18.07.2024
From kick-off to finish
Carl Collins examines the current state of the beautiful game that is now worth billions, its origins in violent country ways and the influence of the far right
England lost 2-1 and Gareth Southgate has gone. Sir Keir Starmer can’t bask in football glory, as Harold Wilson did way back in 1966.
However, for many fans and pundits alike failure to win in two successive Euro finals counts as some sort of national disgrace. There is without doubt a deep sense of entitlement when it comes to football.
The famous ‘Three Lions’ anthem and the “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming: football’s coming home” chorus more than sums up the national psyche when it comes to the game. Written by comedians, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, it was recorded by the Lightning Seeds specially for Euro’96 and almost instantly reached number one in the charts. We have heard the song again and again ever since. Whenever England plays in tournaments, fans chant “It’s coming home”. It is as if the international silverware somehow belongs in England.
Of course, Harry Kane’s team is one of the best in the world. Amongst the top ten perhaps. But throughout Euro’24, Spain were clearly better. They were the deserving winners, playing an attractive, brilliantly coordinated, modern style of football.
Today football counts as the most popular participation and spectator sport globally by far. Billions watch and millions play every week. It is also big business. The international football market is expected to go from being worth $4.04 billion in 2023 to an estimated $5.65 billion in 2031. Top players transfer for eye-watering sums easily exceeding $100 million.
So, there can be no doubt that football has come a long way. But from where?
Start
Let’s start with diplomat and scholar Thomas Elyot, on 16th century ‘fote ball’ or ‘fute ball’:1 “Nothing but beastly fury and extreme violence; wherefore proceedeth hurt and consequently rancour and malice do remain with those that are wounded; whereof it ought to be put into perpetual silence.”
A definitive origin of the sport we now call football is much disputed. The Aztecs played a team game called ‘tlachtli’, 3rd-century China played something called ‘cuju’, and ‘marn grook’ was a game known to have been played by Aboriginal Australians long before white settlers arrived.2
But the game in its modern form - which had a considerable amount of the country engrossed in last weekend’s final - has its origins in 12th century England. A team game, usually involving neighbouring villages, with the purpose of the transporting an inflated pig’s bladder to a marker in the opponent’s village. And, as the description from Elyot suggests, it was certainly considerably more violent than the modern-day game. There are examples of punching, biting and kicking, resulting in broken bones and even fatalities. There were no clearly defined regulations; no referee; no limit to the number of participants in any single match; no defined size for the playing area (sometimes the play area covered several acres); and there was no time-limit. Sometimes it lasted just a few hours, sometimes days.3
One can imagine the anticipation in the lead-up to one of these matches; the excitement, nervousness, trepidation. And it is surely to be expected that a feeling of comradeship would develop, not only between the participants from a particular town or village, but eventually inter-community respect and camaraderie. Attempts to ban the activity by those in positions of power would have intensified such feelings and reflected class antagonisms. Those looking to ban these games would have included the landowners, whose fields were being used (a man once drowned when a game was organised as cover for damaging dykes being used to drain the Fens).
And, of course, others who made up what constituted ‘authority’ would also have been aware of the danger in allowing the masses to come together in this way. Capitalism, even in its earliest days, is always interested in what workers are doing in their own time. Not only because those workers make up a large segment of ‘the market’ as consumers, but also in case those out-of-work activities begin to develop into a collectivity that poses a threat to the wealth and power of the ruling class.
Despite some examples of success in stopping football being played, attempts at banning it have been, to say the least, unsuccessful. And so the game began to develop, mirroring the development of capitalism. The game was exported around the world (as we have seen, there were games that resembled football already existing, but the more codified version was imposed) as part of the colonialist project.
Neoliberalism impacted on the game through the introduction of ‘markets’ and privatisation (of clubs and leagues). And then big-business ownership of clubs, which led to them being used as assets (possibly to be stripped), as a means of prestige for owners of questionable repute - or even by states as a means of ‘sportswashing’ their image as dictators and human rights abusers in their own countries and regions.
A counter-movement inevitably took place from below. A connection can clearly be seen between class struggle and football ever since its inception: from the defiance of private land ownership from around the 15th century to more contemporary conflicts - such as fans opposing football authorities’ proposals to create a ‘Super League’, consisting of Europe’s elite clubs. Ordinary (mostly working class) people demonstrated against the plans of the authorities who were looking to take ‘the working man’s’ game away from them in order to maximise revenue (above all from TV deals). What is that if not a form of class struggle?
