Anti-football, Anti-Arsenalism And The Misguided Self Preservation Of English Football – Part II
ByIn yesterday’s article, I laid out the first part of a coherent argument against what I feel ails English football.
Read: Anti-football, Anti-Arsenalism And The Misguided Self Preservation Of English Football – Part I.
In today’s final instalment, I want to address the role played by different parties in perpetuating this insalubrious culture of thuggery disguised as commitment, grit and steel.
3. It’s Not Just a Hill Of Beans, It’s a Very Big Deal
3.1 The Role Of Players
I mentioned yesterday that when it comes to players, there are two key underlying factors that have contributed to this decay:
- The issue of technically inferior players substituting technique with excessive aggression and thinking that this caveman approach to football is acceptable.
- The culture and environment that these players have been brought up in and continue to work in. It’s a culture that promotes the virtues of English football as being that of the physical ”blood and thunder, leg breaking, gut busting, full contact aggression” – that is typical of the ancient ‘Chuck Norris and Van Damme’ one man hero mentality that conquers all.
When these players cross that white line and get on the pitch, they are wired to unleash the cocktail of systematic violence as a deliberate strategy to slow down the opposing team – whether by physical or psychological means.
They have been programmed to believe that their physical attributes are a shoe in for the lack of technical prowess, and that it’s acceptable to endanger the careers of other professionals by being reckless and aggressive.
These players are conditioned to believe that brawn has more equity than common sense, and apply most of their energy implementing the tenets of this stone age approach to football. Aided by the collusion of weak and incompetent referees who let them get away with murder, the players feel justified as the inaction of the referees are an implicit validation of their strategy.
Such players cannot be absolved from taking responsibility for their actions. It’s inevitable that this systematic rotational fouling coupled with tackles made with excessive force that are supposed to send a ’statement’ to the opposing player will end up with a horror show on the pitch.
Each and every single player has a duty of care to their professional colleagues. It’s unacceptable to think you can go around doing your Chuck Norris or Van Damme impressions and thinking this makes you a footballing cult hero. It makes you a thug.
3.2 The Role Of Managers
In a lot of ways, the managers who deliberately or subtly sanction the use of systematic thuggery by their players are more culpable than the players themselves.
They are in a position of influence and should be held accountable for their actions or inactions in perpetuating the culture of brute force being accepted as part and parcel of English football.
They provide sickening excuses that their only way to survive in the Premiership is to use this brute force for it is their only strength. They spend their resources recruiting gladiators who have little or no technical ability and unleash them onto the world to show that they have that good ‘ole fashioned grit and steel to graft their way through the season.
They pump up their players on and off the pitch with team talks typically including tactics of stopping the opposition by any ‘legal’ means – not caring whether they understand that once their gladiators are on the pitch – there is no controlling what will happen when that brute force is unleashed.
They use euphemisms like ”Let’s get in their faces and up their noses”, “Let them know you’re there” or “Let him feel you and see if he has the appetite”. They publicly extol the misguided virtues of their insalubrious tactics openly contributing to its validation as the warped principles of English football.
3.3 Football Administrators and Referees
The corruption and incompetence within football administrations world over is legendary. The English FA is no exception. Their main concern is to focus on self preservation and to try and sell to the world the only things they have – English football and the FA cup.
The incompetence of the administration is so breath-taking, they don’t realise the damage that this thuggery disguised as the English brand of football is doing to the game. They deliberately go out of their way to mask the seedy and ugly side of English football as it’s not in their interest to address the issues and make things more public.
I’d like to use the Carling Cup game between West Ham and Millwall in August 2009 to illustrate my point. There were shameful and ugly scenes reminiscent of the hooliganism that was the scourge of English football in the 80s and early 90s.
It was the hooliganism that led to English football being suspended for 5 years from European competitions by UEFA. It was the hooliganism that so badly hurt the image of English football around the world and cost it both in reputation and substance.
What do the FA do for self preservation?
