Warren, Michael

LSE Research Online

The Long Read: Beyond the Beautiful Game: Football as a Meansfor Control and Protest by Michael Warrenblogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/07/05/the-long-read-beyond-the-beautiful-game-football-as-a-means-for-control-and-protest-by-michael-warren/The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. James M. Dorsey. Hurst. 2016.From the Back Page to the Front Room: Football’s Journey through the English Media . RogerDomeneghetti. Ockley Books. 2014.Find these books: ‘The first prize of superstition goes to the English, who for many years nowhave been worshipping Beckham as the thirteenth Apostle, and this is whythey have built him a huge statue in Trafalgar Square, to worship in hisshadow and pray.’ This claim from a Greek bishop in The Turbulent World ofMiddle East Soccer might make you guffaw, but perhaps he is right. DavidBeckham could be the nearest thing we have to a deity: he has transcendedthe earthly football pitch to command the respect of billions through hishandsome looks, amicable demeanour and, of course, financial clout.Beckham even recently waded into the recent EU referendum debate in theUK to implore support for the ‘Remain’ campaign. His significance beyond the‘Beautiful Game’ is emblematic of football’s ability to reach all parts of theglobe. More darkly, though, football is not simply a recreational pursuit, butalso a means of exercising control and a tool for power.Control and power are themes at the heart of James M. Dorsey’s TheTurbulent World of Middle East Soccer and Roger Domeneghetti’s From theBack Page to the Front Room: Football’s Journey through the English Media.Although very different in focus – Dorsey concentrates on politics and protestin Middle Eastern football, whilst Domeneghetti writes about English football’sfractious relationship with the media – both show that football is not simply agame, but more often than not a cash cow to be milked no matter the cost to on-the-pitch aesthetics or the fans. In fact, it is the disempowerment of fans in the face ofpillaging political owners and media moguls that sticks out when reading both booksin conjunction. However, all is not entirely sombre – when fans have successfullyclaimed football as their own, they have been able to use it as a source ofescapism, expression, protest and, above all, pleasure.In oppressive societies with limited opportunities for expression, the footballstadium offers one of the few venues for airing grievances. As an Iranian journalistnoted in 2003:in terms of freedom of expression, soccer stadiums are nearly as importantas the internet in Iran now. The protest is more secure there because thepolice can’t arrest thousands of people at once […] They’re showingbanners and singing protest songs, which is why some games arebroadcast without sound now.1/5Although the stadium can act as a place of suppression – as evidenced by the mass graves discovered in Iraqistadiums by US troops following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 – it can incubate revolutionary ideals, asshown not only in Iran, but also in countries including Libya, Turkey and Egypt. Stadiums are also barometers forgauging levels of frustration in a population and a training ground to build battle-hardened protesters for confrontinggovernment might. In the Tahrir Square revolution of 2011 in Egypt, footballing Ultras stood between the mainstreamprotesters and police fury. From regular training altercations on Saturdays when supporting their teams, they wereprepared for the onslaught of tear gas, had honed ‘hit-and-run tactics’ and had mastered strategies of rotation andwithdrawal to avoid panic and fatigue.Image Credit: Egypt v Algeria, 2-0, 2010 World Cup qualifier (Muhammad Gafari CC 2.0)In Western countries, the stadium is not as politicised or as violent a crucible, but it remains the domain ofsupporters with a controversial history. The British press frequently demonised fans, lumping them into onevenomous hooligan cult that congregated on Saturdays. In the 1980s, the bleakest of decades for football’s publicimage, The Times newspaper penned an editorial that derided football as a ‘slum sport played in slum stadiums andincreasingly watched by slum people’. For The Times, stadiums evoked low social stratification, arguably in asimilar way to social housing. The stadium therefore became a locus for blinkered hostility towards fans and thegame itself. This culminated with the Hillsborough catastrophe of 1989 in which 96 fans were crushed to death, andwitness voices were silenced by a prejudiced police force and media. It took many years for this injustice to beheard (as recently documented in Hillsborough Voices: The Real Story Told by the People Themselves), but thisshows how with perseverance, fans can eventually tell their side of the story.The determination of fans to tell their own story is