Column

When football becomes soccer...

It?s beginning to pick up momentum. It started a couple of years ago with the furore over the new ownership of Manchester United ? not just new owners but a takeover by representatives of the world?s most ruthless and intelligent market economy. Beyond any other nation, the US has the growth conditions that allow complete realisation of the business potential of any promising brand and that now includes some of the clubs that play our national game.

Of course, their growing interest in football has not happened by chance as American entrepreneurs have always been aware of soccer?s potential. After all there is no reason why this game, that can command a global audience of one billion for a single fixture, should not reach the heights of commercialism already achieved by the established triumvirate of this sport-mad nation. No surprise then that the American development machine has already made key moves to secure strategic assets across the Pond. Although just an individual, they have in Beckham a high-profile item of merchandise; a hip ambassador to promote the game from a soapbox in the wealthiest state. For as well as being a nexus of potential investment, California is the stronghold of the Hispanic fan base.

The star of David will, of course, eventually wane but by then there will have been a rash of takeovers and switches in the ownership of many of our football clubs. It will come with the investment sweeteners, which will rekindle supporters? hopes that their team will once again be successful. It will also come with the risk that the unthinkable could happen. Who in Britain could imagine a club side being bought out and relocated thousands of miles from its ancestral home?

This is not fiction ? it has already occurred, with LA Rams leaving their devastated fans behind for a new life in the Midwest. To our footballing populace this could only be considered as an act of war, or treason, or all three, and what?s more it could never happen with premier British football clubs (no offence to Wimbledon)... could it? Yet what might be merely uncomfortable conjecture in the short term could, with a flip of an ownership switch, become a reality in the hazy future. What is not in doubt is that there is already massive investment in America?s other top sports and this awaits soccer, provided the game structure is adapted for the US consumer.

First off, football would have to be squeezed into the template occupied by American sport?s big three. For soccer to make it, it will have to become that much more amenable to not only those who attend matches but also the virtual supporters. US business has created a target image for the citizen who sits before the TV screen: it?s a person with a short attention span for the serious and a regular need to go to the rest room. It?s an individual who will tolerate non-stop interruptions of any broadcast (including the news) to make way for lashings of advertising.

These target viewers have an insatiable appetite, and, if not wallowing in a pit of pop-corn and root beer to start with, then after a couple of hours of advert riddled TV they have probably just got in a delivery of a take-away pizza and a half gallon of Seven-Up. This denizen of the sitting room arena also enjoys showmanship to excess and what better stage to get their money?s worth than a virtual sporting event bursting with cheerleaders, brass bands and any other razzmatazz; things the British public either reviles or can?t do properly. Witness a couple of seasons ago the cheerleaders who at a rainy Goodison Park trotted out wearing plastic mackintoshes.

Joking aside, this is worrying stuff for the average English football supporter. Let?s imagine what might happen in a not-too-distant future when the shackles on international trade are loosened and unbridled enterprise further erodes our game. To us it is a game of two halves, but to fit the US sporting mould it must, at the very least, become a game of four quarters. How else will the sponsors get in sufficient machine-gun blasts of advertising to satisfy their massive investment?

Anyway, the controllers of the game across the Pond will have already concluded that 90 minutes is too long a tax on the concentration span of their viewing public, especially with such a novel spectacle. Beyond tampering with the length of a game, it will be obvious to the sponsors that a more radical doctoring of the outcome of matches will be required if the game is to keep, and expand, its US fan base. This means that there can be no place for drawn matches.

Of all the differences between our societies, one of the most instructive is the attitude only on the eastern side of the Atlantic where there is a place for ?the hard-earned point? or an appreciation of, ?an entertaining match in which it would have been unfair if there had been a loser?. I can still remember the look on the face of my Californian father-in-law when he found out that there was another sport in England that could be played for five consecutive days with still no winner at the end of it...

Similarly when our national game, our football, is finally adopted by US business, there will be a clean-up of other irritations about which we in Britain hum and ha but never do anything decisive. The dodgy referee will disappear overnight, his performances shored up by advanced know-how. Video technology will as a matter of course go ahead without any fuss, as befits the ?just do it? culture of the Americans. Now the ball will never do anything mysterious; it will either be, or not be, over the line.