By their inaction, they collude with the media to white wash the coverage of the hooliganism at that West Ham and millwall game. For an FA bidding to host the World cup in 8 years time, such scenes have no place in a public forum and so they just do what they do best – cover their arses.
What is interesting is that in that very week (and a couple of weeks that followed), Arsene Wenger and Eduardo became the anti-Christ according to the media. Eduardo’s alleged dive and Wenger’s defence of his player was apparently more serious than hooliganism. You figure that one out.
In the same way, addressing the ills of English football with regards to the thuggery being branded as part of the game is not in their interests because it’s a direct beeline to a loss of revenue. It’s not in their interest to take action because it forces the issue to be addressed and the world will see this thuggery for what it is.
It forces them to address the deficiencies in English football and forces them to deal with the fact that for decades, they have let their incompetence stifle the development of English football by their inability to recognize the need to move from the stone age into the 21st century.
As for referees – my contempt for this group of individuals is perhaps not worth any more real estate on this blog, but I’ll say a few words.
Referees have the power to stop this nonsense yet they plead insanity when it comes to using that power as a deterrent.
Just using the game against Stoke at the weekend as an example, if Peter Walton had done is job before that tackle, and in particular cautioned Stoke players for their continuous indiscipline, the Stoke players would be loathed to enter his book for a second time.
By Walton’s inactions, the Stoke players felt validated and justified. We all know the result – and what’s even shocking is that Walton was not going to give any card until he saw the actual injury and was duty bound (if that means anything at all to them) to send off Shawcross.
Walton is not the only culprit. Many of the English referees perpetuate the culture of unleashing brute force by their in-action and their ’play on play on’ mentality.
They use excuses like ‘letting the game flow’ and are clearly influenced by the misguided media talk about Arsenal being ’too soft’.
All we ask is that referees do the job they are paid to do without fear or favour.
The Media
For the avoidance of doubt – I’m referring to the print media and all their Fleet Street cousins; TV and in particular Sky Sports, the BBC and ITV; and radio – in particular talk Sport and BBC sports radio – together with the internet portals for all these entities.
There’s a culture where pots call kettles black and certain parts of the media refer to other parts of the media as the bad guys. They point fingers at each other as if they were the righteous section of this media cesspit, and attempt to remove themselves from the faecal matter they collectively shovel in.
My sentiments are to all these factions of the media who are the biggest culpable entity to the scourge of English football. I see the disastrous influence of the media in several ways.
(i) Self preservation
Conventional media is dying the death of a thousand paper cuts. Print media isn’t what it used to be. Newspaper sales have dropped to the lowest levels in our generation. TV and radio haven’t been forgiven as the internet and super fast connection speeds have given consumers a very powerful weapon – choice.
In order to survive, the media has had to adapt, albeit at a snail’s pace. We’ve seen the explosion of 24-hour news media, as well as the move from print as a medium to internet based portals for sending out news to consumers. There is one common thread in the way the media has sought to adapt, and that is to chase the money any which way.
The different media houses and companies have bills and salaries to pay and they have gone full throttle into survival mode. Their biggest threat is citizen media, a perfect example being this and many other blogs giving individuals the power of choice and expression that they didn’t have before.
Sensationalism and hyperbole thus becomes the biggest weapon that the media have as they leverage the global reach that they’ve built for decades to shove their shit down our throats.
And all this simply to sell advertising. Advertising is a game of numbers, and it’s a game of ratings. The more dependent these media houses have become on advertising revenue (and it is very true that conventional advertising is being over-taken by internet advertising), the more outlandish the sensationalism and hyperbole has become.
The end result is the clamour for ratings and traffic at the cost of journalistic and professional integrity.
Like I said, they have bills to pay.
(ii) Incompetence
The worst thing you can do to the quality of any professional discipline is to take a former footballer, shove a Top Shop suit on them and put them in front of a camera to provide an opinion.
