FIFA - death, corruption and football

"For the good of the game" - really??

Regular readers will know that I love football.  Passionately.  My small, local club from where I grew up was on the edge of being relelgated out of the professional English football league altogether 6 years ago, but this year has won promotion to the Premier League.  Next year Bournemouth will be playing against the likes of Manchester United, City and Chelsea.

This concept is as ridiculous as it is amazing.  Or just, amazingly ridiculous.  Through my parents my boyhood team was Manchester United.  AFC Bournemouth were a team I started to watch when I was an older teen because they were local and I had started working so could afford to go.

Following the two clubs was fine, as the idea they would be playing in the same league would be as much a possibility as if I had chosen my second team from Portugal - it was never going to happen.  And yet, here we are.

But then attaching the tag "amazingly ridiculous" is quite fitting with football.  After all, just look at the international governing body for the sport - FIFA.

Football is a passion with many contradictions.  Over the years, aside from the action that has taken place on the pitch, there have been issues regarding racism, homophobia and violence, from both players and fans of the game.

Growing up in the 80s all these things were the norm in football, although thankfully a lot has changed.  The issues are still there, but at least when you hear that a footballer or group of fans have been racist, such as John Terry or Chelsea fans, you are shocked.  In the 80s it was so prevelant it made you sad, but not shocked.

However, there is nothing in the game more appalling than the governing body.  FIFA takes that yard stick and it runs away with it!

At the time of writing the FIFA congress is taking place, and we are in the middle of the voting process to decide the next president of FIFA.  The election is between the current president, Sepp Blatter, and his challenger Prince Ali bin-Hussein of Jordan.

The congress is mired in controversey, although that's nothing new.  FIFA being mired in controversey is like a jam sandwich at a picnic being mired in bees.  You might not like it, but what did you expect?

The big controversey at this time is that shortly before the congress took place a number of FIFA officials have been arrested in Switzerland on behalf of the US Department of Justice looking into accusations of bribery where officials were being paid kick backs by TV executives in order to secure rights to show World Cup matches.

The investigation has apparently been going on for a while, with former FIFA exec member Chuck Blazer, who had quietly pleaded guilty already, wearing a wire to meetings with FIFA officials to help the Dept. of Justice gather evidence.  He'd better stay out of jail for his efforts, because on the inside no one likes a grass!

At the same time the Swiss office of the Attorney General has started an investigation looking in to corruption around the voting process which decided the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World cups, which were Russia and Qatar respectively.

The fact that Russia and Qatar that were selected should be enough to inspire doubt.  First of all Russia - they love annexing parts of other countries but hate the gays.  Not really an inspiring choce to say the least.

But trumping them by some way is Qatar as a choice.  Seriously - Qatar!

In answer to everyone's first question "where???", Qatar is a small oil rich country in the middle east with a population of just over 2 million people.  It is also a country where in the summer temperatures can get as high as 50°c (122° fahrenheit).  A strange, if not insane choice for a host of a football tournament.

But worse than the conditions for playing football itself, are the conditions for workers.  Perhaps you have seen this graphic already being shared on social media:

Needless to say, the statistics are shocking.  According to a report by the Guardian newspaper Immigrant Nepalese workers in Qatar are dying at a rate of 1 person every two days.  They calculate the death toll of Nepalese, Indian and Bangladeshi workers to be 964 in 2012-13.

That should be shocking enough to make FIFA reconsider it's decision to award the tournament to Qatar, but then the death toll of labourers in Qatar will not come as surprise to them, as there would be deaths of workers even without a World Cup.

The International Trade union Confederation estimate there have been over 1200 deaths so far, with another 4000 expected to die by 2022.  Corruption and kick backs are bad enough, but now FIFA have blood on their hands.

Scourge of the poor and oxygen thief Prime Minister David Cameron describes FIFA corruption as the "ugly side of the beautiful game".  And he supports Aston Villa/West Ham/insert football team name here so he knows what he's talking about.

But FIFA appears to beyond reform.  Sepp Blatter is still expected to win the election comfortably.  He has support from the bulk of Asian and African confederation countries after delivering both World Cups in their continents, as well as money for the development of the game.

Some would say that all that money provides much needed investment in the grass roots game in developing countries, others would call it further corruption to enhance Sepp Blatter's power base.  To be honest, both sides of that argument might have a point.

