For the past 26 years, a lot has changed (and not only) in football. At FIFA, what started in 1998 with serial betrayal on an epic scale, ended in mayhem in 2015: Blatter’s reign. At UEFA, what was a period of solid progress throughout the tenure of Lennart Johannson, was followed by the incompetence of a deified footballer who was just that but didn’t have the first clue about running a confederation or the governance required: it, too, crumbled, until it nearly collapsed – also in 2015.
There were periods inbetween that reminded one of excellence and savoir-faire, but there were others that would shed a dim light on the game.
What this writer finds amusing, is that the decades-long corruption scandals of bankers and the financial industry as a whole triggered billion-dollar fines but never, or hardly ever, ended with the arrest and conviction of banksters. We know the outcome in football: here, a megalomanic self-promoter, there, an ascetic doer. Both lawyers, except that one of them actually understands the law, while the other just lost a huge number of his own legal team: they refused to follow the diktat and move to Miami (good luck with the transfer window this summer, which usually requires up to 60 immersed lawyers, now gone).
Throughout those infamous 26 years, one thing remained constant. Whenever things went pear-shaped in football, there was one decrepit corner of the world that would present the same-old narrative, best characterized by the ‘I could do better because I am so entitled, it hurts’. One is reminded of the maxim that arrogance is the step-sister of ignorance, while ignorance is the step-brother of idiocy.
The narrative I am referring to is the English mainstream football media that lived and so often still seems to live not for the excitement for the game (one could even assume that the game itself plays second fiddle) but of the excitement brought to you, the reader, by those who always know better when it come to football.
‘Amertume’, a perpetual bitterness, appears to typify the perfectly imperfect commentary that erupts before every single tournament, be that the EUROS, or the World Cup, and it only ebbs away, after yet another major tournament, is lost by the team that is supposed to ‘bring it home’. It is this arrogance, combined with the impression it gives of a deep-rooted conviction that football belongs only to the English. No-one else. English published football opinion can be nauseating.
No matter who the competitors are – they are automatically the minions on the national team’s guaranteed journey to glory. Thing is, that journey usually dies a sudden death in the knock-out stages of a tournament. But that does not matter, does it? What matters is that “we always knew that the refs were biased”, or “that one goal was pure luck”, or “their victory is thoroughly undeserved”, or “VAR is shite”. They also knew that the ball was round – but since it is a German ball, or an American ball, it doesn’t really cut it, does it? International football to the English commentators is like the Dominion voting machines to Fox News. Difference being, that Fox paid an $800 million fine for its bullshit reporting.
Looking at the long game (an old English favourite), its English media have rarely had something to boast about in terms of the football prowess of their own national team (their ladies are exempt from the broad brush: a highlight). And when the men lose – and they do lose with certain regularity – the Farage-approach to English football kicks in. Either openly, in one or two populist rags that boast big circulation figures, or more covertly at “the local” where everybody laments in drunken stupor that “they were robbed again”.
The racism in football is as rife as it is hidden in cricket and English society as a whole. It used to be behind your back until the advent of a true English conundrum by the name of Tommy Robinson surfaced, and a semi-resurrected halfwit and Brexit promoting dunce Nigel Farage found a new reformed platform (he hates foreigners so much that his wife is German and his flame is French; cool runnings).
But my observations today are not about one of the island’s cherished pastimes: xenophobia. No, this is about the undying certainty that only the English understand football, the soul of the game, its governance and management. Nobody else. And their mainstream who always know best.
The most recent example of this need to tear down, destroy, ridicule, lecture and morally school those who are (elected) leaders of the game and who actually know what they are doing came from a borderline laughable piece by one writer who is on the payroll of a Russian oligarch, now Peer.
That writer opined a day or two into the EUROS not about football (why should he? After all, he’s a football writer..), but about an interview he saw with UEFA’s President on ZDF German TV about the topic of the day in Germany, the EUROS, and what they mean to the country in many more ways than one.
What caught the ire of the pre-eminent scribe – who has taken the role of prosecutor, judge and jury, as well as a self-appointed evangelical genius – was not the football, or how well the Tshermans had organized it all, or how many more teams were competing this time, or how this is a month of excitement for the whole world because “it is coming home” (shortly, chill). No. It was about his horrified upset that the President of UEFA had the audacity NOT to confirm or deny or whatever, that he was actually NOT standing again for President after his present term ends in three years.
At a time when football is pretty much on everybody’s agenda – especially those who actually watch football, go to matches and have fun doing all that – the really really big issues in Europe are about somebody else’s job, and why that somebody has the audacity not only to have it but to decline to confirm or deny whether he wants another go, although he did say that his plans are for a different direction.
Never mind that the next UEFA president will not be elected for three years, picking a fight in football’s political circles at exactly this moment in time is clearly the most important issue to be faced, never mind the stunning football that is being played on the pitch, right now, at the Euros.
Even taking a wider macro-scale view on the importance of an event three years down the line pales into insignificance against what is happening in the real world, again, right now: the possibility that we shall all be dead in a few months if the international collective of assholes drop a few thermonuclear bombs on Europe; the likelihood that yet another imbecile is elected to run England, and with it Britain into the ground in a couple of weeks, and the reality that the Americans have the amazing option to vote for an incontinent zombie or a convicted felon for president.
No, the big global issue we need to be writing about is whether or not Čeferin will actually run one more time or whether he won’t… In three years from now.
This is of course is far more important to write about than the political situation and snap election called by President Macron in France that caused the French players at Euro 2024 to make their own bold political statements.
Arrogance is the step-sibling of ignorance. Ignorance is the cousin of idiocy. And English football journalism too often tends to be the arrogant pursuit of anything that is not run by an Englishman – who could do so much better (Gilly thought so, too?). A bit like Sir Stanley Rouse who steadfastly prevented banning apartheid South Africa from football.
Fact is though, a prevailing mood across Europe is that this kind of English lesson nobody needs anymore.
Enjoy the EUROS and let’s hope they bring it home this time around. Please! Enough with the proclamations already! Bring it home – wherever that home may be: England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Because that’s where it will definitely go home to next time, for the EURO 2028 finals.
James Dostoyevsky was a Washington-based author until the end of 2018, where he reported on sports politics and socio-cultural topics. He returned to Europe in 2019 and continues to follow football politics – presently with an emphasis on the Middle East, Europe and Africa.