I believe they call it punditry, but these cretins have taken football through the eyes of the media to a whole new low. Is it too much for the paying public to ask for these media houses to employ competent people who have actually been educated to a level that qualifies them to communicate with a modicum of professionalism to the viewers?
Perhaps they should implement some sort of City and Guilds or NVQ (anything more is asking too much) qualification on basic communication and presentation skills – and the need for a grasp of subject matter before one becomes a pundit.
The end result is that the misinformed views and incompetent judgements of a select few platinum idiots who are morally bankrupt are allowed to taint the landscape of football as – wait for this – ‘expert opinion as pundits’.
It’s unbelievable that out of the entire population that has played and followed football, we’re stuck with this bunch of incompetent and openly biased cretins being prostituted around the world as experts.
As regular as clockwork, these punks have crawled from the woodwork in the last few days to do what they do best – unleash their diatribe about how Arsenal is soft”, “How Arsenal are too quick and that’s why they get injured”, “How Arsenal need to get with the program and develop a spine for that is the blood thunder and guts way football is played in England”, “how Shawcross or Taylor are nice lads who have no nasty bone in their body and regularly give to charity” – yada, yada yada.
Some even suggest that if Wenger doesn’t like the ‘physical game’, then he should go and coach in Spain or Italy where they appreciate the ‘beautiful’ football more. They even go ahead and try to justify their xenophobia masked as honest debate. I’ve never heard so much intellectual masturbation in my life.
(h5> (iii) Bias and Xenophobia
I’ve covered this extensively in the How ‘English’ Is the English Premier League series – and I’ll just mention a few issues around this here.
- The media has continuously sought to find reasons to portray anything they don’t comprehend as not good enough for English football. In the global world we live in – variety is the spice of life – unless of course you develop an ignorant perception that your way of life and your way of football is in imminent danger of extinction.
- The media has constantly sought to turn a blind eye when it comes to the ills of English football – and as a counter action, have relentlessly highlighted aspects involving foreign players and managers as a deflective tactic. A good example is the demonization of Arsene Wenger as a whinger and moaner – and the praising of Harry Redknapp as a success story of English managers; despite the fact that 4 of the clubs Harry has managed have either gone into administration or close to administration. Coincidence? I tell you it’s easier to find a 21 year old virgin in Sodom and Gomorrah than for that to be coincidence. Redknapp has a breath-taking ability to leave debris wherever he goes yet no one chooses to raise this as an issue.
- The application of selective amnesia when it comes to issues that highlight the ugly side of English football – whether it’s blatant diving by Rooney or Gerrard, or whether it’s the unsavoury tactics of the English golden boys off the pitch.
- The constant peddling of the misguided truth and convenient lie that foreigners have significantly hampered the development of the English game. In truth, the EPL wouldn’t be what it is without these foreign players. The millions of fans around the world who pay to watch the EPL and generate the billions for the Premier league coffers will not be paying to watch Bolton play Stoke City week in week out.
4. Conclusion
Take any event in isolation, and you could possibly make a respectable argument about it being a freak event. That’s not the case though.
Take the players’ attitude and conditioning, take the culture engrained in the establishment about the reckless and wild blood and thunder brand of English football, take the collusion by the administration and referees, take the shovelling of all this shit by the media – and mix it all up as part of the same collective problem and ladies and gentlemen, you have a hell of a lot more than a hill of beans.
Enough is enough and something has to give.
Tue 13th September 2011; 19:45, Dortmund
Top notch stuff Darius. It’s interesting to see the media this time at least trying to appear to give some balance. Of course they throw it all away by ultimately trotting out the same tired lines you have made examples of above. As usual, the answer is already pre-formed in their minds. They just can’t help themselves.
Slowly, slowly, more of us are realising the truth about the anti-Arsenal campaign. It’s up to all of us to act. Don’t buy newspapapers and hurt them financially.
ClockEndRider.
