Football is not entertainment. It is sport and it is competition. It’s purpose is not to give pleasure to anyone by any means other than by victory. Everything else is nonsense. Neutrals have no right to be entertained by other teams. If you cannot appreciate the competitive aspect of two teams you don’t care about without the need for open, expansive, positive, attractive football, then you may be watching the wrong sport. Sometimes football is bad to watch. Very bad. But its purpose can still be fully met. I can leave Tallaght or Lansdowne, or turn off the post-match analysis from Anfield having watched an absolute turd and be completely happy. Elated even. If I’m watching England play Slovakia in a qualifier, or United play the way they have under Mourinho, and it’s a boring game, there has to be something in there to watch – there is always a story. United playing boring football is a story in itself, so you can watch how 11 players you know are among the best can turn to such rubbish, yet still be second in the league – ahead of the absolutely “scintillating” Spurs and Liverpool! The answer is because they somehow contrive to win a lot and lose very little. Ditto England in qualifiers – a harder sell I admit!
The idea of football as entertainment is a Sky Sports invention happily trotted out by people when teams are not winning things, like United at the moment who are in the recently-disgraced runners-up spot and the even-more-recently derided position of needing any sort of home win to reach the last 8 of the Champions League. It is part of the marketing of the English Premier League. Your Sky or BT subscription sits alongside your Netflix or Amazon Prime ones and your Betfair account as another piece of the overall entertainment product. Some people show up to the games themselves thinking “this is going to be great”. Player x will do y coz I saw a clip of him do it last week etc. etc., while the hardened fans do what football fans do best and arrive in a state of 90% cynicism and 10% inebriation. Football is not entertainment. It is just what we do. It is part of our lives and the quality; the brand; and the style of how it is performed matters not a jot next to the importance of the results.
We Irish know that better than most. We have put up with absolute shite throughout long periods of my lifetime and did so because at the end of the day we were getting results. Some of the play under Jack Charlton was garbage although it could be quite entertaining as long-ball football goes. It was positive, particularly at home in the Italia 90 qualifiers where we scored 8 goals in 4 matches and conceded none, but there was zero style. It could be boring, particularly against Egypt, Romania and Norway in World Cups. Most of us chose either to ignore it, or accept it. We were in the Quarter-Finals – say nothing!!! Ditto under Trap and O’Neill. Every qualifying game was met with the usual moans and groans but as we were still in with a chance of getting to tournaments, we persevered. Unfortunately both took it too far and when it went wrong, it went drastically wrong. In Poland and then in Lansdowne against Germany, Trap undermined Irish soccer in a fundamental manner. Against Georgia, Serbia, and Denmark, O’Neill came close, using up all of the credit he had in the bank post-France. I don’t often hear Irish fans baying for entertainment from the national team, however, but we do look to exploit our limited talents and play in a manner that wasn’t set down during the “big lad up front” era of English football or the “defend, defend, defend” mantra of the aging Italian. We want results and history has shown we will accept whatever delivers them. Maybe we are quite the pragmatic bunch, or realistic at least.
But back to the Premier League and it’s relentless narrative which pits the entertainers against the pragmatists. I’m quite amused at the bipolar nature of the lumpen mass of “the fans” who scream for more entertainment from Jose yet scream for more pragmatism from Arsene. There is simply no contest. Whatever Jose Mourinho has done since 2004, despite all of his own professional baggage, is in a different world to Arsene Wenger. A completely different world. And no fan of Chelsea, Inter or Real has looked longingly over to the Emirates at the intricate manner of their latest demolition of a mid-table club, followed by an intricate collapse in a Champions League game and been envious. No, Arsenal have long since danced their way off the radar. Their league runners-up spot in 2016 was handed to them by Spurs Out-Spursing themselves towards the end of that silly silly season and should in no way be construed as a title challenge. Much like Liverpool in 2002. And to have failed to win a Champions League knock-out game since 2010 is laughable, given the praise of the Arsenal way we have heard for so long and given the resources available. Mourinho’s brand of football has brought 6 league titles in 3 different countries and one Champions League title since his victories with Porto in 2004. No contest.
So to the United fans, and moreover the neutrals, bemoaning what it going on, I say give over! To those bewildered by the Pogba situation, it doesn’t matter. There is only one winner in that situation, and the folks in charge of @manutd are just going to have to live with the fact that their no.1 marketing asset may not even be in the first 11 footballing assets as things stand. It doesn’t matter. If they finish in second place, behind the best team in a long, long time, and make the last 8 of the Champions League, Mourinho will have eclipsed Wenger again, and barring an extraordinary end to the European campaigns, Klopp and Pochettino. He will be enviously looking up at Guardiola – the great entertainer – but down at the rest, some of whom he may even regard as clowns.
I’m a Liverpool fan and we have been incredible to watch this season. Not for the entertainment value but for the sheer force with which teams have been swept aside at times. They have been incredible in the manner in which they have fulfilled those fundamental aims of the game – to win the match; to beat the other team in a competitive pursuit by crafting masses upon masses of goal-scoring chances and to score shed-loads of goals. Neutrals may agree that they have been great to watch but give me the 5-0 or 7-0 demolitions against Porto and Maribor watched in full by only Liverpool fans, over the manic scrambling victories that Klopp is only now beginning to consign to the past.
So here we are now, don’t even bother entertaining us, just fucking win the thing!!!
A Yard of Grass 