Ten years after David Conn’s influential book The Beautiful Game? Searching for the Soul of Football was published on the state of the game in England, Gary Andrews looks at what – if anything – has changed.
In 2005, the Premier League, we were told, was the best league in the world. It was a year of that night in Istanbul, the arrival of The Special One at Stamford Bridge and Wayne Rooney at Old Trafford. It was also the year sports journalist David Conn published his updated version of The Beautiful Game? Searching For The Soul Of Football. Both vital and depressing reading, it was an antidote to the pomp of Sky Sports, the bombast of Richard Scudamore and the breathless back page reporting of the tabloids.
For those who actually felt football was more than just multi-million pound transfers and football has lost touch with its roots and the communities that spawned them Conn’s meticulously researched book, examining the areas that some of those in charge would rather forget, became something of a bible.
“Looking at the game in 2005,” Conn wrote in his conclusion, “you can be an optimist or a pessimist. You can be appalled at Chelsea’s buying of success and believe English football is setting the worst possible example. [The] Glazers’ takeover could make you feel that a part of English football had died, yet in the fan’s campaign there was enlightenment, a glimpse of possible change over the horizon.”
In 2015, The Special One is back at Stamford Bridge and Chelsea are champions once again. Both Wayne Rooney and the Glazers are still in charge at Old Trafford and the mountain of debt the latter burdened the club with is still taking hundreds of millions out of the club. Liverpool are unlikely to face another night in Istanbul for another season or two at least and are still paying for the Hicks and Gillett ownership years. And ten years on from the publication of The Beautiful Game, the stories in Conn’s book could be front page news today. Has anything really changed in football? Has the soul of the game departed for good?
Some of the stories Conn have hardly moved on. Hillsborough, which takes up a large part of the book, is still in the news. Anybody who follows Conn on Twitter will see his heart breaking updates from the new inquest as the families of the 96 who never returned from Sheffield that day still battle for justice. The evidence presented to the inquest will come as little surprise to anybody familiar with Conn’s writing.
Arsenal, meanwhile, has gone from the control of a plurality of some very rich owners to being owned by two very rich men, Stan Kroenke and Alisher Usmanov. Those who owned the Gunners in 2005 haven’t done badly from the club; while it could be argued the club itself has continued to do well (even if many fans may disagree). [Continues…]
Bradford City, meanwhile, have finally won promotion from the bottom tier and have achieved fame in recent seasons through their efforts in the League and FA Cups. Perhaps the six weeks of madness in 2000 when a combined £5m was splashed on Dan Petrescu, David Hopkin and Ashley Ward, while free agent Benito Carbone was handed a £40,000 per week contract. This may seem like small change today, but the combined expenditure and wages was enough to send Bradford spiralling into insolvency and relegation after relegation. It has taken them nearly fifteen years to regain any kind of pride.
Of the other teams featured, Bury has endured financial ups and downs, while York have fought back from financial oblivion to regaining their place in the Football League although have struggled in recent seasons. Exeter City are still supporter owned, following their own route, albeit one that involves a hand-to-mouth existence, and AFC Wimbledon have gone from protest club to established Football League team. They are possibly one of the most positive stories to emerge in the decade since The Beautiful Game?
The conclusion to the chapter on Notts County is somewhat prescient: “Perhaps all this was [of Alberto Scardino’s ownership] was for a reason, showing those in charge a better way and all the lessons will or learned. Or, on the other hand, maybe they won’t.” What followed were bitter recriminations after the supporter-owned board sold up to Munto, a smoke-and-mirrors operation that claimed to be backed by Middle Eastern money but had less than nothing. Were it not for the continuous digging of Matt Scott, then of The Guardian, who knows where County would be now.
But it’s the new stories that could just as easily sit alongside those from 2005, which are most depressing. The corruption and greed of FIFA exposed by journalist Andrew Jennings many years ago, but only now making headlines, would not be out of place.
Neither would the largesse of the Premier League’s £5.14bn domestic TV deal, with another £2bn for international rights. The Premier League has proudly trumpeted the £1bn it has put aside for “good causes”, but £300m of this alone goes on parachute payments to relegated clubs.
Yes, it’s more than the top flight has ever donated but last year the FA was docked £1.6m by Sport England for failing to improve participation rates amongst adults at grassroots level and since 2005, these rates have actually dropped. The FA’s current focus on 3G pitches may be too little too late, while the less said about their recurring obsession with inserting Premier League B teams into the lower leagues or cup competitions. Meanwhile, the England C team, made up of non-league players under 23 and one of the few success stories at international level, is being threatened with closure. Other bodies such as Supporters’ Direct – who have provided assistance to many financially stricken clubs over the years – and Kick It Out regularly have to make do with budgets that could be described as challenging.
And as for the owners and the money at the top of football? You could replace Chelsea with Manchester City in Conn’s concluding paragraph from 2005 and it would still read perfectly logically. Plenty of clubs in the top two divisions have come very close to financial oblivion, with Liverpool, Southampton and Crystal Palace amongst them. Portsmouth have not been so lucky and have somehow survived despite many years of being run on debt by very dubious owners. And Manchester United are still laden with debt.
One of the greatest compliments you can give to The Beautiful Game? is that it could have just as easily been written today. Depressingly, ten years on, Conn would have enough stories to double the size of the book. In today’s culture of increased largesse at the top, viral videos and outrage and banter on social media leading the clickbait culture of sports journalism, Conn’s work may not always be the most popular writing across the web, but football needs voices such as his more than ever.