Back in the day? It isn't half as good as it is now
Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 9:42PM Many years back, I sat with a mate chatting about random stuff and another mutual friend joined us looking rather suspicious and paranoid as he sat down.
"You won't believe this", he whispered.
He then proceed to tell us a story that had been reported in the newspapers. However the version he described was somewhat different to the one that was covered by the tabloids. The finer details supplied contained greater clarity and ironically a far more sensationalist pull than how the red tops presented it. In hindsight, you can understand that if you wished to read between the lines, the story in the papers hinted very subtly at the underlying truth behind the headline. Our paranoid friend was not quite constrained by legalities. In the know. Face to face. No hiding behind an avatar or badge. Old skool style.
How I miss those old days, before the Internet. When all your football discussion was done in the stands and pubs pre and post match and then in college/uni/work on the Monday morning. Rumours and stories concerning footballers would eventually find their way to someone you knew who would then share with you by virtue of a far slower cruder network, a grapevine of Chinese whispers, which some what distorted the original version by the time you got to place your ears up close to listen.
Football transfer stories would play out on the back pages. In fact (I could be distorting the past myself here) I'm fairly sure at the time the tabloids were never far off the mark with their stories. I remember following the Paul Gascoigne transfer via The Sun and the Daily Mirror. It played out with every twist and turn pretty much as reported on. Even with the papers claiming (as Paul himself promised) that he was going to join Utd. And then he joined Spurs.
Everything was far less complicated. Sure, agents existed at the time but footballers were only beginning to transcend to the path of vanity and pampered ego. They were still infants. Football had yet to explode (implode). The money yet to hit astronomical levels.
In modern times everything is pushed and harassed under the microscope, probed and then dissected. We can discuss, debate, argue and rant long after we return home from the game - in message boards, on blogs and with social networking. In fact we can do all of it at the game if we so wished via our smart phones. During the game. In fact, we can even commentate on the game thanks to Twitter. We are completely immersed and every thought and opinion can now be snapshot and shared and forwarded onto others and left behind for all to read weeks, months and years later.
It's not just what we see, it's what everybody can see. There are cameras, microphones, twenty-four hour news feeds on tv and the radio. There is so much coverage that it's an impossibility for you to not know what is going on. Everybody is a reporter. Everybody is a critic.
But that isn't a bad thing.
We have the ability to communicate and share opinion with fans from our own club and other clubs - from within the UK and from anywhere on the planet. The football fan isn't just that mouthy bloke in the stand shouting abuse at the ref. We've got writers, illustrators, animators. We have tactical analysts and fanatical statisticians. We no longer have to wait for that bloke in the pub or a mate of a mate to pass on something he heard from his uncle that has a cousin who has a girlfriend that has a brother that works with someone who knows someone who works in the club you support and they heard *snip*. Now we get told the juicy info, off the cuff, from a tree, with only a simple caveat stating 'don't shoot the messenger'. To the point. No messing. No need to wait a month to find it out the details.
Sure, the tabloids no longer control the transfer tittle-tattle. Agents, club insiders, paid off journalists, players - they're all in on it. Along with club managers. Everyone with their own agenda, everyone trying to influence and tap up. Mostly driven by the greed for more money and success. You'll find many staking a claim in a story they copied from someone who copied it from someone else who heard it from someone who probably made it up. But nobody stands tall to be accountable for the mess, because it's part and parcel of how things now work. And if questioned, they claim they're protecting their 'insider'. A license to lie. Much like the existence of God you can't prove it, you can't disprove it. Unless it's written in cryptic English (if it is - then it's a lie).
And sure, players are hardly likeable these days compared to the good old days. Arrogant, smug, horrible self-centred people. Not all of them. Most of them. Especially the really really successful ones. England captains and the like. You obviously get arrogant, smug, horrible self-centred people following the game too, be it in the stands or via blogs.
Especially via the blogs. Crowning themselves the peoples champion when the reality is that they hardly have much to say and there are far more articulate and funny football fans who don't go anywhere near a computer, but you'll find them at the match where perhaps you have to be standing next to them to enjoy and smile at a quick-witted joke or astute observation. Unless they've been escorted out for not sitting down.
And then you have the clubs that treat fans like consumers not football fans, patronising them what with revenue taking precedence over the emotive stuff, because emotion wont help bluster the transfer budget.
Hold on a second. Screw this. I think I need to go back and re-think the title to this article.
This was part 3 of the International Break Diary II
#2 The Spurs Madrid El Clásico
#1 Hands up if you want to stand up at football matches
Reader Comments (18)
Modern football fans are better represented online than off it. Progress. It ruins everything.
Evening all.
Let me guess the story. Two West Ham players sitting in a tree...K I S S I N G.
We are growing fat on information.
