bigideas

Michel Platini, former French football player, manager and now administrator, was on Newsnight last night decrying the influence of money and foreigners (and both, in the form of rich Americans) on English football. One quote in particular got me thinking:

The coaches aren’t English, the players aren’t English, I don’t know why this is the case.

Now, perhaps may seem obvious that an English football club should field English players and have English staff, or get as close to this ideal as possible. I’d like to look at this, and in the process look at what constitutes corporate continuity and identity: still with me?

Let me take as my example Liverpool Football Club, a club that has fallen foul of Platini by allowing itself to be bought by an American and for having a few too many players for whom chorizo and patatas bravas are more familiar than bangers and mash.

The club was founded in 1892 by John Houlding, landlord of Anfield Road football ground. Until that time Everton FC played at the ground but were unwilling to accept a rent increase and left. Houlding, left with a ground and no team to play in it, tried to found a company called Everton Football Club and Athletic Grounds that would continue where the old Everton left off. The football authorities rejected this attempt and he was forced to replace the Everton name with the new Liverpool name. The new club also had the problem of players – Everton had taken all of the local good ones with them. The new manager, Irishman John McKenna, found the answer by recruiting in Scotland. Liverpool hence became known as Team of all the Macs.

So LFC wasn’t a club that just sprung up amonst good, honest Englishmen who played and watched for love until the coming of Benitez. It was, like most English clubs, a product of a complex urban setting and migration. It was founded to provide mass entertainment. It was founded on a dispute about money. It was, when these factors are considered, much the same institution as it is today.

Now, over the past century the club – or more to the point it’s supporters – has become associated with a set of traditions. Support for the club tends to runs in families and the club’s traditions are held very dear by the supporters. Perhaps Platini is concerned that these will become erroded by a new owner with profit-driven priorities. But I wonder – is what constitutes Liverpool Football Club actually just the ground, players, manager and owner? In fact within the next few years all of these elements will have changed from when the club was first founded.

An “English” club isn’t what it first appears, and in fact changes all the time. This makes the statement, “I support the club my father supported,” a somewhat problematic statement, philosophically. We touched on a way of dealing with this problem in the post about Relative Identity. But applying RI here seems pedantic: surely what’s important is the narrative of Liverpool’s continuity. This corporate narrative allows us to imbue an institution with values that we assume we hold in common with others, and validate those values by reference to history. We do this with institutions, movements and nations all the time. It’s a dangerous mechanism at times – nationalism in Europe has demonstrated this convincingly, I think. But recognising it as a pure fiction undermines some simple collective pleasures, like supporting a football team. Instead we abandon some part our rational selves to the narrative in order to enjoy it. All the same there has to be some linkage to the rational world in order for our individual identities not to be erased.

Platini, I think, is lost in a world of jumpers-for-goalposts and men in balck-and-white with long shorts. Better that he recognises that if football is to remain an enjoyable spectator sport it has to in some way reflect the society in which it exists. Believe it or not, a game involving dodgy money and recent imigrants is one that might approximate England today.