and generation of football fan. For the most part, the majority of so called ‘fans’ today do not attend matches, they simply watch football solely on television. These people to me are more to be called consumers rather than supporters. I am not talking about fans who are immersed in their clubs here, and who because of circumstance like distance, finance, and situation, cannot attend games. I am talking about the millions of what I call peripheral viewers who watch, pay their subscription, but in reality don't follow anybody. In pandering to their needs, television is most certainly attempting to, if they haven’t already done it, sanitise the game. In doing this, they are turning the game into something that it never was, and was most certainly never intended to be!

What we are seeing today is a breed of people never before seen in football in the past, and again, it has come with the television money and the Premiership. We are now beset with people who have, or have had, little or no connection with the game of football whatsoever. Agents, image makers, chief executives, commercial and marketing directors – people who now see football as career move, and who have little knowledge, nor love of the game of football. As football has supposedly progressed, these people have acquired positions of power and influence throughout the game. Rupert Lowe the former Southampton Chairman is a prime example. He openly states that he first saw a football match in 1996 – for God’s sake - 2 years later this man was Chairman of a Premiership club, and shortly after that held a powerful position at the F.A.! Similar to David Gill at United today. That gives grave concern, and should do to all genuine lovers of their Club and the Game – especially when the cultures and traditions of football in England really do mean something to them. How can we seriously have a situation when the people who have become the decision makers in our beautiful game have an inverse proportion to their knowledge and feelings for football? Most of the people running the game today have little or no time for what has happened in the past – the history of the game- they just couldn’t give a toss about it. Yet if they really sat down and thought about it, it is that past and those events of yesteryear that has really shaped the game as we know it today. They really should be thinking that football’s past is surely not a chronicle of wasted of time. If they could only see that it is the key to understanding all that happens in football today, and what will happen in the future. Chief executives and marketing Directors, really do get under my skin today. They refer to the genuine fans as ‘customers’ and ‘punters’ – they are this new breed which I spoke of. They may well be equipped with business nous but have no understanding of the history and traditions that football has, so as such, they have very little empathy with, and most certainly fail to meet the needs of their club’s supporters. It sickens me when I see them pumping anything from credit cards, insurance, tatty replica shirts, underwear, and the myriad of other shoddy things things on view, in their supporter’s faces whilst at the same time telling them to; ‘Feel the pride and the passion!” There are millions of us out there, who as fans really do understand the game as the true fan should – through your nerve ends!

It’s my honest opinion that the genuine football fan of today is in reality no different than the fan of 50 years go, or even 100 years ago, even though the game has changed so significantly through those times. We feel the pride and the passion on a daily basis, but not how these chief executives and marketing moguls do – we feel it through the genuine love of our clubs and the love of the game – not through owning a club credit card or replica shirt! I cringe when I hear these “new” people go to great pains to say that their supporters are the lifeblood of the club – in reality the truth is, that they view them quite differently. Most of these people are only in it for themselves and the vast amounts of monies that are on offer to them – as far as they are concerned - the needs of the fans certainly come well down the pecking order!

Television is also transforming the game into something it was never intended to be. They are bringing the game to a sanitised state. It used to be a wonderful spectacle – a true physical and mental experience. But during this last 15 years, the physical side of the game has been year by year, gently eroded. Sky t.v. especially, now has enormous influence on the game and definitely influences what happens at both the F.A. and the Premiership. Every little detail in the game is dissected, especially by people like ex-players who believe the game only started when they played the game. Robust and fractious play is now frowned upon by the television moguls because they fear it will be an affront to the sensibilities of their new ‘consumers’ and that they will not tune in again. This new breed of so called ‘supporter’ who only follows the game on the tube, finds it pleasing to the eye – the real football fan however, finds that the game engages the heart, the mind, the soul – we are totally immersed and touched by it.

That is why when I left Old Trafford after the Boxing Day game I felt the way that I did. The realization of what was really happening to my club and the beautiful game which I love so much, finally hit home, and it also made me understand why people go to watch clubs like FCUM.