The football industry… Is boredom a threat to the world’s most famous game? – Arab Website

“I’m tired of football and can’t finish a match, but I can watch five hours of tennis with enthusiasm.” These are not the words of a sports fan or follower, but of Brazilian phenomenon Ronaldo Nozario. His speech came after the recent European Championship and America’s Cup, and after a consensus among observers and locals that the level of fun has dropped and boredom has dominated most of the games in both tournaments.
Some say that games have become more boring recently compared to recent years, along with some other opinions that criticize gaming in more detail because of the industry it has become.
At least the football we love is no longer the football that Galileo published dozens of books and articles about, historians wrote about it, millions cried about it, it no longer has any meaning or appeal. Fans – poor people! This is not a utopian view, but what the Argentine coach Bielsa said when criticizing modern football and the organizers of football matches. The Copa America tournament between the South American Union and the United States, “Football … is based on popular property, the poor maintain it because it is the only source of happiness in the absence of money. The poor no longer have it.”
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Players earn huge amounts of money from football, from advertising revenues, image rights and the profits that come with fame and stardom, in addition to extremely high salaries. These sums are directly proportional to the game’s transformation into a conglomerate industry built on numbers, analytics, more employees and greater investments by big companies.
All this has turned the player into an employee with little choice, forced to accept certain treatments, strict diets, high-paced travel, media pressure, advertising duties, and many details that have made him a Hollywood celebrity for as long as possible after adolescence from a naughty player who wanted to continue playing football. Because it is no longer just a game and an entertainment sport, but a comprehensive industry that provides entertainment materials, and capital competes to maintain it, amplify its income, and expand the target audience behind the screen.
The problem is that money has become the prior goal of the game and the art of football, and not the other way around. As a result, clubs, through coaching staffs and data analysts, control the way the players themselves play. This greater control and manipulation of the players’ abilities and playing techniques reduces the space for creativity. This is a point of view recently expressed by many players, including Lionel Messi. He criticized modern training strategies and methods for setting great limits on the player, even sometimes preventing him from dribbling. Isn’t this one of the most beautiful qualities of a player? One of the most famous coaches who sets limits on his players is the Spaniard Pep Guardiola.
Lionel Messi combines these two things, perhaps the last player of this generation to be known for his skills, in addition to being the owner of football efficiency and bringing money to investors and club owners, which prompted the Barcelona government, after a dispute with him, to leak information about the amount of advertising that Messi receives every year, amounting to 500 million dollars, of which Barcelona has a share.
But Messi said that at the end of their careers, players no longer have room for creativity because they strictly follow the coach’s instructions on the smallest details of passing and how to play the ball. The coach no longer just sets the strategy, but also controls how they play and how many passes they make.
This technical and mechanical order imposed on the players makes them almost machines controlled by the coach who in turn is controlled by the administration, forcing him to make decisions to introduce players and release others based on numbers, the number of successful passes, the positions moved and the number of goals scored… These numbers do not necessarily reflect the playing style and skills of one player relative to another, as much as it provides an illustration of the player’s productivity. He is therefore an employee who must do the job assigned to him.
Belgian player De Bruyne and Spanish player Rodri complained in the statement, which shows how difficult the life of a football player is. Rodri talked about more than 5,000 minutes of games in an interview with the media: “One day, everything piles up and becomes too much. Playing requires your physical condition, but your mental state is also important. People just watch the game, but there is also the pre-match, preparation, travel, time spent in the hotel, time watching the game. Sincerely, but something needs to be done. (Games) are getting more and more, and there seems to be no sign of stopping. The players must be taken care of. I am very clear about this. I have reached the point where I can’t do it anymore. However, if you say so…”
Then he hesitated, and continued: “Look, I know football is a business, and I know there’s a lot of money, but at some point you have to take care of the athletes.”
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Diego Armando Maradona, considered one of FIFA’s most outspoken critics, criticised matches suitable for television in a statement: “No one asks the players what they want. We are the ones on the pitch. We are the foundation of this game.”
The reason for these statements is that FIFA scheduled a match at noon, when the sunlight is very strong, because it suits the television broadcast in most time zones of different continents.
FIFA and the sponsors of today’s football are the main controllers of the form, quality and direction of the game. Numbers have become the criterion for determining important players and skilled players, since the latter becomes a burden to the team because he does not provide additional help to the club, which is motivated by economic reasons and sales rather than by the audience’s enjoyment of the victory and applauds, and therefore the idea that beautiful football does not bring championships is back and is repeated… Therefore, a skilled player is a disobedient player who simply refuses the instructions of the coach.
The human resources represented by the players, despite their good income, remain victims physically due to the accelerated development of the modern football industry machine. We find its disastrous consequences in all the serious accidents where players fall while playing and almost die from overexertion. Off the field, the victims of this system are the workers who are under great pressure when building sports facilities. While the funds are concentrated in certain clubs, it is at the expense of other clubs that cannot compete, withdrawing talents from poor countries in Latin America and Africa and selling their contracts in Europe for huge prices.
The Chinese Super League is the result of this escalating conflict, between the FIFA and UEFA organizations on the one hand and the owners of the major clubs on the other, as the biggest, most popular and famous clubs notice that they have the largest public capital in the game, bringing money to the organizers of the game and its most important organizational bodies, who in turn do not hesitate to attract advertisers and investors.
Where will this economic conflict lead? And what role do European governments play in this conflict, if we know that they are one of the most important modern soft powers?
Bashir Amin
Syrian writers
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