frequently undertaken with ingenuity. Domeneghetti writes vividlyof the advent of fanzines that confronted these stereotypes. Soon after the Hillsborough incident, one fanzineeditorial noted that supporters are:deemed to be passive accomplices to the sociopathic minority. The police see us as a mass entity,fuelled by drink and a single-minded resolve to wreak havoc by destroying property and attackingone another with murderous intent. The implication is that ‘normal’ people need to be protected fromthe football fan. But we are normal people.2/5The proliferation of fanzines began in the 1970s, riffing off the Private Eye format. With hundreds to choose from,often locally produced and geared to local audiences, they were a localised form of expression that allowed fans toorganise themselves to build a mosaic of intertwined identities across the UK, challenging negative perceptions offootball.Alongside fanzines, the Football Supporters Association (FSA) also used the media to project alternative images offootball fans via localised FSA branches. This reached a zenith at the 1990 World Cup where lawyers, journalists,medical staff and interpreters were on hand to resolve any ‘area of potential friction’ and to ensure that the storiesthat reached the British public were not misrepresentative.Although the stadium is still the domain of fans, how long for is another matter. Domeneghetti notes that in the finalseason of the old First division, the forerunner to today’s glitzy English Premier League that commenced in 1992,children could stand for 90p. That has now exorbitantly risen by 2240 per cent. Working-class fans are getting pricedout by owners who mine the commercial power of football. Hundred-million-pound TV deals transformed football inEngland, but, as Domeneghetti reminds readers, if you look beyond Rupert Murdoch’s wily brinkmanship in securingthe deals, it is the fans who are the driving force behind them. They are the ones with BskyB dishes – fans who hadbeen demonised in the Murdoch-owned The Times as ‘slum’ people and were falsely accused, in another Murdoch-owned title The Sun, of robbing the dead.Image Credit: Official Programme, Newcastle United v Bela Vista (Brazil), 1958 (footysphereCC 2.0)It is not just powers of commerce that shape and share complicated relationships with fans, but also political owners.In Turkey, increasing wealth and the professionalisation of football has encouraged socially climbing owners to buyup clubs to gain political leverage and increased personal recognition. Clubs can be symbols of power, and thecentral football asset is Fenerbahçe – coveted by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and cleric FethullahGülen. The latter wished to reduce Erdoğan’s power over the club and a member of Gülen’s movement to be placedat its heart following match-fixing scandals. The club became a key piece in the political chess match between thetwo, as recounted in detail by Dorsey. This acrimonious dispute highlighted murky but inextricable ties betweenfootball clubs in Turkey and organised crime, with football emerging as a ploy for obtaining wider political power.3/5The commercialisation of football and the acquisition of clubs by political owners also raises the issue of ‘theoutsider’ in football. Football can be a close-knit homogenous world where fans nurture kinship through collectivechants, their team’s run of form and shared ideals about the club (the latter may include views on race, class andlocality). A national team’s success is one of the few things that ties together fans who are otherwise in perennialinternecine confrontation. The Chairman of the English Football Association recently noted the Premier League hasbeen a ‘massive success […] except it’s owned by foreigners, managed by foreigners and played by foreigners’, allof which are seen as having a knock-on effect on the England team.However, blaming foreigners is not a new spectacle in English football. Domeneghetti observes how the Roy of theRovers comic strip – a long-running popular comic following the topsy-turvy world of fictional footballing demi-god,Roy Race – expressed negative stereotypes held by British fans when Roy ventured into European adventures.Opposition teams were often ‘sneaky’, ‘unfit’ and more defensively inclined, unlike the cavalier Roy Race. Visits toSouth America were even more dangerous, with Roy’s entire team being kidnapped twice whilst on different tours inthe 1960s.Image Credit: Anglo-Italian Cup 1973 – Official Souvenir Handbook. Newcastle Utd beatFiorentina 2-1 in the final (footysphere CC 2.0)Alongside this fear of ‘the other’, football itself has been viewed as a dangerous Trojan horse importing alien values.Al-Qaeda-affiliated bomb maker Noordin Mohammed Top asserted that the 2009 bombings of Western hotels inJakarta were to kill ‘salibis (crusaders)’ – i.e. the Manchester United team. However, Dorsey