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KICboy - Kicked In (the) Cloisters. That is how I now feel about football. From Charterhouse to the Champions League, the game of the people needs to be returned to the people. Let's end this corporate scope creep! 80s YTS footballer turned Project Manager with a few roles in between whilst I changed my game. I am passionate about football at every level and want to encourage people to WAKE UP! There is no point even looking at the findings of the Government Select Committee Enquiry Into Football Report unless we are going to make a stand and bring about some of the changes recommended. I am offering an alternative vision; an independent candidate for change - Martin Bell in boots, if you like! Do you feel that football is increasingly kicking you in the cloisters? Then read KICboy and The Man(ifesto) - creating the mandate for change. (Illustrations by Gemma Hastilow.)

12 February 2011

One Love/ People Get Ready

As Arsenal brace themselves this week, (Jack Wilshire even suggesting that they need to be ‘a bit nasty’ towards their opponents - I wonder if Wenger saw that..!), many people are asking if the current Barcelona side is the best club side ever....? My seven year old nephew, who lives in the third most populous settlement in Staffordshire, stated that he supported Barcelona recently. Their appeal and reach transcends national leagues and global business territories. Where will all this end, I wonder...?

With football increasingly presenting itself as a hybrid of sport, entertainment and business it is easy to imagine that, in future, there might be one dominant global player in the football sector like there is in other industries such as facebook, social networking; youtube, creative visual media; twitter, briefly famous and Google, search engines and all the other places they are beginning to inhabit - though not the state of being evil, of course. The shift towards supporting one dominant football team could easily unfold once we have 100MB connectivity, unbundled broadcasting rights allowing the major clubs to stream their matches live and maybe a new world league comprising the top few teams from each territory (ie European Champions League, the South American Copa Libertadores and a concoction of revenue rich customers from the middle east, India and China).

But, wait a minute – consider this: as the football heritage has been unpacked over the last twenty years, aren’t we in danger of forgetting about how the fabric of football internationally, nationally and locally is so interwoven? If the mechanism for engaging with football locally is lost then the bigger tournaments will become less meaningful. Already for some, the preferred choice of engagement with football is by watching a live hook-up at 3pm on a Saturday (or whenever their team is scheduled to play). Aside from the legal implication, this does not look like a good model for engaging with football and will lead, ultimately, to a diminution and detachment from the playing/ participative side of football, in my opinion. One feeds the other. This might be the legacy of the Premier League marketing strategy - a generation of so called fans who do not participate in football or any sport - consumer society continues to go large.

With that in mind, I think that the whole pyramid from FIFA down to your local FA needs to resynchronise the football calendar to allow everyone a chance to engage with football in different ways. Something like the following might work:

- start the season in February (Jan winter break)
- March 2 wk window for international qualifiers/friendlies
- April 2 wk window for international qualifiers/friendlies
- June/July summer break (planning & periodisation in July)
- season recommences in August
- Sept 2 wk window for international qualifiers/friendlies
- Oct 2 wk window for international qualifiers/friendlies
- do not play any internationals outside these times
- Dec season end
- Jan break (winter World Cup on the equator then more feasible...?)
- 16 teams and 30 games for elite leagues globally to facilitate this
- reducing game time for elite players allows Champions League, Copa Libertadores, Euros, World Cups, etc to be played with less risk of fatigue or injury
- the result is better international tournaments with motivated players
- an additional benefit is that some interest and supporter base can be shifted and focussed periodically on teams and leagues further down the structure otherwise they are going to go bust.

It is not something that will happen quickly, I know, but I have factored in a decent planning cycle to kick off the debate. These are just initial thoughts and there’s no doubt a football special full of those willing to fight these ideas. But, can't we just make football itself, in all its local forms across each continent our one love – rather than having a love for just one team.  I love Barcelona. The way the play the game is wonderful. But I also love Stafford Rangers, Wolves and the England national team as well. I want them all to survive and prosper so that our children's children can play and support teams like them, too. Do you?

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