FOOTBALL AND CAPITALISM

An odd marriage?

Eagleton, Football a dear friend of capitalism

• Armchair left approach to football?• “If every rightwing thinktank came up with a scheme to

distract the populace from political injustice and compensate them for lives of hard labour, the solution in each case would be the same: football”.

• “No finer way of resolving the problems of capitalism”• “Modern societies deny men and women the

experience of solidarity, which football provides to the point of collective delirium”

• Co-operation and competition are cunningly balanced (individual talents+ selfless teamwork)

• Players are hero-worshipped, but one reason you revere them is because they are alter egos, who could easily be you

• Football is a matter of spectacle but one that also invites the intense participation of its onlookers.

• Football combines tradition, postmodernism attitude to amnesia, the characteristics of a religious faith and a carnival, providing the common people with a safety valve for subversive feelings.

• Along with television, it is the supreme solution to that age-old dilemma of our political masters: what should we do with them when they're not working?

• CONCLUSION: ABOLISH FOOTBALL

D.Zirin, Football is not just about capitalism

• Eagleton’sabsence of understanding on the relationship between sport and modern society.

• Are football fans just addicts permanently distracted from what "really matters" as we engage in a pastime with no redeeming value?

• We love it because it's exciting, interesting and at its best, rises to the level of art.

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• Like all art, sport at its essence – what attracts us to it in the first place – holds within it a view of human potential unshackled

• We now know that as soon as human beings could clothe and feed themselves, they played. Sports is as human an act as music, dance, or organising resistance. As sports such as football reflect our society, they also reflects struggle.

• For instance in Port Said, Egypt recently. A football match became a killing field, with at least 74 spectators dead, and as many as 1,000 injured. “The shock of Port Said hasn't produced a political coma but instead acted as a defibrillator, bringing a revolutionary impatience back to life” (D.Zirin).

Football in Tahir Square• Lots of Egyptian activists argue that in 2011- and maybe today as

well - the ultras have been key protectors of the revolution, both physically and structurally, in the sense that they keep intense pressure on the state to listen to popular demands.

• The Al-Ahly ultras - after being a leading street fighting force during the revolution, have become a leading target of the military. The Al-Ahly ultras wear that target proudly, chanting gamesOh you MPsYou turned out to be more rotten than the policeRaise the prison walls higher and higherTomorrow the revolution with lay them to wasteOh brother, write on the cell wallJunta rule is shameful and treasonousDown Down with Junta rule!

• Now not only are many Egyptians coming to the defense of the ultras but, remarkably, ultra groups from opposing clubs have pledged to join forces, seeing the attack on Al-Ahly as an attack on all of them.

J.Barnes, Football's debt to socialism

• The best football teams are socialist in nature. They play for each other, and individual brilliance is often subservient to the common good. Even the language of team sport is socialist – solidarity, unite, goal, come together.

• Barcelona, possibly the world's most successful club, are the living embodiment of this idea as they are owned by the supporters for the supporters.

• England players and the Premier League. Never has there been a more pure and banal example of the cult of the individual: a Premier League in which everything is measured by money and the success that that money has bought, and the money that that success will then generate: the supreme hydra-headed monster.

• Is playing for England as important as playing for Chelsea, Manchester United or Liverpool? No, because the monetary rewards don't compare.

• Brian Clough, who gave tickets for Derby's games to striking miners and agitated for a player walkout (admittedly after he had walked out on Derby), was once asked by the former Labour MP, Austin Mitchell, whether he was a superstitious man? "No, Austin, I'm not," he answered. "I'm a socialist." Sure he drove a Mercedes, but he wanted everybody to be able to drive a Mercedes.

• When asked if the coming World Cup would help the poor of Brazil, Socrates said, "There will be lots of public money disappearing into people's pockets. Stadiums will be built and they will stay there for the rest of their lives without anyone using them. It's all about money. What we need to do is keep up public pressure for improvements in infrastructure, transport, sewerage, but I reckon it will be difficult."

• Bill Shankly (Liverpool Manager - 3 league Title -2 FA CUPS -1 UEFA cup)

• "The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That's how I see football, that's how I see life"

• Socrates, Death of a LegendSocrates may be the only professional athlete to ever organize a

socialist cell among his fellow players. He helped assemble Corinthians, a club team from Sao Paolo built on a radical political foundation. Corinthians proceeded to become a focal point for national discontent with Brazil's military dictatorship.The military had ruled Brazil since 1964, when it overthrew the left-wing president, João Goulart, who promised land redistribution and nationalisation of industry. By the early 1980s, as the dictatorship was beginning to strain under the weight of mass repression and economic stagnation, Socrates and his teammate Wladimir organised and played for Corinthians, known as the "Time do Povo" or "Team for the People", to demonstrate the power of democracy.

“What needs to change here is the focus on development. We need to prioritise the human being. Sadly, in the globalised world, people don't think about individuals as much as they think about money, the economy, et cetera."

Going Capitalistic in UK football?