And was the ‘hooliganism’ of the 1970s and 80s in Britain, which saw the expression of a distinctive culture, of symbols and rituals, not at least a part of a counter-movement to the deindustrialisation, the unemployment, the attacks on working class institutions carried out by the likes of Margaret Thatcher, which decimated working class communities, leaving them with little else other than ‘their’ football club through which to express their anger and frustration?
Right outfits
In addition to the super-rich taking over the top end of the sport, rightwing political organisations have certainly identified with and exploited, ‘football culture’. The Football Lads Alliance and later the Democratic Football Lads Alliance are two recent outfits to do this. Imbedding themselves within the fan base, they are then able to institute their ideology and steer a layer of fans. The English Defence League (in the 70s and 80s the National Front and British National Party) have found fertile ground for agitation and recruitment.
Benito Mussolini exploited the popularity of football in Italy in the 1920s and 30s in order to reshape public consciousness. Through propaganda, he was able to ferment nationalist sentiment by associating it with sporting success (Italy won the 1934 and 1938 World Cups and the 1936 Olympics soccer). Historians and fans a lot older than myself may argue that Italy was deserving of the success on merit, but Mussolini took no chances. It is widely claimed that he heavily influenced the organising body and even the referees to guarantee success.
In the 1934 World Cup Mussolini himself selected the referee for the semi-final and final. In the 1938 final, it is widely believed that he demanded the team - now wearing a black kit to resemble the colour of fascism and displaying Roman salutes before games - should “win or die”. Italy’s opponents’ goalkeeper, Hungarian Antal Szabó, is reported to have said afterwards: “I may have let in four goals, but at least I saved their lives”.4
Similarly, Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Berlin Olympics to promote fascism and his regime’s image on the world stage. Sporting success was portrayed as resulting from ‘discipline’, which could then be filtered through to other aspects of people’s lives and create a justification for the acceptance of such ideas. The idea of ‘discipline’ and ‘power’ explains why elite public schools, such as Eton, pushed for football to be played by students before the game split into two separate codes (rugby and soccer) as a result of public-schoolboy cheating and picking the ball up! (I am aware that this is a bit of a myth, but it will annoy just the right people and make football fans laugh).
Francisco Franco too exploited the passion of fans in Spain, cultivating and increasing divisions in society and the civil war by adopting certain teams as the emblems of his regime.
There are, of course, other examples which football fans amongst the Weekly Worker readership will probably have in mind. Even today’s political figures, such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, look for endorsement from celebrity players as much as from business leaders. Not a goal is scored nowadays by the England team without the inevitable, heavily staged photo being posted on social and contemporary media, showing politicians of all stripes in their ill-fitting football shirts celebrating, along with the masses.
Left illusions
There are some on the left who think that leisure pursuits such as football were specifically designed, or at least permitted, by the ruling class as a form of repressing protest; and that by participating in any way in this sport the working class becomes distracted from the need for revolution. History would show us that, on the contrary, there is the potential for ‘football culture’ to be an integral part of the revolutionary movement.
It is watched by billions across the world. It creates a passion and devotion that is held closer than many a religion; it is passed down and continued through generations. And that goes right to the heart of working class communities.
When I see fans campaigning against ticket prices, I see ordinary people demanding higher wages and resisting the profiteering of capitalists. When I see fans campaigning against a takeover of their club, I see ordinary people fighting for more democratic control. Fan takeover of clubs represents to me a community form of working class control and management. When fans are complaining about migrant labour dying in their thousands while building sports stadiums for dodgy states to hold events in an attempt to ‘sportswash’ their crimes, I see the fight for workers’ rights and trade unions. There are, if it is properly considered, very few concerns faced by football fans, either directly or indirectly, which could not be addressed by the minimum demands of any communist organisation worth its salt.
There are fan groups, such as those of Rayo Vallecano in Spain, St Pauli in Germany, Celtic in Scotland and Dulwich Hamlet in England, to name but a few, with leftwing or progressive ideologies informally (or even formally in some cases through constitutions), who are dominant within the clubs’ supporters. Some fight fascist organisations directly in the streets and terraces, and they have managed to combine communities and football clubs on that basis. Organisations such as the Football Lads and Lasses Against Fascism and Trade Union Football and Alcohol Committee have worked hard to counter rightwing agendas. There is potential to organise within the football fan base, linking their issues to communist solutions.