But hey, the fact that 7 officials have been arrested and the election hasn't been postponed at all tells you that this is an organisation without a sense of shame.  I mean, if there is any chance of a shake up it will come because sponsors such as McDonalds have threatened to withdraw their support unless reforms are made.

You know your organisation is evil when you can let McDonalds be the one to take the moral high ground.

Also, Blatter's opponenant is a Jordanian Prince!  FIFA is so backward that it takes a figure from a Feudal system of governance to be seen as a great reformer.

At the end of the day, FIFA may be the governing body, but ordinary football fans do not recognise them as part of their game.  Next year I wll be trying to see as many Bournemouth games, home and away, as I can, and experiencing the wonders that the game can provide.

If the 2022 World Cup does go ahead in Qatar, then I won't be watching it that year.  I love football, but I won't have blood on my hands.

"We are Premier League!!"

Who needs 'Roy of the Rovers' when you've got 'Eddie of the Cherries'

Club captain Tommy Elphick celebrating with the fans

It's been referred to as a 'Roy of the Rovers' moment, after the British staple football comic book hero, because it feels like a work of fiction.  But no, it's real life - AFC Bournemouth have won promotion to the Premier League.

When the news is dominated by the election and the earthquake in Nepal (and it's hard to decide which is the most depressing) this is a rare good news story.  And not just for fans of the football club - it seems nearly everyone with an interest in the sport has been cheered by this news.

In 2009 the club was almost snuffed out of existence.  Bournemouth had spent years in financial dire straights.

I was born in Poole, next to Bournemouth, in Dorset, on the south coast of England.  My parents were both Northern - My Dad a coach driver from Manchester and my Mum a nurse from Accrington in Lancashire.  When they married they moved down south because it meant my Dad would spend less time away from home due to the tours he could do.

Our neighbours thought they were grockels - a local slang term meaning tourist.  My Mum's accent is still strongly Lancashire even after well over 30 years on the south coast, so many still think that.

Through them both, but mostly my Mum, I developed a passion for Manchester United.  There is an absolutely valid argument that says that you should support your local club.  However, I never remember there being any pull to do so when I was young.

If you live in a big city like Manchester, Liverpool or London I suppose this makes sense.  For somewhere like Poole the nearest City (and it's still an hour away) is Southampton.

Kids at school supported a variety of teams, the most popular in the 80s being Liverpool, closely followed by Manchester United and I suppose Southampton with a bit of Arsenal and Spurs thrown in.

My family roots were not from the town, so it makes sense the route I took in following my Mum's team.  In the early 90s when I started to get into football United changed from being a team with history, to being a team that started to make it's own history again.

I do not remember there being any pull to watch Bournemouth when I was growing up, I don't even remember kids at school supporting them at all.  Watching the local news I picked up that they were a small club that were permanently in financial risk.

The first time I went was in 1999 to watch them play in a pre-season friendly against Southampton, and the only reason I went was because former United front man Mark Hughes had just signed for Southampton.

Whilst the match was not particular memorable, I enjoyed the atmosphere.  I had been to Old Trafford a few times, which is a hell of a stadium of course, but the rawness of a rickety stadium like Dean Court (as it was then) stood in the terraces - the experience struck something with me.

I was 17 and in a summer job in a factory, so had a bit of money and freedom to spend it for the first time.  Doing a morning shift on the first Saturday of the season me and a lad got chatting and decided to go.  I found out which was the football bus using the google of the time - i.e. by asking my Dad.  Then off we went.

The first game was against newly promoted Lincoln City, and we won comfortably 2-0.  I remember seeing Mark Stein playing up front for us.  A very handy striker who, with age, was starting to come down a bit in his career (he had played for Chelsea before us).  He also looked like a small boy with some kind of weird ageing disorder.  A top player though.

This experience was enough.  Being a bit shy I only went because there was someone else who wanted to go too (even the friendly against Southampton was with my Dad).  But after that I was happy to go by myself, and went to nearly every home game that season.  It was a big turnaround compared to previous years and they only just missed out on the play-offs.

There were some great players then.  Richard Hughes who went on to play in the Premiership with Portsmouth.  A great defence as well with full back Neil Young and Jamie Vincent who would overlap in attack (a style of play still adopted to this day) and the centre backs in Ian Cox and a promising young lad called Eddie Howe (I wonder what happened to him?).

Alongside him was Mr Bournemouth himself - Steve Fletcher.  I must admit, I wasn't smitten at first.  A big target man of a centre forward, his job was to dominate in the air, hold up the ball and win flick ons for team mates.

