“Everything is possible in football,” says the saying; And enthusiasts know that they should always believe it. However, it takes the faith of the pilgrim to think today thatAnother football is possibletitle of a recently published collective test (the water edge, 72 p., 8 euros).
The formula, but in interrogative mode, was one of the first issue of the monthly Football Notebookstwenty-two years ago, and it must be admitted that this alterglobalist watchword was swept away, such as alterglobalism, by the thatchier axiom “There is no alternative”. There were, in reality, but they did not happen.
After the turns of the 1990s – explosion of audiovisual rights, liberalization of the players’ market, creation of premium competitions -, elite football assumed the mercenariat of footballers, the gigantism of competitions, the loss of identity of the clubs and the enrichment of the richest of them, the financialization, the weakening of sporting equity, geopolitical instrumentalizations, etc.
Troubling thing, these “drifts” seem to be part of the show than to constitute a problem to be solved. So what conditions have missed for thirty years of flight forward, and still lack, so that another football is possible?
Resignation
Because these developments have made many losers, such as the great national footballs that are too modestly modest (Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Scotland and others) to follow the arms race. And many victims, such as these clubs brought to bankruptcy by incompetent investors. Another football is possible is also born from the tumble of the Girondins de Bordeaux, explain the authors, Stéphane Beaud, Timothée Duverger, Vincent Mourgues, Jérôme Saddier and Jean-Luc Veyssy.
A large majority of clubs, now reduced to the role of foods of players or subsidiaries for the Superclub oligarchy, are objectively injured, but their relegation is perceived as fatality. Only a fraction of supporters, in particular ultras, organize forms of opposition.
You have 56.35% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.