Achi news desk-
Within a few decades, Scottish emigrants were taking the game to every corner of the world and helping to establish some of its best clubs and organize their national structures.
Still, there is an inconsistency in Scotland’s influence on world football and its successes on the pitch. In almost 100 years of international competition Scotland have never qualified for the final stages of these tournaments. During the last four decades the efforts of our club teams in European competition have been an embarrassment to a nation where football is more or less a religion.
Earlier this month, another notable contribution was made by Scotland to the development of football. It came as a result of the publication of a book which has already been hailed across the world as one of the most important essays ever written about the future direction of world football. It’s called Sport’s Perfect Storm and is written by Roger Mitchell, a chartered accountant from Glasgow and former CEO of the Scottish Premier League.
In it, he suggests that football, as we know it, has come to a crossroads and that its entire future depends on which path the game’s lawmakers take. Significantly, despite international acclaim for his analysis and solutions, none of the banjo-playing backwaters of Scottish football have sought his advice or input.
“I’m not interested in personal validation or profile,” he told me last week, “I simply think that the challenges facing world football are even more profound for the game in Scotland.” Since he left here in 2006 he has become a globally compelling voice in sports investment, helping new companies and start-ups to invest in sports and pitching them to administrators and marketing directors.
He now lives on the shores of Lake Como with his wife and family, but his passion for Scottish football burns fiercely. Mr Mitchell also believes that football can help the physical, emotional and intellectual development of our young people and reverse trends that have seen them retreat into metaverse voids where human interaction has almost ceased.
“The real task for smart people who care about our game is this: how do we take this asset, football, and use it to lure young people away from their lonely, delusional existences that have Embedded in iPhones, virtual reality goggles and Artificial Intelligence?
“The only pursuit that can bring them back to the real world and talk to each other again is football. This is the only thing that will save our children from disappearing down electronic black holes forever. And that is as true of Coatbridge as Como.”
He was surprised to discover recently that a majority of young people find dates on electronic websites. So even romance, that most basic and urgent human interaction, has been subcontracted to global third parties.
He cites the film and music industries where instant, risk-free success is required. “Simple Minds only started making money after their fifth album. Today they would have had their ditch after one. In Hollywood all the money is spent on global superhero franchises, there is no longer room for quirky legends like Local Hero.
However, he believes football has charms that film and music lack. These are rooted in an emotional and spiritual appeal that is rooted in families and communities and is passed down through generations. Yet aspects of his book seem to lean in the direction of corporatism and the embrace of big capital.
I note that only once in the last 27 years has a team from outside the four major European leagues – England, Germany, Spain and Italy – won the Champions League. The element of competition, its most basic appeal, disappears. The Champions League has now been reduced to a glamorous pre-season tournament sponsored by one of a few mega-corporations.
He disagrees. “My son is 22 and a knowledgeable football fan. He and his friends are obsessed with the technical side of the game. They love the knockout stages of the Champions League where all the best teams hit the stage at the same time and the games become compelling showcasing the game at its most beautiful and powerful.”
But isn’t this just football for connoisseurs, for tourists, I ask. “Maybe, but the current young generation doesn’t use football like we used to,” he replies. They also do not use long form journalism. I am writing a long-form article as a weekly blog about some of these issues. My kids are not remotely interested in it.
“They find it difficult to watch a whole 90-minute game live. This is because the magnetism of the smartphone is amazing. The algorithms are so smart that they come to fetch them and remove them to see other things. When my son and his friends see players making a few bad passes they say: ‘I’m not hanging around if this is the quality’.
“Football has been funded for 30 years by selling 90-minute live footage. I would say now that this product is not desired by the current generation. And once you recognize that, you say “Oh f**k” and you think of a book title of ‘Sport’s Perfect Storm’.”
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I still believe though, that top level football is in danger of eating itself by reducing the element of uncertainty and danger in favor of pre-arranged outcomes. If what Mr Mitchell says is true – that millennials with short attention spans are not interested in anything below Champions League quarter-final level – then what is to stop the corporate sponsors from reducing the game to three periods of 20 minutes. In cricket, this is already happening where the rise of T20 cricket is rapidly displacing Test cricket and killing the County game.
He is relaxed about this. “Our generation is asleep at the wheel. One day they will wake up and the game won’t be there. They should be asking – as cricket administrators have asked – what shibboleths we can remove; what sacred cows do we need to kill?”
His book has had what he describes as an “overwhelming” global reception. He can pick up the phone to any international administrator and discuss these issues. And he would like to be having these conversations with the people who run men’s and women’s football in Scotland.
Our generation is asleep at the wheel. One day they will wake up and the game won’t be there.
I suggest that we may be on the verge of creating two different codes of football. This happened with rugby in 1895 when Rugby League football was introduced over the issue of professionalism. Northern working class clubs included miners and mill workers who needed compensation for taking time off work, while southern clubs had independent means and could afford to maintain the amateur aesthetic. Over time, rule changes were introduced such as abandoning the line and reducing the number of players.
“I think we’re getting close to that place now,” Roger Mitchell said. “The sooner we recognize that we have two products then the game might be saved. FIFA and UEFA have absolute power, but can they resist their sponsors’ calls to change the dynamics of the game to appeal to their target audience of young people who specialize in memes and user-generated content during, and immediately after, games? This is where the juice is.
“In Scotland we are still discussing 16 team leagues and how we distribute the money. Nowhere do they mention how the product actually works and how to develop it to capture this generation. It is still a very unwelcoming environment for women and young children.”
He loves watching Manchester City because of the aesthetics in their play and how Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden are technical wizards. However, I hate Manchester City, not least because they are a factory club built entirely on the wealth of a multi-billion oil sheik.
When a club like this can buy the best players on the planet, games are confined to a pitch half the size and a sterile series of training ground triangles.
“Maybe we need two different football jurisdictions,” he said. “Effectively we have two versions of the game that have no connections to each other. One is global and the other is local. But they are governed by the same bodies that do not know how to reconcile them. If they don’t find a solution to this then football will indeed eat itself.
