The game has gone. This is the much-uttered, wearily repetitive response to any development in modern football, whether it be technology or the propensity for players to fall as if struck by an invisible hand of God.
The truth, of course, is more brutal. The game has been fractured. There are now two distinct versions of football. This is simply proved. Elite football now has different rules from the mass of the game.
The revolution, too, has been televised. The top end of the game has doffed its hat to its paymasters. The 2026 World Cup has become a product for television, a plaything for the rich and an enormous financial burden for comparatively poorer fans hanging on to the traditional custom of supporting one’s team in a stadium.
This is not a protest at the game ‘losing its soul’. Those of us who watched the game in the sixties and in the following decades know that professional football always had scant regard for supporters. Many died in stadiums at home and abroad. Most stood in unspecified filth, swaying dramatically to the capricious moods of huge crowds. It was dirty, dangerous and no one in authority cared until they were forced to by tragedy.
A wistfulness for the old days should not blind us to the reality that elite football is safe, even comfortable, to watch. It is now a product. It is now a construct of television.
One of the ironies of the World Cup is that though tickets are shamefully expensive, it is a competition that is best watched on television. The view from the couch is perfect with the added bonus of knowing just what is occurring. VAR analysis and decisions can be better understood from my perch in a pebble-dashed scout hut in Stirling rather than a $10,000 seat in the Azteca.
Gianni Infantino takes a selfie, much to the embarrassment of former referee Pierluigi Collina
It is the most garish example of how FIFA has bowed to the broadcasters. It is the prime example of how we now have two different sports. VAR is the sole preserve of the Premiership in Scotland. All other matches down the pyramid and beyond play to another rule: that of decision made, get on with it.
The gulf between the sports has widened with the ‘hydration breaks’. These were an obvious innovation to provide more advertising breaks for the broadcasters. They will not be coming to a ground near you. Can you imagine the scene at the Indodrill Stadium, in the lee of tracer-bullet sleet sweeping in from the Ochils, and the ref calls for a break? The only remedy then would be to apply Bovril intravenously to shivering players.
The World Cup has also extended the half-time break, if only — for now — for the final. This means that the biggest match in the world — with hydration breaks, injuries, substitutions, and mandatory sing-song at the break — will stretch to two and a half hours. At least. Two and a half hours at a Scottish stadium in the winter would call for the intervention of rescue workers addressing the onset of mass hypothermia.
Elite football, too, is officiated on a different level. It is possible to attend a semi-professional football match in Scotland and witness one man or woman arbitrating the mayhem. It takes at least seven to run a World Cup match.
The World Cup, incidentally, also throws in cameras that may or not be hit by a ball. Scottish football reserves this right to the top of grandstands.
Most egregiously, the World Cup also makes it up as it goes along. Disciplinary procedures seem, well, flexible. The saga of presidential phone calls and the subsequent suspension of a suspension for Folarin Balogun, the USA striker, was an awful moment for the sport. FIFA could invoke Article 27, the executive could protest its innocence but this decision was a stain on the game. It will not be forgotten by traditional fans.
Thomas Tuchel tries to urge his men on during one of the much-maligned ‘hydration breaks’
It will, though, be forgiven by many at the top of football in their respective countries. There are calls to bridge the gap between elite football and its base. Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, may face a challenge to his supremacy. He is booed and held in contempt by the average punter.
Football authorities have a different view. The Qatar World Cup was hailed as an extraordinary success after its turnover reached $5bn. The show in the USA, Mexico and Canada will generate $13bn at least. Some of that goes to football authorities who will quietly thank Infantino. His plan to raise the participation of countries to 64 in the next World Cup will not cost him votes among the mass of countries that struggle for a place at the trough.
Infantino — or someone like him — will push forward with plans to refine the brand. This will have little to do with fair deals for fans or improvements to players’ welfare. The priority will be to raise revenue through increased sponsorship and television deals. The World Cup generates three times as much money as the Olympics. More than one billion will watch the final.
The extraordinary entry prices will continue. FIFA will note the 99 per cent capacity of games throughout the tournament and see no reason to accommodate those of lesser means. There is a burgeoning football tourism market among the upper middle class, an insatiable hospitality sector and a rump of fans who will pay almost anything to watch their country in a World Cup. The World Cup on a limited budget is now a preposterous notion.
The game, thus, has been fractured. The elite level — World Cup, Champions League, EPL — are increasingly the preserve of relatively rich tourists. The laws are bent to suit the powerful, the format changed to accommodate telly.
It is still, of course, massively entertaining, even to this fitba’ granda who cringes at the obvious manipulation of the game he loves.
Donald Trump is pleased with this World Cup but for many it has only highlighted faults
There has been one highly welcome change. Protection has been offered to skillful players. It is why we can still wonder at Lionel Messi, who is approaching his 40th birthday. The integral drama of football also survives. It cannot quite be destroyed by whiffs of corruption, willful pragmatism or all-consuming commercialism.
In many ways, the World Cup is a banquet of football. But one that produces an occasional sense of queasiness. I will, of course, watch the final with obsessive interest.
However, my weekend will be marked by a visit to Kilsyth Rangers facing Kirkintilloch Rob Roy by way of a palate cleanser. There is no inverted snobbery about this. It is just an acceptance that the game has now a chasm at its heart.
One will be moved, enthralled and entertained by the events in New Jersey. The game I love, though, will be more faithfully represented on grass and plastic throughout this country this weekend.
It will largely be officiated and organised by those who give rather than take. This is a lesson ignored by elite football but its merit offers a lesson far beyond the pitch.