The new technology will also bring an end to a life long institution: the questionable offside decision. The agonising of the TV pundits, as to whether he was or he wasn?t, put to the sword by the twin robots who run the line and whose connected lasers always get it right.

Once the broad structure of the game is sorted, the sponsors will apply pressure to some serious tweaking of football?s rule base. For a start, the investors will want to have much greater protection of their assets, so, instead of putting up with the metatarsal soap opera, they will opt for not only a return to wholesome (but still jazzy) footwear but also more general protection of these valuable bodies.

The rules will carry on bending in a protective direction, yet also with one eye on expanding the commercial appeal, in that any excessive body contact will be punished by a penalty kick, irrespective of where the offence happens on the pitch. Similarly, following the American tendency for excessiveness (did you know that the express lane checkout in most Californian supermarkets is for 20 items or less?) they?ll be happy for the playing 11 to be completely substituted at any stage of the game. Who knows whether this, combined with a game of four quarters, might impact on the crowd chanting e.g. ?Boring, Boring Arsenal? becoming ?Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring Arsenal??

Boring anyone though, will not be tolerated. Just imagine what the Americans might do to a game that is all square after three of the quarters? What?s to say the sponsors might not conjure up some diabolical intervention to settle the tie. If imagination is given its head, then for the last quarter we might have say, suspension of the offside rule. The more conservative sides might respond to this glimpse down a goal-infested abyss by playing two keepers. It all could point to a truly Laurel and Hardy impact, guaranteed to spice up even the most dour league fixture and, of course, boost the ratings.

So what will the future hold for our club sides once Trans-Atlantic politics and sponsorship changes have had their way? What will be the shape of our Premier League after 50 years of buyouts, translocations, extinctions and even amalgamations?

In the early years of the second millennium, Man U was yet to settle in its final commercial orbit. However, in five decades time, Man U will of course exist but with the club now basking in perennial sunshine and a beach culture that Old Trafford could never deliver. The men of Anfield too will be around and still manage to hang on to at least one of their traditions: red shirts, even if it is now the colours of Liverpool Redskins playing out of Seattle. They didn?t care that they left behind that expensive ground; neither were they bothered that it went to Everton and ? let?s face it that ? was the only way that the Toffees would ever get a ?new? ground.

But it isn?t all onwards and upwards; most don?t make it... look at Leeds United, still struggling but this time in the lower division of a league sponsored by a well-known toilet cleaner. Spurs, though do at last do something before they sink out of view; they set a record for the most personnel changes ever, and give new meaning to the phrase, ?Manager of the Month?. Collapse of course comes to Chelsea too, although the auditors are still trying to find out what exactly did happen to send the club on its way to the Far East, but further east than anyone could have imagined.

Other teams too see the writing on the wall; some join forces to try and stave off what is the inevitable. It was never going to be easy to accept amalgamations but Sheffield-now-truly-United is always preferable to the administrator?s offer of Sheffield-every-other-Wednesday. Who though would have believed that, in this climate of brutal natural selection, a new team might appear out of nowhere; well the North Sea to be exact. For there amongst a sprawling conurbation of oil and gas rigs, wind farms and giant fish culture operations, Dogger FC is born.

No surprise also that in this weird world of the future that the FA Cup has new sponsors. Forget that the backer made its billions treating the bowel problems of the world?s most bowel-conscious nation. Remember only that all they wanted for parting with the $5 billion prize money was a small name change to the competition, oh and, that the final few rounds should be played in California.

It?s Cup Final day, so who cares if football has become soccer? It?s Cup Final day and a poignant one at that: Man U of Los Angeles is about to do battle with United FC of Manchester, and as the two teams run out into the inferno of the Rose Bowl, the fans settle back to enjoy the spectacle of one of our most cherished institutions. It is Memorial Day, 28 May 2058, and they?re watching the final of the Flatulence Alleviation Cup.

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