Balance is golddust when it comes to sports journalism – and that’s something that would be welcome. It’s a shame that the voices of reason within the media establishment are quickly reined in and forced to tow the party line because they too have kids to feed and mortgages to service.
The second & concluding part of this post is on the same level – quality wise – as the first, and hits the right guilty targets as far as I’m concerned.
I think a key part of why the English football establishment has circled the wagon around both Shawcross and the culture & climate of opinion that constitutes English football is because:
(a)
they reflect – to a very large degree – their vision of how English football should be played, at all levels of the game.
(b)
they reflect – to a very large degree – something about the character, values & self perception of the traditional, ‘indigenous’ English population. See or read the excellent book by Jonathon Wilson on the history of football tactics for more on this point.
It seems to me that the English football establishment has not really accepted (nor appropriately & effectively adjusted to) the fact that the game is now operating in a global football economy in the 21st Century, and that this is not going to change anytime soon.
They need to fully realise that whilst the English may have invented the game of football way back when, since then, it’s been deconstructed, rebuilt & reinvented many times over in different ways in different parts of the world, and is continuing to do so.
It is the English game & football establishment that now needs to get with the programme, not the rest of the world, and certainly not Arsenal.
Darius,
Its a great read, I just wish England could work up and see. But, I am afraid it will take a Rooney broken leg for these lot to see sense in what you outline in your two part article in many others you have written, and in what Arsene Wenger sees and says (after all he is only a Johnny foreigner!!). Or may be they need to hear from his Lordship himself, Sir Alex Ferguson, if he says something, unfortunately, the media reports he has been on to Shawcross congratulating him for a good job done. For me SAF comes from the same school as Shawcross (he was his apprentice remember). He is the kind of managers you refer to above, just witness his unleashing of the Neville brothers on once Arsenal’s Jose Antonio Reyes in the autumn of 2004, or and if my memory serves me right, his Man U conduct on that fateful day in May (or was it April) 2002 when arsenal won the championship at Old Trafford.
Good post as usual Darius. I personally have just started to put this incident behind and don’t really care what anybody else says. I saw what I saw and it was not good. The last few days have been emotional and for me a bit depressing too. After the injury, the rest of the game for me was a blur until Vermaelen scored. Watching his reaction said it all.
As you say, the managers have a big part in this. Some idiot players do what they are told. As far as the media is concerned, for them, it’s all about getting a reaction and have more people tuning into them. They don’t care that a someone is in hospital for Christ sake and will spend a good pat of the next 12 months trying to get back to where he was. Some of the comments have been shocking and I am sure we are all appalled.
And the referees, well what can I say. Letting play go on is one thing, having a young kids career potentially ended (and I have faith that Ramsey will come back stronger then ever) is another. Why can’t they just use the f@#ing common sense or is that just too much to ask from players, managers and most of all referees.
Silver lining in all this (if there is any) is that we can all stick together like the boys did after the game and at least Ramsey will have the best medical care and Eduardo for support.
Excellent piece Darius.
Whilst I agree with most of your points, I think the basic problem is pure lack of thought & a desperation to stop the evolution of the English game.
I am afraid that we are battling against the tide.
When England again fail to shine at the World Cup, no doubt Arsene will be blamed for not playing enough Englishmen, rather than……
“The thing is English football, quite aside from this particular incident, will always be rough, tough and incredibly hard fought. The reason for this is it’s how we play the game as kids. We don’t stand round admiring each others skills and/or torsos, if someone was better than us in the playground, we kicked them until they were less good. Arsene Wenger has built an incredible team, a brilliant team capable of football the likes of which I have rarely seen before, if ever. But what he continually campaigns for is that this team should be allowed to fully express themselves without fear of hinderance from the other team, which is never going to happen in English football, because as supporters we won’t stand for it. We like our game the way it is, as does the rest of the world, which is why it enjoys the successes that it does”
http://www.whydelilah.co.uk/blog/vestanpancearsene-wenger-easy-admire-impossible
It is becoming clear from the “plunditry” including our own Lee Dixon & Martin Keown still live the the world described above, as well as a good %age of former players now coaching the game at some level.
