Oct 01 2009
What We Think We Want 0-1 What We Really Want
Brian Phillips on Manchester United v. Wolfsburg:
Somewhat more interestingly, then, I think the lack of interest in this game is a minor, local reflection of the fact that what we think is good in soccer and what we actually want to watch aren’t always the same thing. To leap to another example, almost everyone is opposed to the creation of a European superleague, me included, because of what it would do to old traditions and old meanings within the game. At the same time, I think it’s safe to say that confronted with the choice of Barcelona v. Arsenal or Stockport County v. Huddersfield Town, a huge subset of anti-superleague fans would choose the superleague game every time. Me irrevocably included.
What that means, I’m not really sure, except that it probably points to one reason football has such an overheated moral rhetoric compared to every other sport in the world. And it probably suggests one of the basic, weird features of the game’s evolution at this moment, which is that the administrators and owners who are conventionally depicted as bad guys (people who want football to be a business, people who only care about money) are in many cases pursuing their nefarious ends by trying to give fans what they would actually choose for themselves if it were available—only to be actively opposed by fans who have somewhat surprisingly (and maybe prudently) defined their own interest as something else.
Read the rest at The Run of Play.
