Embracing the Banality of the Post-Modern Game: Sports Laundry, Vol. 1
Football is meaningless, so enjoy it!
Oh, football.
You used to be the preserve of stories, lustre and stardom. You used to inspire, to incite, to charm. You used to be a cultural kingpin, standing tall at the confluence of passion, community, sportsmanship and wonder. People used to care.
Alas, no longer. Your star has faded, and my enjoyment has too.
Football has ripped out its curiosities and quaint peculiarities, mashed them together into homogenous green slop, and sold itself in oversaturated 4K-UHD media packages for eight billion people to consume (see cover image for context).
The world’s game seems to revel in its all-encompassing-ness; if you’re even remotely interested, it can, at times, feel like it’s being rammed into every orifice - like a horrifying accident at a sausage-packing factory, if you will. There’s simply no escape from the football machine.
So much is made of every moment. Every game is a must-win. Every club is in crisis. Every transfer, a record; every goal, a bombshell; every manager, a genius; every player, a global icon.
Hear the edict of the footballing powers that be, and rejoice: you’ll go to every game; you’ll buy every shirt; you’ll follow every player; you’ll pay every streaming subscription; you’ll support your team with every fibre of your being without a moment’s respite, lest you be judged as the plastic fan you are.
The vapid accompanying entertainment is practically bedded in from childhood. Beware the football-adjacent-stuff pipeline; you’ll start by watching 442oons and trading Match Attax in blissful, youthful innocence - but before you know it, you’ll be jaded, bemused, wondering why Sky Sports are inviting impressionists onto punditry panels… and writing rambling blog posts about post-modernity.
With manufactured drama at every turn, football breeds such fetid vitriol; no other sport facilitates tribalism to such a degree - though, indeed, no other sport can claim to have supplanted traditional beliefs as the religion of the masses. Stadia become cathedrals, chants become hymns, sportsmen become saints, bearing badges and sponsors like stigmata as they wage holy wars from August to June (plus friendlies and international fixtures), and fans become zealots.
It really is relentless.
I know I can’t stomach even a brief glance at my phone after a defeat. Therein, I think, lies the problem.
The internet has pushed fans over the edge into lunacy; the constant slew of ‘content’, accessible in seconds and available on every media platform you could ever imagine, has simply fried our brains. It’s sent the modernist ‘grand narrative’ of football into hyperdrive.
If you’re not consuming football, ‘yer da’ style, through the lens of Facebook groups and poorly-sourced tabloid articles, you’re being hounded for supporting a ‘finished club’ by anonymous 15-year-old football fans on X (I really do hate having to write that) or being reeled in by rage-bait TikTok users. You just can’t win.
The (artificially) high stakes of every facet of the sport mean that everyone has everything to lose at any given moment. The result? The most toxic, insecure fan culture humanly possible. It’s worn me down - others too, no doubt. Maybe even you.
Such insecurity begets a need to be first to every tidbit of information, which in turn saps the excitement from what once would have been exciting breaking news; every lineup is leaked, every transfer is rumoured, every match sits within a near-48-hour preview-live-coverage-analysis cycle. It’s addictive, yes, but truly joyless.
I think, fortunately, we’ve arrived at a moment of reflection. If even I can cotton on to the fact we’re at saturation point, then others must have too.
Thank god, then, for Football Clichés. If you’re not familiar (and, like me, need to hear your gripes validated in amusing podcast format), I’d suggest changing that. There are hours and hours of good-faith fun-poking at the sort of repeated tropes which can drive you a little mad if left unchecked. It provides that necessary opposition to the ‘grand narrative’ which means that you - yes, you - can too partake in some cool post-modern thinking.
It’s valuable proof that away from the content farms, there’s ample entertainment within the grasp of the prospective high-minded fan. A single podcast is only the tip of the iceberg. For a football obsessive, it’s almost therapeutic, and serves as a reminder to shed the sort of views which have made up the bulk of this post so far, and see the game for what it is… a game.
Yes, fine, I sound like a parent consoling their child at a school sports match, but trust me: there’s liberation to be gained in armchair fandom.
Why hold yourself in such high esteem as a fan? Really - what’s the point? Pinning your emotions to the actions of a small group of athletes is, unless you support one of about three clubs in the entire world, ludicrously unwise. My mood was darkened by news of a player’s groin injury the other day. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
So, take a step back. As I alluded to earlier, the stakes aren’t actually high (shocker!). Football has no right to make any sort of lasting impact on one’s emotions. That’s not to say you can’t enjoy it for what it is: a sport - the best sport, in my view - and an entertainment form (where, of course, high drama can be found in droves), but nothing more.
Slow it down. Read a column - this one, preferably. Go to a match. Go to the pub. Have a good time. It’s just a game, and it doesn’t matter.
…or does it? Like a poorly-executed tease at the end of a studio film franchise, this is only PART ONE of a titillating two-parter about why football might actually be important. Next time, I might deign to do some serious writing!
Okay, right, a bit of admin to finish us off. You might have noticed a little orange ‘SL’ logo in the corner of this post’s tasteful accompanying cartoon.
What does it mean, you ask?
Well, it stands for Sports Laundry. Ha. Sportswashing. Yes, very good. No, it’s not the only thing I know how to write about. It’s designed to demarcate the sports section of Saunderisms - treat it as an instruction to tune out, or tune in, if you see the soon-to-be-world-famous Sports Laundry™ logotype on one of my articles.
Thanks. See you next time.
Does the Sports Laundry need a kitman?.......