Blog: Ace

Football. We shouldn't be watching - we should be playing

I know this is going to turn into a rant so I am going to have to hold myself back from time to time.
Football has always been a sport that is best played. And it does not matter your ability, your size, your age or gender, you can always find a like group of individuals who you can kick a ball with.

But now through the combined efforts of the Sky marketing machine, the Premier League, football agents, football club directors, media pundits, pub chains, Mobile Phone operators, we are turning into a nation of couch potato analysts. You could if you want watch, listen, read,interact with football virtually 18 hours a day withour really shifting your arse. And of course its not really football is it -its the Premier League.

You see, call me old fashioned - and I probably am - in the same way that George Best or Denis Law or Kenny Dalgleish or even Chris Waddle are old fashioned - I used to get a great buzz playing. Ok I wasn't very good but I played in the depths of the Southern Amateur League on a Saturday Afternoon. We would all meet at the same place, travel in the same two battered cars - the goalkeeper would always smoke in the back of my 15 year old Estate and off we would go round the North or South Circular around London.

In the dressing room we would all talk rubbish - crack jokes- apply horse linament and keep a serious face when the skipper described our tactics and then go out and play our hearts out for 90 minutes. Sometimes we won, sometime we lost - I can't remember but afterwards we drank with the other team and just generally took the piss out of each other. On the way home - it was fish and chips and back in time to see Match of the Day. Perfect.

The point is we played. And we took a passing interest to what Professional footballers did. Watching football was for old men or Hooligans I suppose.
But now it has become an all consuming big screen X box of delight where plodding journeymen are turned into heroes and piss taking footballers are paid more money in a week than most Pro footballers used to earn in a year. Its not their fault. Its ours - by being so gullible to fall for the hype and the snake oil. And now all we do is gawp and gape and dig deep into our pockets to finance yet another Bentley for yet another flash harry

Earlier this week, Chris Waddle amongst others pointed out that we were ruining our own National Game by the amount of foreign signings - its true. Again its not their fault. Why wouldn't you want to earn millions if their was a system in place that was short sighted enough to pay up. What has happened to our academies? What has happened to our young players. What has happened to the game that should be played.

This season unsubscribe, turn off, get out your boots and find a team and share that experience right here. Like life - its better to take part than be a spectator.

by Ace on 08:13 on 18th August 2007