Is the Beautiful Game now tarnished…
Last week we saw the inauguration of the delayed European football championships between Turkey and Italy from Rome, and many football fans like myself sat themselves down eagerly awaiting an entertaining game played in front of a catchall of fans for the first time since the global lockdowns of the last year. However, over the last few days my attention span has slowly dissipated and has been concerned by the number of ridiculous fouls that litter the game constantly and the fluidity that it detracts from the game.
Cast your mind back to the golden days of football or soccer of you are reading this in America. Players who graced the field back in those days such as Nat Lofthouse, Stanley Matthews, Puskas, De Stefano and Pele had to to ensure a much more physical game which also flowed and entertained the crowds that paid to spectate, and now compare those with those who play now and there is no comparison. Today’s footballers are spoilt by inane directives created by UEFA and FIFA and which are now backed up by VAR and have taken the physical element out of the game completely, and we are left with a field of overpaid prima-donna’s playing tippy tappy football, that leaves us demoralised and underwhelmed by the whole experience.
For many years players would play with a leather ball, which if the weather was inclement would become totally saturated and make heading it a very difficult task indeed and the there was the pitches themselves, back in the day there was no drainage or undersoil heating to maintain the pitch’s condition, by the end of the winter, football pitches resembled quagmires rather than the perfectly maintained carpets of grass we see now. Footwear has changed markedly from the golden era of football, instead of the heavy leather boots that some of the best players ever wore, players now endorse boots which now resemble glorified ballet shoes, which are designed to exercise extreme whip on the extremely light polyurethane balls which are now used.
Lastly, players back in the day when football employed hard men such as Hunter, Bremner, Harris and Smith, a tackle was a tackle and if you were the recipient you would certainly feel it, However these days if a player feels the slightest of contact, they will go down and a free kick invariably is awarded, pathetic isn’t it.
Sadly the players who played in football’s heyday have paid the price both physically and mentally. In the last few years former players such as Jack Charlton, Bobby Charlton, Gordon McQueen have all been diagnosed or lost their lives to dementia, and Ray Kennedy battles each day with Parkinson’s disease all a legacy to their glory days and the punishment they put their bodies through.
To end this gripe on the diminishing love of the game I once enjoyed, I turn to a modern players earnings, not only is it obscene but immoral as well. In addition to their unbelievable weekly wage, players also receive win bonuses and international duty payments as well as their many lucrative endorsements.
To conclude I want refer to the tragic incident which occurred in the match between Denmark and Finland, when Christian Eriksen suddenly collapsed and a world audience was privy to seeing a stricken player having CPR and defibrillation in order to restart his heart, and thankfully to the quick actions of both the players and the medical teams, Christian is now stable and conscious in hospital, however it is likely that his football career as player is now over, and I wish him continued good health and recovery and say thank you to those who saved his life.