Completely agree that 15 to 20 years back the tabloids was the only ground to control and influence transfers. Far less bullshit posted back then. These days practically ever single eventuality is covered in the press until they strike lucky.
strange times ...........you cant say somethings or you can say anything you like......the worlds gone mad
It worries me that sooner or later, someone is going to start looking at these blogs, especially the comments section and start considering the extremely favourable libel laws that are available to them in the UK.
I know that they won't be making any fortunes, but it is a way to curtail freedom of speech, but on the other hand, some of the posters that we see on these sites should not be allowed with a mile of a PC.
During the ITK work in the last transfer window I made up, on the spot, that I was ITK that 'Arry, Capello and Jose were just about to announce a 3 way job rotation.
The next time I saw it, an hour later, was on a message board as "heard from someone high up in the FA"
While there can be a lot of good in getting opinion and debate out and about and in the public, there is a lot of crap out there (with all due offence to the ITK community meant and implied)
I am pretty grateful for the internet. Without it, I would never have been able to see Crouchy do City at Eastlands while two feet of snow and counting piled out on my back porch last year. I would likely never have found Spurs and the joy/anguish they give me.
The internet gets a lot of things wrong, but it also gets a few things right.
Its kind of like cell phones--everything is different now with everyone having cell phones with them everywhere they go. I like the straight up news, told first hand..not the news that has travelled through the reporters to the press to the people, so much left out and changed and the whole truth becomes twisted. I guess it is cool in one aspect that it is relatively instant and worldwide.
And don't forget the porn
Spooky , reading this kind of stuff always reminds me of the fact that i am getting old (not old but still old enough) , i grew up during the changes you describe ... From the non internet , football slavery days to the after Bosman money period
But the Internet is a bliss for me , as for the other foreign fans , i can now see every game , every action and read about it on your blog afterwards.
So that's a win , but what football has become - the money driven factory where you have to sit down (in england at least because we can all stand up in the other countries :p ) that's a loss for me. I have played and followed this game all my life and am growing weary of the way it plays out. Said it before on here, when i was little all i wanted to be was a good player because of the game and maybe the fame. Now it is all about the lifestyle and less about the game , the team and just simply being the best.
Even on my level , money rules everything , i have seen players sell games , take dope to achieve a better fitness level , go on strike because the club refused to buy them shoes and so much more. I have seen guys lose because going up a level would mean less victories hence less money to be made ... Whereas i always want to win , i do not care about the measery few euros we can make as semi pro's (it s a nice plus but just that) , i want to win.
I always thought having to retire from the game would break my heart , but i am not sure this will be true. I will miss playing but the rotten vibe that has destroyed football destroys one of the last romantic notions in life i had left.
I remember years ago while a little bored at uni I posted on delphi forums that we had agreed a deal to sign rebrov for 13mil or something like that ...
later that evening teamtalk carried the story almost word for word
not long later he signed for 11..
So here goes
I can confirm that Tottenham have agreed a deal to sign Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior from Brazilian club Santos for a fee believed to be in the region of $35mil.
haha
I remember before we signed Rebrov (pre you tube days), avi files of his goal scoring antics did the rounds. He looked immense.
Anyone remember when Gazza used to dress up in fancy dress in the daily Mirror? One week a cowboy, another week a soldier. You craved information on Spurs back in the day and i think that's how obsession started. I used to cut photos out the paper. My nephew likes football, but he doesn't have that passion that I did - information overload and access kills the passion for young fans now days, I believe.
On another note, tickets were for sale on the Real Madrid website for the public this morning, was easy to do, so get in the North end of the Bernebau before they sell out - don't rely on touts if you are going over..
Gazza and Waddle as Laurel and Hardy. Classic days.
I've actually got a box full of newspaper cut outs of Gazza from the tabloids and footie mags from just before he signed for Spurs till his days in Italy. Idolised him I did. Saddens me what he's become.
Yes I remember them as Laurel and Hardy, classic! I used to love watching them both firing footballs at the Spurs mascot before the game, assume it was chirpy then, can't remember.
I've still got that book somewhere, Gazza daft as a brush. I tell you what winds me up now, is when the media say he should of gone to Man United and Fergie in 88. What people seem to forget is that Spurs, at that time, were a more glamorous, successful club than Man Utd. No one then could see what Fergie was about to embark on, in fact he was under pressure at that time.
@spooky
yeah he did look immense was a proper goal machine..pity he didnt replicate it at the lane. Bit like Postiga...the much vaunted Dave McEwen! and Paul Mahorn (even youtube couldnt make him look good!)
AVI files! cor weren't you lucky...I still have nightmares of the .asf/.mpeg's that were no better than a crappy old vhs
Tom Traubert: You have a lot to answer for (LOL)