To me he was big, awkward and slow, and not much of a goal scorer.  Others who were Bournemouth hardcore fans explained to me that despite what my eyes had been telling me, he was in fact a legend.  Over time, I got it.

Eddie Howe and Steve Fletcher in their younger day, doing their bit

When in 2009 he scored the only goal in the last game of the season to save Bournemouth from relegation, I got it.  On that day if we had lost we would have been relegated out of the football league altogether, and would soon have gone out of business completely.

Our leading appearance maker covering 20 seasons might not have been Messi, but he gave every bit of himself on the pitch, and we loved him for it.  He now has one of the stands at Dean Court named after him.

Next year is going to be strange for me.  As I said before, I was brought up supporting Manchester United - this is ingrained.

Supporting Bournemouth as well reminds me of what Irish friends have said about supporting football.  In Ireland many support an English team and a Scottish team, knowing that it made no difference because they would never meet.

In the years I have been going to watch Bournemouth I know that a lot of the supporters have other teams they follow as well.  However, there is of course the core of fans who are pure Bournemouth.

For them there was never a choice.  Generations of their family supporting the one club, no matter what division, no matter how little money they had.  These are the fans who put the hands in their own pockets to help save the club time and again from complete destruction.

All of that was just to have a club to watch and support FULL STOP.  However, enter Max Denim, a run of the mill Russian billionaire who lives in Sandbanks.  Many have heard of this tiny area of land on the coast in Poole because it has the highest concentration of millionaires anywhere in Britain.

To many when I say I'm from Poole this is all they know, not realising the Poole is an average working class town, albeit with a big slant towards tourism and a few rich folk with yachts.  Well, one of them provided AFC Bournemouth with a personal loan of £10 million.  This was to stop the club going bankrupt, but now look at us.

There has certainly been money spent on this current squad, but not a ridiculous amount, and certainly very wisely invested.  A few years ago you start to see midfielders and defenders that cost 100-200k here and there.  Not huge sums compared to the big players in the game, but for us more than we had ever been able to spend before.

Throw in to the mix a young genius of a manager in Eddie Howe, and we are now set to join the elite in the Premier league.  He's seen us through from survival in 2009 to being promoted three times in 6 years.  He recently won the football league manager of the decade, quite an accolade to say he hasn't even been in management for the full decade.  But still, an award richly deserved.

I have lived in Manchester for over 10 years, so most of the matches I have seen them in have been away matches around the region.  I have loved every minute.  You get the hardcore support, lots of singing and passion, just what football should be about.

Hoping these Blackpool fans don't kick off.  We had just beaten them 6-1!

Although I'm delighted to see the club in the Premier league next year, there will be changes.  I'm used to turning up to grounds like Bury and Doncaster - big open stadiums in which you pay to enter a certain stand then can sit where you like.  Not that I ever sit of course, I'm stood through out singing my heart out.

Not in the Premier league though, shit hot stewards and cameras, tight controls to make you sit down and shut up.  I think it's fair to say though that after all these years of hard work and pain, the Bournemouth fans will be ready to cheer no matter what conditions they are put in.

I hope to be there singing alongside them too.  That's if they don't mind a weird northern sounding grokel being there, that is.




Bringing me down to earth, I expect my next blog will be about how awful the outcome is from after the election.  I'm not predicting who will win, just that whatever happens, it will be awful...

A funny old game?

Football is a bizarre hobby.  The commitment it evokes from its followers is as such that many fans would be wiping rage induced foam from their mouth just at my suggestion that it is a “hobby” at all.  For a significant number of people it is not just a hobby, but a way of life.  Legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankley once said “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude.  I can assure you, it is much, much more important than that.”

There is no form of entertainment like football.  Andrew Lloyd Webber fans don’t beat up Leonard Bernstein fans if they come across them in the West End, Coronation St has never started a riot, nobody has rearranged their wedding because it clashed with the release of the latest World of Warcraft game.  Popular music can be tribalist at times (think The Beatles v. The Stones, Mods v. Rockers, etc), but this often artificially created rivalry pales in significance to that of football.

Now, I like to consider myself a practical man.  Someone who is able to stand back and see the bigger picture, take a scientific approach.  Art though, has its own rules and yes, I am including sport as art.

Football is a mess of contradictions.  We pay high entrance fees and TV subscription rates to watch a bunch of millionaires, made wealthy from the money out of our pockets.  The footballers themselves are often not just wealthy, but vulgar with it.  Smashing up sports cars like they are toys, getting in to fights outside clubs, and sexually using and abusing women like disposable play things.