Football Capitalism • Definition: free movement of labour free

movement of capital • Compare:• Football Social Democracy- free movement of

labour but controls on capital mobility (most of Europe)

• Football Socialism – restraints on capital and labour mobility (NFL’s style)

• Socialism in the US sport?!?!?!?!? Yes they can• As a matter of fact the new American owners

of Liverpool stated that they were lured into buying a stake of the “Reds” cause: "EPL" – the English Premier League – was that they get to keep all the money they make, rather than having to share it as they would have to under the – their phrase – "very socialistic" rules that operate in US sport. In other words, England has become a magnet for those drawn to behave in a way they couldn't get away with at home.

For the current state of our football sheds a rather revealing light on the current state of both our politics and our economy. Or, as one sage of the sport puts it: "As ever, the national game reflects the nation's times.”

If capitalism is often described metaphorically as a race in which the richest always win, football has turned that metaphor into an all too literal reality.

• Two types of stability in football economics

• Long run- Growth trends and volatility over time: attendance, revenues, club identity

• Short run-Sensitivity to economic shocks (recession and economic crisis)

The long run stability of English Football

• In 1923 the Football League consisted of 88 teams organized in four divisions of 22 teams.

• In the 2007/08 season: 85 still existed (97%) • 75 remained in the top four divisions (85%) • 48 were in the same division as they were in 1923

(54%)• Only 9 teams (10%) remaining in the top four

divisions were two or more divisions away from where they were in 1923

Compare stability in other industries

• • What happened to the top 100 companies of 1912? By 1995:

• Only 20 remained in the top one hundred • Only 50 survived • 7 liquidated • 6 nationalised• 37 had been acquired by other firms

The Financial Crisis and English Football

• Since September 2008:• Loss of sponsorship income (e.g. Manchester United

and AIG) • Several clubs up for sale (e.g. Newcastle United) • Questions asked about debt finance of US owners

(Glazers, Hicks) • Control of West Ham decided by Icelandic bankruptcy

court• Clubs entering insolvency proceedings (Southampton,

Darlington, Chester City, Stockport County)

OCCUPY FOOTBALL?

• Inequality is built into sport: some people are simply stronger or faster than others….BUT…a different kind of inequality matters too: money. A rich club can buy up all the best players and win every time.

• It means the half-dozen top sides, already at a different level from the rest, soared even higher towards the stratosphere and out of reach – in just the same way that the super-rich float ever further away from everyone else, the 1% in a different league from the 99%, as the Occupy protesters would put it.

IS IT THE MARKET STUPID?

• According to dogmatic capitalism there is nothing we can do to stop the richest teams dominating football than you can prevent the fastest sprinter winning gold. That's the force of the market, all but a law of nature.

• American sport to show us another way….

• 1. there are those rules on revenue-sharing that so frustrated Liverpool's new owners. All the money that, say, a baseball team makes – from tickets, TV rights and merchandise – is taxed by the major league that runs the sport and spread around the other clubs, so that the richest cannot dwarf the rest. WHY? Because they understand that their sport is worth nothing if it stops being a real competition, if only a handful of the wealthiest teams ever have a chance of winning. Redistributing the wealth around the league ensures their sport doesn't become boring. It does not level the playing field, but it comes very close.

• Over the past 19 seasons, 12 different teams have won baseball's biggest prize. In the 19 seasons since the Premier League was created, only four teams have won; Manchester United alone have won the title 12 of those 19 times.

2. In American football and basketball a salary cap applies, limiting how much each club can pay in wages and thereby preventing the richest teams making their domination permanent by snapping up all the best players.

3. In the same spirit, teams in all major US sports submit to a "draft", in which they take turns picking from a pool of newly eligible players, so that the equivalent of Chelsea or Manchester City can't gobble up all the fresh talent, but instead have to let the Blackburns or Wigans have a go.

Is this a dream in Europe? Let’s have a look back in time…

When the founders of the Football League gathered in a Manchester hotel in 1888, they pound upon how they might ensure that a fixture between, say, Derby County and Everton remained a real contest. They agreed the home side should give a proportion of its takings to the visitors, a system that held firm till 1983.

After that…….

• Clubs shared the TV money when it came too, spreading it around all 92 league clubs. But the big teams always resented subsidising the minors; indeed, the Premier League was formed out of the biggest 20 clubs' express desire to keep Rupert Murdoch's millions for themselves.

• Upcoming Uefa "financial fair play" rules will require teams to live within their earnings, which should put an end to the sugar daddy handouts of Man City and Chelsea. But that 2014 change will push clubs to maximize their revenue, which is bound, in turn, to mean even less sharing. Football will still be a game determined by who has most money.

CONSEQUENCES

• 1. Football's most storied clubs have become attractive to foreign tycoons who are allowed to make money, unrestricted (Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City…..)

• 2. A model was established that is inherently unsustainable, involving colossal debts that cripple all those without a billionaire to bail them out. Since 1992, league clubs and one Premier League team – Portsmouth – have fallen insolvent 55 times.

• 3. We risk killing the golden goose, turning an activity that should be thrilling into a non-contest whose outcome is all but preordained.

Galeano, Football in Sun and Shadow, p. 1

• History of Football is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got turn out by its very roots […] Play has become a spectacle […]with few protagonists and many spectators: football for watching […] The technocracy of professional sport has managed to impose a football of lightning speed and brute strength, a football that negates joy and kills fantasy and outlaws daring.