Bravehearts, not billionaires

I was reading a piece by a Scottish football fan this morning lamenting the cost of travel and tickets to matches in next summer’s World Cup and bemoaning the fact that he wouldn’t be able to afford to attend the final, ‘should we make it that far.’

On a cold, frosty Worcestershire morning, the prospect of warm days in North and Central America, supporting your country’s latest overseas crusade, is very appealing, isn’t it?

For Scotland fans, this is especially true, having not made the finals since those heady French days of 1998. However, a wee trip over the Channel is not just a far cry, geographically, from transatlantic travel; it is more than a world away from the one we lived in 27 years ago.

Still loyal, still passionate, still herded like animals into stadiums by paranoid police officers, this experience remains the same for the majority of ordinary football fans. Except, none of us is ‘ordinary.’ We are each extraordinary in our support and willingness to put finances, health and even personal safety on the line to follow our team.

And yet, I don't believe that FIFA is interested in the ordinary, much less the extraordinary; it seems to be laser-focused on the money. I suspect it always has been and always will be until one too many corruption scandals force its demise. It is only the sponsorship deals and corporate packages that appear to be important to them. Even the football is secondary to that prime objective. Anything outside of this financial paradigm and you’re on your own. No, really, make your own plans if you really want to, but it’s not our problem if anything goes wrong. It’s there in the small print, in more than 40 different languages.

Why worry about the heat (like everybody else) when your private box is air-conditioned?

Why let yourself worry about the distances required to travel around the continent when there are private jets?

Why restrict yourselves to worrying about local skirmishes when the battle for global reach via the most lucrative broadcast rights in history has already been won?

I’m writing the latest in my History of Football series – The World Cup story. I am currently in Switzerland in 1954. In a post-war world trying to rebuild itself, the World Cup too was an opportunity for European nations to show that the fascist influences in 1934 and 1938 had been well and truly buried. Much of the world was still on its knees, yet the World Cup in those days represented an opportunity for nations to project positive, progressive identities, no matter the cost. Even South Korea made the effort, just a year after the armed conflict had ended there.

Huge numbers of people crossed national borders to watch matches, each believing that they could win the trophy. Scotland appeared in the World Cup finals for the first time, having come second in the British Home Championship, which was used as a qualifying group, finishing second to England. They could have been in Brazil in 1950, having also finished second behind England, but rather sniffily refused, saying they would only attend as winners, not runners-up. Perhaps then, as now, the cost of travel came into it…

I can just remember the 1966 final, because my grandfather had come round to watch it with my father on our tiny black & white television. They didn’t generally get on, although on that glorious afternoon, there were smiles, much backslapping and tinned salmon sandwiches for tea (red, not pink!). Ever since then, I have understood that football can bring people together, whether they be supporting the same team or enduring the banter and good humour that only football rivalries can produce. After watching Brazil in 1970, I was totally bewitched by the mesmerising spectacle of the World Cup, and my current research is both a revelation and a validation of that.

Metrics didn’t really enter my consciousness until 1971; now they seem to be at the heart of everything, and not all of it good. There were certainly arguments and divisions, flaws and downright injustices in those early World Cups. There was also optimism, though. The enduring belief that things would get better, and not just for the entitled few.

At least some of that has survived, as our Scottish football fan worries about what on earth he is going to do about the final, should Scotland ‘make it that far…’

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