While football amorally considers every which way it can protect its money, I’ve been growing increasingly contemptuous of the whole rotten to the core corrupt mess.
After a few weeks without football, I’ve come to realise I’m alright without it. Liverpool Vs Atletico was, to my mind, the last time the sport should ever be allowed to put itself first on a societal level. The more this goes on the more utterly apalling the decision to play that game was, a product of the self interest and greed that we all abide to follow our clubs.
This crisis will, I hope, be an absolute reckoning for football. We are dealing with an event that will fundamentally shift everyone’s priorities, and the numbers of people that are going to be able to pay extortionate subscriptions, memberships, ticket prices and so on is going to be affected. Where people are still able to afford it, they may be less willing to. This is going to change football, as it is changing almost every way in which we live our lives. Things are not going back to the way they were.
And certainly, when this is finally over I hope football does have to contend with some of the consequences of its selfishness. Withholding medical facilities and personnel in case they are needed to finish a season that would be played for little more reason than to obtain TV money is abhorrent.
The contingency plans that have been mooted, playing games behind closed doors, players made to live in covid-sterile camps are like the stuff of dystopian fiction. The idea that football clubs should be allowed to obtain Covid-19 tests that are needed in the health service is an affront to everyone working to minimise the loss of life from this pandemic.
Football clubs and their owners throwing players under the bus of public opinion while they syphon off public money to furlough their most vulnerable employees to protect a fraction more of their millions should revolt every one of us.
Football should stay in its box, and remain there until its told it can come out. When the government, when the scientists believe the threat has passed and not one moment before. Football should not be a pioneer, should not be the vehicle for an experiment to see whether they and those like them can start milking people again, putting them at risk as they do so. Not one ball kicked, not one public resource consumed. Society and people come first. Football is neither of those things. In better times, football’s excesses could be ignored and tolerated. Not any more.
is this true? Did specific clubs do this?
) I watch football, cricket, tennis and golf mainly, but anything will do. And when it’s all back, I’ll watch it all again, but this time with more appreciation.
