Living Wittily

The unholy trinity of 'Money, Football Dominance, and the Cosmic Scale Ego'.

Don't know how many regulars to this blog have any interest in football. But I think most probably have considerable interest in issues of justice, human flourishing, use and abuse of power, and the dangers of globalised capitalism and consumerism when they are made the absolute standard by which human activity is judged. So from a weekend of action and news - some reflections.

Queen of the South, a wee team from Dumfries, played in the Scottish Cup Final against one of the two the wealthiest clubs in Scotland. The final score of 3-2 to Rangers points to a close game, and the sheer romance of a rural town virtually emptied as 17,000+ went to support the local team. David and Goliath it wasn't - cos the big guy won this time. What was recognisable was the sport, the human experience of competing, trying, and knowing that though there can only be one winning team - played the right way for the right reasons, everyone comes away with more than they took.

Hull City played Bristol City for the final place in the Premier League. The winning team would find its finances boosted by around £60 million. So Dean Windass, 39 year old striker with the build of a slightly out of condition rugby player, hit one of the best timed volleys of his career, and netted the club £60 million. No pressure then. With that kind of money, how many of the current squad who worked to get the team into the Premiership, will be there after the start of next season, when that kind of money is around to buy some security and success. How far should money count in a sport, in the life of a sports player?

Which brings us to Chelsea, whose owner is one of the richest men in the world, who spends millions the way the rest of us spend 10p pieces, and who has injected hundreds of millions into the Club. That explains the quite astonishing arrogance of their Chairman Bruce Buck speaking after Chelsea sacked Avram Grant:


We have had a great season," said Buck. "In the four competitions we were in, we were runners up in three of them. But we have very high expectations at Chelsea and a couple of second place finishes is just not good enough for us."

He added: "Although we never would have thought in September when Jose Mourinho left that we would be able to make it into a Champions League Final - as we did, and that is fantastic - Chelsea is here to win trophies so, although it was an excellent season, we are still disappointed."

Now I'm not naive enough to think that a huge, lucrative, ego factory like top flight professional football should by some miracle show the slightest display of such human virtues as altruism, due deference to the excellence of others, fairness, or even at a push evidence of actually enjoying the game itself. But there are levels of irrational expectations behind that statement that border on religious fundamentalism rooted in worship of a God named ' Money, Dominance and the Corporate Cosmic Ego'. (Buck is pointing to said deity in this photograph - note the open mouthed worshipper on the left). The ruthless disposal of a failed manager, after 8 months having inherited a club in crisis, and on a definition that counts three runner's up places in four competitions (one of which was lost by the captain of the team slipping as he took a penalty that would otherwise have one the biggest of them all) as not good enough, is an act that betrays a truly scary worldview. Some of the most ruthless military leaders in human history would struggle to compete with such expectations after 8 months in charge. Alexander the Great took a bit longer......

All of which means what? Football is a major global industry, increasingly used as a shop window for the world's most powerful global capitalist interests, and now the sport itself has become the means and not the end. Left me wondering if my deep moral repulsion at such power seeking and financial muscle flexing in sport is only one of scale. The two Scottish teams in the final need money, and money and status are at the centre of professional sporting motivation, so they play the same game. But equally I'm quite sure players on £200,000 a week!!! is a moral issue of another order. And the sacking of a manager in such cirucmstances as Avram Grant, explained with the liturgical solemnity of a High Priest spokesman of ' Money, Dominance and the Corporate Cosmic Ego', demonstrates with brutal clarity, that when money speaks, some people hear it as the word of god (small captials intentional). They also live under the quite irrational belief in the divine right to win.

Much to ponder as a once football player, a lifelong football fan, and a follower of a different God, who speaks a different discourse, whose goals are very different, whose criteria for excellence are not centred on universal domination, and whose view of human beings is, apparently, not as ruthlessly exacting as those held by Bruce Buck. But then the God I refer to never finishes in penultimate place - indeed hear the Word of God, (capitals intentional this time): - the last shall be first and the first shall be last - no place then for the penultimate or the ultimate then. Winning isn't everything, thank goodness.

There's nae justice for the bairns

As an Aberdeen fan, and a Christian, I watched last night's game between Aberdeen and Falkirk with mixed feelings. In old fashioned Biblical terms, Aberdeen get into the top six of the Scottish Premier league as those who enter by the skin of their teeth. Falkirk played us off the pitch for big chunks of the game, including the first 15 minutes till we scored with our first attempt on goal. Then after conceding early in the second half, we grabbed a late winner, from an acute angle, with the ball a few millimetres still in play (if you're an Aberdeen fan) or at least three inches out of play (if you support Falkirk [nickname, The Bairns]).

What was funny, silly and, for fans who pay good money, frustrating but still funny, was the way each team tried to waste time once the score suited them. There's something of the Primary 1 class level of non-grown-up behaviour in the playground, about professional players walking slowly, bending slowly, fumbling with the ball before lifting it, cleaning it on the shirt, then dropping it for the team mate to throw it, but not before he also slowly retrieves it, cleans it (cos it's dirty again cos it was dropped, ye see), then feigning to throw half a dozen times before the ball comes back into play, yawn, zzzzz.

While desiderating on the fitba theme, congratulations to Ross County who won promotion from Division Two, on Saturday. Derek and the boys done good. A ten match winning run after Christmas, a blizzard of goals home and away, the place buzzing and confident for next year - not bad for one of the youngest managers in the professional game. So it's been a good week to be on holiday and reflect on the deep and serious things by which men live. Sheila, by the way, has no problem with the non-inclusive 'men' in the last sentence - she wouldn't want to be included in the sad, perspective-limited, theatrical worldview that us football fans willingly pay money to inhabit.

