Monday, November 14, 2011
Becoming a professional footballer is not easy. Most of us aren’t blessed with the exhilarating ability of Lionel Messi, the sultry good looks of David Beckham or Carlos Tevez’ agent so we try and sate our football desire in other ways.
Some people become match officials. Referees and linesmen, they get to rub shoulders with players and show them who is boss with their whistle, cards and flags but really for anyone who is a keen student of the game, or is just football daft, it’s a real last resort. Because for people who really know football, who love the game, those officials, like traffic wardens and people who draw up complicated visa requirements, such positions maybe vital but not something you’d want to boast about to close friends at dinner parties or in the pub.
Other frustrated players get more involved in their local club. They may start fanzines or blogs, design and sell t shirts or just do their best to never miss a game home or away and make sure as many people as possible are aware of their limitless devotion.
Then we have match day stewards. What better way of showing how ‘in’ you are with football than wearing a yellow jacket every home game, watching for free and telling everyone else to sit down and shut up.
The high profile role of stewards at football is a relatively recent phenomenon. They have always been around but it’s only in recent years they have taken over many of the duties formerly carried out by policemen in stadiums.
Now, instead of policemen telling you not to raise that middle finger so often or asking you politely to sit down because the lady behind you, the one with the pink hat, can’t see through you, it’s stewards. And whereas before stewards would be fans of the club only to happy to help out, now they’re brought in, often by sub contractors, and instead of fans they are people on power kicks, often with sad meaningless lives away from the stadium with feelings of low self esteem.
But give them a uniform and the power to kick out football fans for celebrating a goal or questioning the parentage of the man with the whistle and a whole new persona takes over. They become a jobsworth. They may not know the offside rule, or have a clue who won the FA Cup in 1987 but they have memorized all the rules and regulations pertaining to a football stadium and the issuance of match day tickets.
They’ll quite happily tell a first time visitor to the stadium off for eating a bag of crisps they had bought outside, perhaps even threaten them with eviction, for no other reason than they can. It’s the regulations, and it’s more than his, or her, job is worth to overlook the matter. But deep inside they luxuriate in the power and the knowledge that they have this power over everyone in the stadium. Because they know the rules.
It’s not just England where these busy little people have made their mark. Singapore to. Singapore where the local league attracts crowds in the low hundreds, every game is manned by these people in their fluorescent jackets out to spoil someone’s evening.
I saw one man at a game with his son and during half time they started munching on some snacks they had brought with them. Along came the jobsworth in yellow and told them that no, if they wanted refreshment they must buy stuff from the vendors inside the stadium. It was written on the back of the ticket.
Father and son. They are the bedrock of football’s future. Every club needs them attending games regularly to keep the gene pool revolving on the terraces. That’s not the way the jobsworth looks at it.
A few feet away, at the same game, there were a handful of fans banging drums and waving flags. The same tickets actually forbid drums and flags from the stadium but for some reason best known to jobsworth it was a man and his son he picked on.
The SEA Games football competition started last week in Jakarta with teams like Myanmar, Brunei, Timor Leste, Vietnam and Laos doing their best to excite the fans. Without the hosts Indonesia, or even local powerhouses Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, turnout was always going to be low, and that was before ticket prices were announced with the best tickets in the stadium going for an outrageous 500,000 rupiah.
So far empty seats have surrounded security officials and stewards as games are played in front of a few expats and a plethora of uninterested people with clipboards. And stewards. Stewards everywhere. Standing on the stairs, standing at the gates, standing in the aisles. Everywhere you looked there were stewards.
I don’t doubt the stewards were told by their bosses to stand up during the game. The problem with that idea, apart from being totally daft and tiring on the poor lasses in their platform shoes, is that the fans who actually bought tickets had their view blocked by these mannequins. Ask one to sit down and she would shuffle along the row and stand in front of someone else, blocking their view. And when they finally did sit down, you should have seen their nervous glances up to the VIP box.
Good stewarding, like good policing and good refereeing, should be invisible. Unfortunately, given the fragile egos who take up the glow in the dark jacket, being anonymous isn’t on the menu. What’s the point of being a jobsworth if you can’t impress on people how much you think your job is worth?
Carling Cup
It has long been thought that the big English clubs have looked down their noses at the Carling Cup. With the stature of the English Premier League as well as the importance clubs place on qualifying for the UEFA Champions League the Carling Cup is assumed to have slipped down the list of priorities at the big teams.
The facts however suggest otherwise. One from Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United has appeared in every final in 2004. If you add Tottenham Hotspur to that list, they have always taken the competition more seriously than other clubs, then only one final since 1998 has featured none of the five.
Managers like Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho would suggest that winning is a habit that needs to run through the whole club and that by winning even the ‘lowly’ Carling Cup would provide a boost throughout the football club as well as giving the fans something to cheer. And certainly Manchester United fans have had plenty to cheer about having won the trophy three times in the last six years.
Contrast that with Arsenal where manager Arsene Wenger has frequently expressed his contempt for the competition though after the heartbreaking defeat to Birmingham City last season perhaps he has now changed his view.
This season’s quarter final draw shows how seriously the big teams take the competition. The new money bags of English football, Manchester City, travel to London to take on last season’s beaten finalists, Arsenal who have turned around a season that was heading to debacle a couple of months back.
Chelsea host Liverpool. The Blues have appeared in four finals since 1998, winning two, while Liverpool have appeared in more finals than any other team, ten, and won more than any other team, seven. Liverpool have been showing signs of starting to gel and Kenny Dalglish, part of the Liverpool team that won the trophy in four successive years back in the 1980s knows all about how important picking up a winners medal is for a player’s self esteem.
At Old Trafford Manchester United will take on Crystal Palace. Ironically, given the perceived wisdom of big club apathy being a recent phenomena, United have never really rated the competition and it wasn’t until 1983 that they made their first final. They lost to Liverpool but Sir Alex has been less condescending and under his reign they have appeared in seven finals, winning four. Including back to back triumphs in 2009 and 2010.
The only romance on the cards will come from Wales where Cardiff City host Blackburn Rovers. The Lancashire side of course won the trophy back in 2002, their only success so far.
The odds are the final this year will yet again be dominated by the big boys of English football leaving the minnows to fight for the scraps and pray for the occasional home draw, like Aldershot hosting Manchester United in the last round, which can provide a much needed financial windfall. Still, Birmingham City showed last season what is possible.
The likes of Manchester United and Arsenal have used the cup as a training ground for their younger players as well as an opportunity for players on the fringes of the squad to show their worth.
The facts though suggest that
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