Football’s new age will require realists AND revolutionaries
EVERYBODY happy, then? All getting on well with lockdown, coping gamely with home schooling and feeling generally pleased with how things are being run? Excellent.
Such a pity, of course, that this air of unified purpose and camaraderie sweeping the UK should be disrupted by something so apparently inconsequential as sport. Boo. You rotters. Spoiling the mood again.
Why, this week in Scottish football alone, we’ve had Gordon Strachan fantasising about a cull of half of the country’s senior teams, the Aberdeen chairman demanding that the SPFL be scrapped, clubs axing footballers by the bus load — and players lashing out at their treatment.
And, at the time of writing, it’s only Tuesday.
In the spirit of civility, let’s begin by crediting the always opinionated Strachan for ‘starting a conversation’ on whether all those community clubs should be left to wither on the vine.
But it has arguably never been more important to push back, with everything you’ve got, against the kind of contemptuous elitism so willing to decide that this or that club simply doesn’t deserve to exist.
Do you really think an exercise billed as lopping off some dead wood will stop at the bottom two tiers of the SPFL? First they came for Albion Rovers and I did nothing etc.
Yes but, yes but, yes but… the lower leagues exist entirely on hand-outs from the wealth creators at the top of the game.
A bit like the ‘other’ Premiership clubs living off the proceeds of a TV deal entirely dependent on four Old Firm games a season?
You don’t have to imagine the outrage should it be suggested that Celtic and Rangers would be better negotiating their own broadcast deals.
We can tell you what the response would be. Exactly the same as the last time the idea was mooted, following the collapse of Setanta. Absolute uproar.
So spare us the gung-ho ‘survival of the fittest’ claptrap. The moment your club falls on the wrong side of that line, you’ll change your tune.
Which is kind of what Dave Cormack was getting at when he allowed his mind to wander on a fairly entertaining podcast released on Monday.
The Aberdeen chairman’s starting point, one reached after a quick look at the business model, is a belief that Celtic and Rangers will eventually wander off to join some sort of European league. It’s the future, apparently.
It’s easy to dismiss Cormack as silly and naïve. The ‘breath of fresh air’ tag he inherited from Ann Budge, previously held by any number of new faces, is already slipping.
And he already seems to be feeling a bit beaten down by the experience of constantly being told what can’t be done. So floating the Atlantic League by another name, pushing for summer football and Saturdaynight games under floodlights at the old ball park? Never going to wash.
His excited chat about an expanded Red Shed emulating Atlanta United’s ‘Supporters’ Section’, meanwhile, ignores some fairly pressing realities.
In the middle of a health crisis, any plans including a huge mosh pit — a sporting petrie dish — isn’t absolutely 100-per-cent guaranteed to be approved.
Cormack’s idea of bringing all of football under the umbrella of the SFA, a single unified theory of everything, also has some flaws.
Starting with the fact that concentrating all power in one place feels a touch risky.
There’s a reason why the DFB exists separately from the DFL. The same thinking dictates that the FA have areas of responsibility away from the Premier League.
And, hey, someone should tell Cormack that Scottish football used to have not one or two but THREE governing bodies. We’re making progress.
Before you dismiss him entirely, remember the circumstances. Accept that the entire game is going to be changed for ever by this lockdown — and recognise the importance of getting out in front of that transformation.
If realism must remain at the core of any recovery, people with bold plans will have their place.
An ability to look at things differently, to improvise and to adapt on the hoof, is going to be crucial. Because history teaches us that great leaps forward don’t just happen.
Cormack’s line about investors ‘turning up to a rusty stadium before being handed a cold pie’, then being asked how much cash they’d like to hand over, will strike a chord not only with any number of business people given this unappealing sales pitch — but with every supporter who ever paid six quid for a lump of greasy pastry.
In a new age of closed-door games or even restricted attendance, a lot of people are going to fall out of the habit of going to games.
Luring them back will depend on more than just appealing to tradition and tribalism. It’s going to take some bold strokes.
Listen to what Cormack has to say, then. Hear Strachan out, even. Then make a contribution to the debate. Calmly, sensibly, without rancour.
After all, we wouldn’t want Scottish football — such a convenient scapegoat for societal ills — to be responsible for introducing a note of rancour to all this harmony.