Come on you reds! Aberdeen and Bayern Munich

Aberdeen 2 - Bayern Munich 2

 Just spent a couple of hours sitting on the edge of the sofa, looking at the TV screen between my fingers, from behind the cushion, and sometimes squinting through near closed eyelids. Most of us were prepared for a hard lesson in due humility, or even overdue humiliation. But the boys done good. And the return is next Thursday on my birthday - so I get to choose the food for our meal, and the entertainment for the night. 

Come on you reds!!!!!!!!!!!

Death of a footballer - Phil O'Donnell, Motherwell FC

Now and again something happens which exposes the superficial levels at which we sometimes conduct our mental and emotional lives. Take football. For football supporters the team dominates their worldview. Local economies react to the fortunes of the local team; the morale and hopefulness of whole communities is responsive to the results, the way the season is going, how well the team is playing.Like everyone else the least bit interested in football, I have my opinions, more or less informed, as biased as any pundit, and just as likely to exaggerate the cosmic significance of 90 minutes of grown men huffing and puffing up and down the park.

But as I said at the start, sometimes we are all reminded of how fragile life is, how precious and unique and irreplaceable a human being is. And we were so reminded last Saturday, when Phil O'Donnell, the captain of Motherwell Football Club collapsed and died during a match which his team won, and for once the result was an irrelevance.

Bill Shankly's famous quip, 'Football isn't a matter of life and death. It's far more important than that', remains a humorous piece of over-stated rhetoric. But even the most famous of Liverpool managers knew that was exactly what it was, and all that it was. No game is more important than life. The Motherwell manager Mark McGhee, in a statement on behalf of the Club, made it clear that for now, no one was interested in the training pitch, the football pitch or anything else to do with football, till due respect had been paid, till their friend had been remembered and his family cared for. Alongside such sudden tragedy and its human significance, football is relegated to its rightful place.

So yes, football can give rise to some of the silliest, overblown claims about the game's importance. And sometimes listening to those involved in 'the game', you wonder if the real world ever gets a look in. But countless football supporters live out their inner struggles through the ups and downs of their team. Their identity and sense of who they are is mortgaged to the team, the stadium, the colours, the names and numbers on the shirts. And that became so obvious as I watched the devastated groups gathering around Fir Park. Football has its problems alright, but when you witness the sense of loss, the genuine grief and sorrow of a community at the death of a young family man, you become aware of the social and humanising importance of sport when it is exemplified in such popular, respected and decent players; and when it evokes such humane and genuine affection.

With apologies to Bill Shankly, football isn't a matter of life and death; rather it is one way in which many people celebrate the life they live in their community, and live through the joy and sorrow that are the changing colours of every individual life. The current practice of a round of applause in appreciation of a footballer who has died is both moving and an important reminder, that life is irreplaceably precious, and that at its best, for football players, football is one expression of that hunger and vitality to achieve through effort, to excel in skill, to express the reality of who they are, through a game that when played both fairly and skillfully, and with all my prejudice admittedly showing, is a beautiful game. Phil O'Donnell was a player who graced the teams he played for, and who gave back in dignity and sportsmanship, easily as much as he earned.

One extra fragment of evidence to add to widespread testimony and appreciation - outside Fir Park there are scarves left in tribute from many different teams, including both Celtic (whom Phil O'Donnell played for) and Rangers. In sorrow and loss of such a good man, sectarianism is transcended, blue and green on the same side - no bad tribute in itself.

Aberdeen 4 FC Copenhagen 0

There's a time to be humble, to not gloat, to be self-deprecating, to shrug the shoulders apologetically and apologise for not doing what everybody expects; a time to remember that pride goes before a fall, to consider the feelings of others and refrain from crowing.

This isnae wan o' them, though!!!

Aberdeen 4 F C Copenhagen 0

At the end of a glorious evening of solidarity with the Dons, exhausted by the emotional and physical cost of kicking every ball (while lying supine on the sofa, occasionally hiding behind a cushion) we emerge not only as winners, but 4 -0. Christmas will be an anti-climax now, unless somebody can think opf something better than 4-0!

Anyway, not to go on about it, but I would like to place on record my appreciation for the efforts of the Aberdeen team this evening, my admiration for their earnest endeavours, my complete endorsement of their tactical awareness, and my absolute incredulity that when I play back the recording there are indeed four goals and I wasn't dreaming. So, to avoid being tediously repetitive, if I may reiterate briefly.....4-0!!!!!!!!!

Best corny line from the commentary: referring to the AFC management team, "There's the three wise men - Jimmy Calderwood, Jimmy Nicholl and Sandy Clark - and they're looking for a star tonight!"

Time to say my evening prayers, which tonight will be 4 thanksgivings and 0 complaints. 4-0, get it?

Derek Adams, Ross County and Christians in Sport

Derek Adams appointed head Coach at Ross County. Well, you might wonder what that has to do with most of the folk who click in and out of my life on this blog. I met Derek Adams in 1984, when he was 9, and wanted to be a footballer like his dad, George Adams. Derek with his family were in Crown Terrace Baptist Church in Aberdeen, and he and George remain active in Christians in Sport. They are also good friends, so why not mention them - anyway I'm up in Inverness next week, and they are playing Raith Rovers at home, so I'm going. Probably be freezing, but that'll let me sample the pies and the hot chocolate. Salad, apple or grapes don't do it for me at a fitba match - need the calories, the heat and the frisson of guilt that accompanies a pie with broon sauce.

It makes me feel my age that Derek is now a football manager with his playing career at the later stages. Today in his first game in charge as head coach at Ross County, they won 4-0. I used to play five a side with Derek, and occasionally got past him! Learned some of his skills from us amateurs whose talent remained undiscovered. Och aye, the boy's done good, but.