The lifestyle our financial contributions are helping to fund is often morally repugnant to even the most open minded of individuals.  Yet, it is amazing what football fans are willing to ignore.  Accusations of rape, racist abuse, and so much more are put to one side when cheering on your team.  Paolo Di Canio has just been announced as the new manager of Sunderland, and his history as a proud fascist has fuelled anger at this appointment.  And yet we all know that if he wins a few games whilst in charge, the vast majority of fans will forget all this.  In no way am I suggesting Sunderland fans are less morally or ethically sound than any other football fan, because this would be the outcome at any football club.

And yet, somehow, football has me.  Completely.

I have experienced football in two very different spheres.  On the one hand there is my first love in football, the most highly supported team in the world and, by the very nature of football, therefore the most hated as well: Manchester United.

This was bestowed by my family, as is often the case.  Unusually maybe, this inheritance was in no way forced, or even assumed.  As a child I hated all sport, as it seemed that it’s only reason for existing was for my Father to deny me the chance to watch cartoons on TV.  Sport just got in the way.  And yet, by the time I was 10, I felt like I might be missing out on something.  Perhaps these were the first stirrings of the adolescent need to conform.  I don’t remember.  I was 10!

So I adopted my Mothers team.  As it is from my Mothers side, there was never any pressure from within my family that this is something I had to do.  Nurturing and caring, my mother would never have pressured me in to doing anything I didn’t want to do.  My dad was neutral on the issue, as he has always insisted that he supports both City and United (to put this in to a historical context, imagine the effect of making a lovely cup of tea, and alternating between taking careful sips of it and then dipping your knackers in it).

So I decided I was going to like football, because it was just something you should do.  Like drinking beer, the taste at first may seem bitter, yet it gives way to intoxication.  That year United won the very first premiership trophy, their first league trophy in 26 years.  With such an excellent sense of timing, you can understand why I would eventually decide to become a comedian!

Of course it would be expected of many that I would support Manchester United due to where I was brought up in Manchester.  South Manchester.  Very south Manchester.  Ok... Dorset.

Eventually though the pull of my local team had its effect, and I eventually started to go and see AFC Bournemouth.  Many died-in-the-wool football fans will insist you should support your local team, but there genuinely was not a pull for me when I was growing up.  Existing in the third tier of league football, I didn’t know any friends at school who were Bournemouth fans.  I only went the first time because United legend Mark Hughes was playing for Southampton there in a friendly.  But that summer I started to go to every home match.  At the time I was just 16, and thanks to my first summer job I had the money and the independence for the first time to go to football by myself.

This was a very different kind of football to that seen at Old Trafford.  Up front was Steve Fletcher.  A striker who might score 10 goals a season if he played particularly well.  Used as a target man, if he didn’t win the ball in the air he would make sure he elbowed the defender instead.  A player with little finesse, skill, and certainly no pace.  Over time though I would come to accept that this man is a legend.  And I do mean that in the present tense because he still plays for Bournemouth now, at the age of 40 (Ryan Giggs eat your heart out!).

Such a legend, in fact, that one of the three stands at our ground, Dean Court, is named after him.  That’s right – three stands.  Any fans of rectangles out there will know that they invariably have four sides, and yet we only have three sides to our ground.  Three fully seated stands, and a car park.  This was not the world’s first “drive in” football ground as you may think.  No, we didn’t build a forth stand because we couldn’t afford to.

This is because Bournemouth has been paupers for years, a club constantly under threat of administration.  But now, as the universe has been engulfed by financial despair, the cosmos has been turned seemingly on its head because Bournemouth now has money.  In fact, we’re one of the highest invested in teams in the league which is, frankly, mad!

We have a strong squad and a great manager in Eddie Howe.  Maybe in the coming years 10,000s will flock to see the mighty Cherries, but for now at least we can still be assured of that “authentic” league football experience of flocking in our 100s to places like Bury.  Grounds so low in attendance that when you arrive you are not given a seat number, merely allowed entrance to an entire stand and told to “sit where you like”.  Compare that to trying to get tickets to Old Trafford, and you will understand what I mean when I say that I have experienced football at both ends of the spectrum.  Even then, whether it’s Old Trafford or Dean Court, and taking in to account all the myriad contradictions inherent in football, it is still a thrill to experience the beautiful game!