I am willing to accept that Richard Caborn is not as corrupted as Tessa Jowell in their fiefdom at the British government's Department for Culture Media and Sport but any individual who existed on the periphery of the decision making process regarding the first super-casino can hardly claim a moral high ground. And, yet, the full spectrum (from proper football all the way through to the corrupt spectacular society nonsense which is dished up today) allows people like Caborn to shuttle around a twilight zone that allows tokenistic posturing towards the most visible power structures while equally facilitating the corrupt infrastructure required by such power structures. A sort of Orwellian political duplicity...
Yesterday, Richard Caborn published a public warning to the Premier League and, by association, the G14(18) group of teams. Caborn asks (in a suitably Castro-esque posture) "is the Commission prepared to give sport back to the people?" followed by a thinly disguised power grab with "are they prepared to give powers to sport to carry out better governance and regulation without being threatened by the courts of Europe?".
Caborn's gang want the Commission to give sport an exemption from European Union rules that encourage free markets and open competition, a logical and concrete outcome, they say, of the European Council's Nice declaration of 2000 that acknowledged the specific characteristics of sport and its social role in Europe.
This is a fake reality - it is not going to happen. Football has mutated into an entirely different species of event since the Bosman ruling, the impact of major gambling liquidity and the input of Sky television. There is no going back particularly if the proposed route undermines the powers-that-be. The changes that Caborn will present to the European Competition Commissioners will be opposed at that immediate level as there is an annoyance at his tokenism. The Premier League, the UEFA Strategy Board and the G14(18) will treat any campaign against their interests as a further momentum towards the establishment of a European Super League (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/04/every-so-often-g1418-group-of-europes.html). Caborn appears not to see that by appearing to be fighting the good fight in an inappropriate territory, he is actually creating more destructive forces against the game. A few points...
* It is not in the interests of football for the Super League to occur.
* Whether they like it or not, UEFA and FIFA are going to have to both play second fiddle to the major teams and their cartelised representative associations and also approach all negotiations with a hidden agenda suggestive of compromise. As soon as the footballing authorities cross a threshold of the power team's own choosing, these self same teams can simply pick up their ball and start a whole new game. We'll all follow them - they know that! FIFA and UEFA know it too!
* All successful campaigns must involve realisable goals otherwise such projects are both dispiriting and futile and, furthermore, frequently strengthen the opposition. FIFA and UEFA will be required to achieve incremental adjustments protective of their specific interests and the interests of football (or both on the occasions where they coincide). Power grab = counter productive; incremental realism = the best defensive strategy. It's like chess. FIFA and UEFA are a couple of points down and the prime gameplan is solid defence with guerilla raids if and when feasible. Then along comes Mr Caborn's loose cannon riding headlong into the opposition on a suicide mission that will trigger an immediate counter attack.
* Although watching the rich get richer and the poor poorer is an unpleasant spectacle wherever it is found in society, we exist in a shareholder capitalist system. What does football expect? The game, at the top levels, sold out. Complaining about the financial strength of the major operators should be a generalised and not a specific posture. Why should the impact of manipulative money in football be regarded any differently than the equivalent money in any other sector?
* Reading a New Labour minister pontificating about illusory leftish issues usually means that there is a career breakpoint ahead. Is Caborn's timing of a public portrayal of his non neocon credentials anything to do with the forthcoming change of leadership in his party?
* Inside the game, there is an awareness of the corrupting influence of gambling money and an acceptance that the situation is about to get a whole lot worse with the influx of money from some entertaining sources. If Caborn really wanted to make an impact on the modern day reality of top tier football, he could confront the considerable forces that, having implemented a strategy for the game to sell out to the dollar, now wish for that dollar to be a gambling dollar. No chance of Mr Caborn venturing into that territory and, yet, his job title is Minister for Gambling as well as Minister for Sport... Proper bottom-up democratic reform and good governance with regard to corruption have both been conspicuous by their absence over the last ten years as indeed they were for the previous 15... In fact, as has ever been the case!
The most worrying aspect of all this for the fan of a people's football is that the individuals, businesses, governments and organisations that are scrapping for competitive edge and power within the global cash cow of football are fighting their own proprietary agendas. Nobody (except, perhaps, Platini) is taking decisions for the good of the game and, as is always the case in this system, the truly psychopathic come up trumps. The battle lines are drawn. There is a considerable daylight between Caborn's threat of "storm clouds gathering on Europe's skies" (who writes his stuff?) and the Premier League's "the idea that there is a crisis in European football that is unique in nature is a flawed concept".
Caborn should have a shave, for starters, and then take a good look at himself in the mirror. Can he really believe that inappropriately poking the money monster on our behalf but not in our interests is a preferable course of action to a different type of poking which is both in our interests and on our behalf and, much more importantly, is indicative of Caborn's job of gambling governance?
I don't care whether Chelsea buy Shevchenko.
I do care when Chelsea corrupt the outcomes of football matches.
Wow! How therapeutic was that?