There is probably not much hope for the overall improvement in technique to come through until the generation coming through our academy (& some others) system have had their careers & start to teach tne ongoing generations.
From the Stoke program:
Craig Sinclair – Academy player when asked about the best piece of advice given to him:
“Put it in row Z. If in doubt kick it out. Use protection.”
Not bad advice, in certain situations I wish Billy Boy would, but it is an indication of the lack of ambition at that level.
Excellent post, there is one thing that I would like to add though, although you’ve already alluded to it in your piece and that is the effect that this travesty has on the development of talented players. Exquisitely talented players are not encouraged here; strength and fitness are the default. It would be hard to imagine a Messi or Ronaldiniho developing under these conditions, without a doubt they would have been kicked to pieces as youth.
Consequently, if we are brutally honest with ourselves we have to admit that, Britain does not produce its fair share of truly world class, highly skilful players. I am speaking here of the really, really exceptionally gifted players. Currently from the English squad only Wayne Rooney would fit the bill.
Thus in order for Mr Wenger to deliver his brand of ‘The Beautiful Game’ to these shores, he has had to look abroad for the talented individuals to fulfil the task.
He has started to develop his own crop of talented British youth and look what happens… ‘The Brutal Game’, has taken him down!
‘The Brutal Game’, played in the UK cannot produce such talent, the powers that be, are doing this country a disservice with their ineptitude. It is no wonder that the country that invented the game has been left behind, in both it’s ability to produce truly ‘world class players’ and it’s ability to win major trophies.
Just as an exercise in venting my frustration at the “Plunditry” (Hat Tip Flint) here’s my response to Sam Wallace’s article in The Independent.
It’s long for a comment, I hope fellow readers will understand the underlying anger:
http://tinyurl.com/yl3zldw
If ever evidence were needed of the irresponsibility of the media in perpetuating the culture of violence in english football, Sam Wallace writing in The Independent today would be exhibit #1 (http://tinyurl.com/yl3zldw)
I, in my disgust, have decided to present my view of things in juxtaposition to Wallace’s effort. My request to Arsenal fans is this: Read both, and if you, like me, are persuaded, for the reasons I outline below, that Mr.Wallace’s effort is both lazy, fallacious, and offensive, please write to The Independent expressing your disgust. Being a fish-wrap is one thing, but this is really poor even by those standards.
Here are my grievances with the article:
First, the headline: “Ramsey’s injury a reminder that bad things sometimes happen by accident”.
Was this an accident at all? The question isn’t whether Shawcross stepped on the field, or into the tackle, with an intention to “do” Ramsey. The question is whether there was sufficient bias, personal, collective, and circumstantial, that increased the odds of the event happening.
Let’s take Shawcross’s record:
1) 2007; Francis Jeffers; tackle from behind; broken leg.
2) 2008; Adebayor; studs up with the ball out of play. He certainly wasn’t going for the ball there.
Next, Stoke’s attitude and intent: This quotation (http://tinyurl.com/yd44al9) from Ricardo Fuller sums it all up. Are we expected to believe that these were only his individual views, hermetically sealed off from the rest of the stoke squad? I suggest these were his takeaways from team meetings. You be the judge. Mind you, this is but one example. How many times have we heard opponents talk about “soft”, “physical”, and “mixing it up”? Lovely euphemisms all, I must point out.
The circumstances: As pointed out yesterday, the lack of proportionality in penalties means there’s nothing that deters players from going all in.
Under these circumstances, this wasn’t an accident, but an accident waiting to happen. There’s a difference.
Then there’s Mr.Wallace’s sifting of the evidence:
“As the Match of the Day replays showed, when Shawcross made contact with Ramsey he was attempting to strike the ball with the laces of his boot and not his studs. The tragedy of that moment was that Ramsey was just a second too quick for him and got there first.
