Was football better in the old days?
I wrote a whole book about this and I was prompted to revisit it after reading Wednesday’s mailbox, especially Moses’ rant about top-flight football.
It’s interesting because such a view is diametrically opposite to all the advertising and marketing, which has worked for over 30 years and underpinned the financial inflation of the game to its vaunted status today. But it’s increasingly becoming like Trump’s alternative world where the sh*t you say is sold as reality.
So while the promotion depicts children hugging Lionel Messi like he’s the Messiah and 30-second packages of slow-motion goals with a throaty commentator exclaiming hyperbole, the reality is miserably standing in the rain watching a wrestling match at a corner having paid £60 to endure it. And you are expected to be grateful.
Of course dreadful football has existed in all eras and we can all cite examples. We’re talking generalities. Clearly, after watching football for 58 years, I’m not going to stop now.
Nostalgia for a time when you had more hair and weighed three stone less is easy for everyone to indulge in. It doesn’t matter when you were born, or if you think anything from the 1950s to the 2010s was the greatest era; that greatest era is usually when you were 10-25 years old.
But when you remove the nostalgia, what’s the actual truth?
The gap between appearance and reality is obviously massive now. That’s objectively true. But then you could say the same about any advertising. But I don’t recall a time in the last 55 years when there was so much dissatisfaction about the quality of the entertainment.
One reason is the inflated cost. It was free and rare on TV and believe it or not, even at the highest levels, used to be cheap, really cheap to watch. So if it was rotten, you didn’t feel so bitter about spending the money just to pay the players more in just one week than you’ll earn in five whole years or to support an oppressive state. So the sense of unfairness is more quickly provoked when all you’re watching is a messy attempt to score from a corner by crowding the six-yard box like in a school kickabout.
I’m often falsely accused of fetishising 70s football. That was when I grew up but I’m quite clear-eyed about it. For all the more varied competition, long-ball football, brutality and rain-lashed sand and mud pitches creating a more visceral game, half of every match was spent passing it back and forth to the goalkeeper and was often tedious. But I’d paid 50p to stand on the Holgate at Middlesbrough 50 years ago, which was the price of two pints, so I didn’t feel cheated. Even if I felt bored. I also had to get to and from Ayresome Park without getting my head kicked in, which was an ever-present danger.
And football was incredibly un-diverse and inward looking, with almost no players or managers from anywhere else. England was very slow to learn from 12 years of failure to qualify for a World Cup and seemed to think physicality would eventually triumph over skill and thought. Few questioned entrenched opinions.
The violence at football peaked in the 80s, which alienated many. But the conclusion of my book was that the 90s offered the best blend of quality of football with accessibility; that said I recall being appalled to learn Alen Boksic was picking up £64,000 a week from the Boro.
It was far from perfect but the back-pass rule improved things enormously and though the players were largely British, the cream of overseas players were also here. And there were still plenty of mavericks and flair on display. Prices hadn’t peaked and it still felt great to have more football on telly, even if it was no longer free. Plus, you were less likely to get your head kicked in or burned to death.
The stars at the time were outrageous talents that you’d pay to see. Everyone from Paul Gascoigne to Eric Cantona to Georgi Kinkladze to Juninho and many, many more. Today’s stars pale in comparison.; they excite much less often or are given less freedom as clubs become addicted to the 7/10 and not a 4 or a 9. The permanently sweat-drenched Declan Rice is a great player but he is no Bryan Robson. We’ve forgotten what such players were like. Robson was a human dynamo even by the standards of the time.
I argued that if you watch any game from back then and compare it to now, today’s game looks tame, over-thought, precious and much, much more risk-averse. It’s obviously a generalisation and exceptions exist but I think it largely holds. In fact I’d speculate the upward curve of money in the game follows a parallel downward curve of satisfaction or entertainment.
One line in Moses’ email stood out: ‘Football was an escape, a form of entertainment, a spectacle of skill and talent…now it feels like work.’ That’s quite profound. Many feel the same.
So was football better in the old days? We shouldn’t be ashamed to say to the authorities that yes, it was. Not be afraid of being thought old farts. Some things are objectively true. Like so much in today’s world, the authorities and media companies are just barefaced liars and pretending those lies are the truth. Trust your eyes.
