I was given a couple of freebie tickets to this year's Charity Shield, and wanting the opportunity to view the new, overpriced, Wembley my brother and I went along to see Portsmouth v. Man Utd.
I often complain about not getting out enough in my old age, but everytime I do, I just get outraged at how crap things have got.
I saw Isaac Hayes last year, and what a pile of shite he was, yet the audience, susceptible to the marketing hype lapped it up.
And the modern game appears to be under the same curse. I do not need an announcer telling me to welcome my team to the pitch. I do not need the announcer to tell me that half time was now happening, and to be reminded that it was Portsmouth v. Man Utd in the Charity Shield. As for the pre-match "entertainment", it was some women being promoted by Simon Cowell being given essential exposure, whilst a handful of blokes rode around on "segways", no doubt helping to promote these ludicrous vehicles in Britain. And this just two days after the lavish olympic opening ceremony in China. It was mediocre embarrassing crap.
And the game was pointless and without atmosphere, but the crowd didn't seem to mind!
My brother and I hark back to an earlier age, were men queued for hours to get into a game, where you stood sardined in the terraces, listening to scratchy chart hits six months out of date until the teams ran out to thunderous applause/booing/rancour. No-one needed to be told who was playing because: a) it was printed in the fixture list at the start of the season, b) it was on the poster outside the ground when you turned up, and ultimately c) it was on the ticket. If that wasn't enough, the average football fan had enough nous to recognise that the bloke running towards the goal in the red shirt was George Best, and the bloke lying on the ground in the blue shirt was Ron "Chopper" Harris.
And the terraces, apart from being death-traps, had atmosphere. They were bear-pits. Working Class bear-pits at that, one huge beast swaying up a down the terrace during the course of the game. I was at Anfield as an eleven-year old, where my feet barely touched the ground, as I bobbed around like a small cork on a tidal wave of scousers. Barely saw the game, but my god, what a day!
Twenty years ago I took a couple of colleagues from Tennessee to Spurs v. Aston Villa, where Venables' side, with Linekar and Gascoigne were taking on Taylors' championship hopefuls, which included Dave Pleat and Gordon Cowans. Big Game. Tottenham still held 50,000 back then and the atmosphere was raucous, and had that mid-week floodlit edge to it.
As we awaited the arrival of the teams, my guests asked "where is the entertainment?, in the States we have cheerleaders, singers, presentations, plenty before a game!"
"This is a football match," I replied, "We're here to watch a game of football!"
When the teams came out and the roar from the crowd snapped at us, my colleagues were visibly shaken, and as the game got under-weigh, and progressed through the best possible scenarios that a game can throw up, they began to realise that this was something different, and increasingly so as the volume grew as the tension mounted. At the end of the game, with Villa winning the game and earning a torrent of abuse from the home support, our ears were ringing, and one of the Tennesseans turned to me a said "Oh, I see what you mean: the football's the entertainment!"
"Too fucking, right!"
But now? 84,000 people prepared to pay £50 a ticket, and £2.30 for a coke who want a day out and an opportunity to sit with like-minded people in their replica shirts.
Curiously, when the non-event ground to a halt at 0-0, we were told that it would go straight to penalties. Now tradition used to have it that a draw meant that the shield was shared, but no more, the consumers were to be given a winner!
My brother and I decided that it was time to go, and at least it gave us to opportunity to get to the tube before the crowd.
We were not alone, as we shuffled down the Wembley Way, we were joined by other men, exclusively over forty, none of whom wore a replica shirt, all equally disillusioned by what they'd seen. Modern life? Keep it.
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