The move started when Samir Nasri played the ball inside to Nicklas Bendtner, who flicked the ball up with his left foot and lost control of it, playing it limply with his second touch against the midriff of Shawcross, who was behind him. Shawcross moved past Bendtner, who stuck out a foot and then withdrew it to avoid the foul – which caused the Stoke man to alter his stride.
Shawcross’s second touch (after the ball originally hit him) with his right foot was heavy. Ramsey, already moving forward in anticipation of Arsenal’s break forward, saw his chance. He burst forward, touching the ball away from Shawcross with his right foot just as the Stoke man swung with his left to clear. But the ball had gone – and he struck Ramsey’s leg instead.”
My response: It is virtually impossible, unless one comes to the field wih a battle ax and mauls the opponent, to unambiguously dissect video evidence for violence. There’s no way under the sun to decisively interpret that Shawcross did, or didn’t, have enough time to restrain himself. Mr.Wallace suggests he couldn’t have, I suggest he could have. ‘Am I unambiguously and blatantly wrong?
It is this ambiguity that makes the circumstantial evidence outlined above crucial.
Then comes this: “But the severity of the injury does not mean that Shawcross can simply be dismissed by Wenger as a dangerous footballer.”
“And so a dangerous game of blame begins. When Arsène Wenger describes Ryan Shawcross’s challenge on Ramsey as “horrendous” and “unacceptable” he has to realise that, coming from someone of his status, those words have a lasting effect on the reputation of a young player like Shawcross.”
May I suggest that Ryan Shawcross’ personal conduct – and I’m not thinking crying and going home with mummy here – has an atleast as lasting and justified effect on his reputation? And that Wenger’s views, viewed under that light, aren’t entirely unreasonable?
The Conclusion: “When injuries like the one to Ramsey occur, the instinct is to blame someone. But the truth of football is that it can be brutal and cruel without it being someone’s fault.”
When a player has previous, when his team’s thoughts clearly extend to “getting stuck in”, and when there’s nothing in the form of punishment to deter him, he will err on the side of violence, making football brutal and cruel entirely out of voilition.
Hi Darius, posted this elsewhere, hope you don’t mind, I think it’s a relevant reference.
“Raphael Honigstein’s book on the peculiarities of English football, Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Die geheime Geschichte des englischen Fußballs, was published in German by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 2006, and the English version Englischer Fussball: A German View of Our Beautiful Game was published by Yellow Jersey Press in 2008.”
I’d also recommend the ‘It’s up for grabs now’ podcast this week. Alan Davies account and reaction to what happened on his twitter feed after he recommended Shawcross be banned for as long as the injured player is out, is interesting.
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What Flint describes above is something I’m familiar with, but I have to say, everyone I used to play with, hated that attitude, and if anyone would attempt to prove their ‘manhood’ upon the pitch, rather then show off tricks to girls watching (not very PC, but an honest memory!), they wouldn’t remain on the pitch very long, they’d be be lucky to get off it. English football is not entirely in thrall to these zombies. Maybe the fact that some of the kids I played with were committing GBH on a weekly or nightly basis meant that they had no suppressed violent urges? Either way, other peoples’ psychosis’ don’t need to be tolerated upon a football field, in my humble opinion.
I’ve played in cricket games, where I’ve had to wash blood out of a wicket, but that is a part of the game, a fast bowler is meant to intimidate and injure an opponent. That’s why Batsmen wear helmets etc.
If the delightful Delilah brand of ‘Football’ carries on, then it will eventually be played by people who dress like American Footballers.
A Tour de Force, Darius. Really good work.
One point, don’e excuse Ferguson though, His arrogance and double standards set so many agendas in english football
Thank you Darius for a quality, well reasoned post. Just to point out one fact: Alex Ferguson’s hypocrisy set most of the tone for the iZombies. He never comes out against anything, unless it will favour his club only.
Professional people matter a great deal in as much as what Im about to demonstrate to you is very urgent.