interestingly recountsthat among Islamist factions across the world, there are split views on football. Whereas Osama Bin Laden was anArsenal fan who utilised football as a tool for physical enhancement and recruitment, other Islamists were moreconcerned by the sport’s threat to conservative values, condemning the 2006 World Cup as a ‘plot aiming to corruptMuslim youth and distract them from jihad’.Furthermore, as Domeneghetti observes, perceived ‘others’ need not be from outside of a country. English football’sattitudes towards women’s involvement in the men’s game is notably poor. Manager Dave Bassett’s opinion of thefemale commentator Jacqui Oatley in 2007 epitomised this antagonism: ‘It’s a disgrace! Football’s against it.’Bassett’s view stemmed purely from Oatley’s gender, disregarding her expertise garnered from working atnumerous radio stations as well as a coaching qualification. Four years later, Sian Massey acted as a lineswoman4/5for a Premier League game to the disbelief of two male Sky Sports pundits, Andy Gray and Richard Keys. Off-air,Gray remarked, ‘women don’t know the offside rule’, to which Keys replied, ‘the game’s gone mad.’These are not isolated incidents, but part of a wider phenomenon where many within football see the sport as abastion of masculinity to be protected from feminine encroachment. Domeneghetti hints at one solution to ensuregreater parity in women’s involvement in, and playing of, football: more media exposure. This is most profoundlydemonstrated by John Morgan, sports editor of the Daily Express, who held many reservations about women’sfootball in the 1960s. In 1977, he watched an England women’s game and contritely wrote: ‘Ladies, I apologiseunreservedly […] I went with all the usual male prejudices about soccer being ‘‘unfeminine’’ that the girls wouldbreak down and cry if someone kicked them […] I saw instead the best game of football I have seen since thefamous Wolves managed by Stan Cullis.’There is much to be gained from reading both books: Dorsey’s is academic in tone and politically focused, whilstDomeneghetti’s is constructed through loving anecdotes and a close study of the media. Both are accessible to non-football fans whilst offering new interpretations for anoraks. These are also timely works as the footballing worldcomes to grips with the possibility of a resurgent spectre of hooliganism at the 2016 Euros. With the 2018 World Cupdue to be hosted by Russia, there are potential lessons enclosed in the book for fans concerned about the image ofthe sport. It may also be interesting to build on these studies with a look at the role of managers in the football powernexus. Managers make decisions that affect the game and fans – see the intense ire heaped upon Roy Hodgson aspart of the now biennial phenomenon of England managerial recriminations – yet are also beholden to the whims ofowners and whatever backlash the media can arouse. Strong managers, like Sir Alex Ferguson, can wield controland use owners and the media for the purpose of the game, whilst others are conduits for enacting decisions fromabove.For all the power dynamics swirling around the football pitch, it is a relief to note that it still lacks predictability andthus can never be fully controlled by the media, owners and external forces. Chris Anderson and David Sally’stheory that about 50 per cent of occurrences in a match are down to luck comes to mind. Football’s beautytranscends winning, with a far greater purpose of giving escapist pleasure to millions of fans and a means ofexpression. This lies beneath both Dorsey and Domeneghetti’s complementary texts. Although they approach thesubject in very different manners, they understand the essence of football and the centrality of the fans. A fittingsummary comes from Dorsey’s book as one Egyptian supporter explains in 2008 that the average fan at their club ‘ispaid minimum wage and life sucks. The only thing is that for two hours on Friday he goes to the stadium […] that iswhy it is such an obligation to win every game. It makes people’s lives happy.’Michael Warren completed an MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation at the LSE in 2012, and graduatedfrom the University of Sheffield (studying on exchange at the University of Waterloo, Ontario) with a BA in ModernHistory in 2011. He researched on an open data project for Deloitte and the Open Data Institute, and worked for theAll-Party Parliamentary Health Group and as a Management Consultant in Health and Public Service at Accenture.He is a Policy Adviser at the Professional Standards Authority. Read more reviews by Michael Warren.Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of theLondon School of Economics.Copyright 2013 LSE Review of Books5/5

The long read: beyond the beautiful game: football as a means for control and protest by Michael Warren

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