Beautiful game that cannot hide from life’s ugly truths
New film explores whether football shapes or reflects society’s problems, writes Alan Tyers
as it Brian Clough who said of football’s role in hooliganism: “If people have a fight in a supermarket car park, nobody blames Sainsbury’s”? Perhaps Clough, or Oscar Wilde, or possibly Chairman Mao – one of those lads who was always saying stuff, anyway. The point that Cloughie, or Maoie, was making was an invitation to explore sport’s place in society, its responsibility to it, and whether it shapes or reflects its life and times.
It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that British football is undergoing a period of self-examination, for countless millions here and abroad are more than happy with the shiny, noisy thrill of it all, with the Premier League’s pulsating hypercapitalism and constantly updating emotional drama. But in some pockets, people are questioning where the sport sits in broader society, and one such is a thoughtful film on BT Sport this Wednesday called State of Play, by Michael Calvin.
Calvin is a sportswriter and broadcaster who made a very good documentary a couple of years back called No Hunger In Paradise. That BT Sport film looked at the ruthlessly efficient meat-grinder of the elite football academy: a large number of young boys in, a very small number of men playing top-flight out, and especially the waste product, the broken and disillusioned lad who feels his life is over before he is old enough to get a driving licence. State of Play has a broader and less melancholic remit, and indeed the scope is tremendous for a 90-minute film.
Northampton Town forward Marvin Sordell talks about terribly low times, including an attempt to take his own life, and the poetry he now writes about depression under the anagrammatic nom de
plume Denis Prose. Gareth Bale talks about the paradox of being incredibly feted and yet also giving up a lot of personal autonomy. “We are like robots, told where to be and when, what we have to eat. You lose your life. You think, ‘Is it really worth it?’”
Burnley coach Sean Dyche talks about the pressure of needing to deliver instantly, he attempts to shut out as many distractions as possible; referee Ryan Atkin and Stuttgart director of football Thomas Hitzlsperger discuss coming out; Chelsea Women’s manager Emma Hayes ponders whether she will be the person who blazes the trail to coach men at a high level; Accrington Stanley chairman Andy Holt explains how you continue to think and buy local under economic pressures in a global world.
Danny Rose appears to be in despair about racism and what is not being done about it. Les Ferdinand delivers a striking assessment: “Stephen Lawrence was killed, just for being black. The same things that people are chanting from terraces, Stephen was killed for the same thing.”
But it is not all doom and gloom: there is also the infectious, joyous disbelief of Jadon Sancho realising that his tricks and flicks are now being emulated on Playstation by kids barely younger than himself, or a neat portrait of the desire to carry on competing, by which Derby manager Frank Lampard explains his plunge into the uniquely stressful world of management.
Linking all of these stories – about racism, mental health, sexuality, money, privacy and identity, ambition, belonging or being excluded – is the question: is football causing them, or incidental to them? Would they be happening anyway?
Calvin does not offer simplistic answers, but does conclude that football “reflects and magnifies”. There will be those who think that politics and social issues have no place in football, and that it should be an escape and retreat. The state of play for that view, increasingly, is: Not possible.
State of Play, the next film in the award-winning BT Sport Films series, will premiere at 10.30pm on Weds May 29 on BT Sport 2.
‘We are told where to be and when, what we have to eat. You lose your life’